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Foreign Invaders crisis cost $150B in 2023, forcing some areas to cut police and fire services: report Israel kills head of Hezbollah Intelligence. Status: Not Logged In; Sign In International News See other International News Articles Title: Trump: NATO partners "agreed to substantially up their commitment" Source: HotAir URL Source: https://hotair.com/archives/2018/07 ... reed-substantially-commitment/ Published: Jul 12, 2018 Author: Ed Morrissey Post Date: 2018-07-12 09:30:26 by Tooconservative Keywords: None Views: 2433 Comments: 26 Mission accomplished? After a contentious NATO summit, Donald Trump held a surprise press conference earlier today to announce substantial increases in spending commitments by other members of the alliance. Trump declared NATO now a “fine-tuned machine” after his negotiations, but also hinted that he could have disassembled it if he wanted: "Everyone has agreed to substantially up their commitment": Pres. Trump says NATO member nations have agreed to spend more money on defense. https://t.co/rc4ztpQ6dg pic.twitter.com/RxIHuz0QoV — ABC News (@ABC) July 12, 2018 President Donald Trump declared NATO a “fine-tuned machine” in an impromptu news conference at the conclusion of his participation in a contentious NATO summit during which he has questioned the utility of the alliance and harshly criticized some of the United States’ closest allies for not paying more into the alliance. The alliance is much stronger than it was at the outset of the conference, Trump said Thursday, taking credit for what he said are increased commitments from allies to up spending, citing an increased commitment of $33 billion to the alliance. “Yesterday, I let them know that I was extremely unhappy with what was happening and they have substantially upped their commitment and now we’re very happy, and have a very, very powerful, very strong NATO; much stronger than it was two days ago,” Trump said. The president told reporters he “probably” had the unilateral power to pull the United States out of NATO if he chose to do so but said he thinks it’s unnecessary. Not only is that a foolish thing to say, it’s at least technically untrue. The NATO treaty was ratified by the Senate in August 1949, giving it the force of law, which means — theoretically, anyway — that Congress would have to act to formally undo it. In practice, though, Jimmy Carter unilaterally canceled a ratified defense treaty with Taiwan in 1978 without any action from Congress, and without any penalties except some political damage that largely got forgotten in the Iranian crisis the next year. Congress might take stronger action against a president that abruptly denounced our NATO membership, especially with this president. Even apart from that, it’s still foolish, considering how much the US relies on its NATO partners for security and military operations that go far beyond Europe. It’s the equivalent of cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face. And yet Reuters claims that Trump leveled that threat as a means to getting the contribution increases he demanded: U.S. President Donald Trump told NATO allies in a closed-door meeting on Thursday that governments needed to raise spending to 2 percent of economic output by January next year or the United States would go its own way, two people familiar with the discussions told Reuters. The ultimatum was delivered in a session at the NATO summit, the sources said. “He said they must raise spending by January 2019 or the United States would go it alone,” one person said. French president Emmanuel Macron denied that any threat ever was aired, publicly or privately: BRUSSELS (AP) — Macron says Trump 'never at any moment, either in public or in private, threatened to withdraw from NATO' — Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) July 12, 2018 Maybe not, but the private meeting featured some “intense” back and forth anyway, according to one of Trump’s targets: Merkel said: “We had a very intense summit.” … The mood had appeared to have calmed as the summit went into its second day, focusing on operations beyond Europe. But, several sources said, Trump instead reopened in strong terms his demand that other countries spend more immediately. “The language was much tougher today,” one source told Reuters. “His harshest words were directed at Germany, including by calling her Angela —‘You, Angela.’” As well as Merkel, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and Charles Michel, the prime minister of Belgium, were singled out by Trump for undershooting on their spending targets when U.S. taxpayers, funding a defense budget worth about 3.6 percent of their national income, foot much of NATO’s bills. In the end, Trump got the other NATO members to agree to his terms. That’s why he held a press conference to declare victory, but it’s likely only a momentary win. NATO members have been pledging increases for years, only to fall short later. Their countries aren’t fond of the idea of spending more money on defense, a legitimate frustration for the US. Perhaps Trump thought that threats of breaking the alliance might finally wake them up, but those are very likely to have more effect on NATO’s opponents and enemies, who have waited almost 70 years for the alliance to fall apart. Airing notions of unilateral withdrawal in public over $33 billion in pledges is pennywise and pound-foolish in a world where Russia is actively rebuilding its empire by force in places like Georgia and Ukraine. And when those pledges fall short, you can bet your bottom dollar that Vladimir Putin will have Russia’s propaganda machine making the most of it, hoping to break the last threads of the alliance that broke the Soviet Union and kept Russia out of eastern Europe since then. Poster Comment: Okay, now NATO is a fine-tuned machine after a two-day summit. Too bad our other presidents never thought of that. Maybe we should wait to see if our alleged allies actually do increase their spending by Trump's January deadline. I like how he went after Merkel. "You, Angela." After he threw those pieces of penny candy on the table in front of Merkel in Canada last month and said, "Don't ever say I never gave you anything, Angela." Anyway, it was a very fun little junket for Trump to go tell off those uppity EUro deadbeats. This also plays into Trump's sanctions against Iran and his demand for fairer trade with the EU. Post Comment   Private Reply   Ignore Thread   Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 26. #2. To: All, Vicomte13, redleghunter (#0) AoS: Speaking of “Warriors” Less than a third of German military assets are operational says report Number of weapon systems ready for action: Typhoon jets: 39 of 128 Tornado jets: 26 of 93 CH-53 transport helicopters: 16 of 72 NH-90 transport helicopters: 13 of 58 Tigre attack helicopters: 12 of 62 A400M transport aircraft: 3 of 15 Leopard 2 tanks: 105 of 224 Frigates: 5 of 13 Submarines: 0 out of 6 That's the entire Bundeswehr. Nobody else in (western) Europe is doing much better. Compare that to the TOE for a single US Mechanized Infantry Division. Throw in a little air cover from the zoomies, and the US Division would mop the floor with the entire Bundeswehr. And the US Army has 20 divisions, give or take, about half of them active. No wonder NATO is squealing like a stuck pig at Trump's demands that they pull their weight. I get that we're going to be the 800lb elephant in the war room, but I don't think it's asking too much for NATO to be a pack of wolves at our side, do you? Tooconservative  posted on  2018-07-13   15:03:18 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #3. To: Tooconservative (#2) (Edited) The other Western countries aren't doing much better... I can't quite agree with that. The major powers there face different problems. Rand corporation did a study entitled: "The Abilities of the British, French, and German Armies to Generate and Sustain Armored Brigades in the Baltics" Here is their synopsis: "We found that the three countries each could muster and sustain a heavy brigade, albeit at different rates; sustaining these forces would also require significant strain. More specifically, Britain and France would be able to marshal and sustain at least one battalion-size combined arms battle group within a few weeks, with Germany perhaps taking longer. The French probably would get there first, possibly within the first week. Surging more forces to get the deployments up to brigade strength would take more time: a few weeks in the French case and possibly more than a month in the British or German case. For all three armies, the effort would be a major endeavor that probably would leave the forces with little spare capacity for any other contingencies, and there are questions to be asked regarding the capabilities that those forces might have at their disposal or their aptitude for the kind of warfare that fighting the Russians might involve. For the French, the essential problem is that their army already is badly overstretched; for the British and Germans, the problem is the size of their deployable force, although both now are working to expand that size." Vicomte13  posted on  2018-07-13   15:14:08 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #4. To: Vicomte13 (#3) Most of the first troops to reach a conflict would be American. Our readiness forces are probably greater than the forces of EU NATO combined. That's just not right. And Germany clearly is unprepared to respond to any sustained conflict. These countries have never re-armed and restocked on vital spare parts since they expended their might trying to off Ghaddafi. They failed and we had to finish him off, wrecking North Africa in the process. After that, our alleged allies all cut spending and did not replace the parts and missiles they had expended. So even if you can say that France will get there in a week or Germany in two weeks, will they have enough munitions and spare parts to sustain them for a month or more? The answer is no. Tooconservative  posted on  2018-07-13   15:21:12 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #5. To: Tooconservative (#4) So even if you can say that France will get there in a week or Germany in two weeks, will they have enough munitions and spare parts to sustain them for a month or more? The answer is no. Does Russia have the armed forces to sustain an invasion? No. If Russia invaded, and broke through, and was surging towards capturing a Western capital, would France or England warn them to stop or face nuclear consequences? Unknown. If the Russians overran Germany, absent a full alliance between Germany and France, as the Russians approached the Rhine the French would warn them to stop. If the Russians crossed the Rhine and could not be stopped conventionally, the French would nuke them rather than permit France to be overrun. Vicomte13  posted on  2018-07-13   17:56:42 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #25. To: Vicomte13 (#5) Does Russia have the armed forces to sustain an invasion? No. They have the numbers but are logistically challenged even with interior lines of communication. But all Russia has to do is cut off the natural gas, and let Germany stew in that for a bit. redleghunter  posted on  2018-07-17   12:15:27 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #26. To: redleghunter (#25) They have the numbers but are logistically challenged even with interior lines of communication. But all Russia has to do is cut off the natural gas, and let Germany stew in that for a bit. Sure, Russia can make things cold for Germany, but that's really it. And of course then the Russians wouldn't be getting paid for that gas either. What possible incentive would the Russians have to engage in an outright embargo of their primary European export market in their primary export product? The Russians need the money as much as the Germans need the gas. Germany can, of course, replace the gas with other energy. Yes, it will cost them money (they have it), and yes, it will be cold for awhile, but it will get better for the Germans. The country won't collapse. Russia, on the other hand, will have lost a vital source of cash permanently, and as a security measure you can expect that the West will turn decisively away from Russian gas for good. Russia's economy is smaller than Italy's. It's smaller than France's, the UK's and Germany's. Those four countries combined have a greater population and about six times as big an economy as Russia. In short, it is absolutely impossible for Russia to win either a trade war or a conventional war against Western Europe. And if they launched a nuclear war, and the US stayed out, France alone can exterminate Russia. France plus the UK can bounce the rubble. Russia is not a threat to Western Europe. The Cold War is over. The USSR is gone. The Western nations don't have great big militaries, and Russia doesn't have a great big deployable one either - and Russia has no capacity to use it to try to invade all of Western Europe. If they can't conquer it all, they would eventually be conquered by it if they tried to invade any of it. The West learned from Poland 1939. Nobody is going to permit Russia to take a Baltic state and then sit tight. If Russia invaded a NATO country, the full economic and armed might of the West would spool up - it would take some time, but it would happen - and the Russians would be pushed out. Also, the Ukraine would be brought into NATO, along with Georgia - all the rest of the precarious border states. Nuclear weapons means that nobody will be invading Russia, but Russia simply does not have the power to push the West around. Americans keep pretending that they do, in order to justify a sort of neocolonial hold on a NATO of the past. It's not absurd: there's a lot of money being made for American defense contractors, and a lot of unnecessary jobs being filled by military and intelligence professionals. But THAT is the purpose of the current US anti-Russian policy: to keep the military and intelligence services happy and with a purpose, and to keep up the flow of profit to the defense contractors. No real MILITARY or real SECURITY purpose is served by it. What we need to do is make peace with Russia, peace in North Korea, and cut the US military and intelligence budgets by half. Balance the budget that way, and you will REALLY be improving American long term strategic security. John McCain's world no longer exists. Vicomte13  posted on  2018-07-17   13:53:10 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   Replies to Comment # 26.         There are no replies to Comment # 26. End Trace Mode for Comment # 26. Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest

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