The Obama-Trump Connection
Barack Obama and Donald Trump agree at least on one thing: They both think the Europeans are freeloaders. Europe doesn't have to take that.
President Barack Obama and wannabe president Donald Trump, as much as they may differ, do agree on one thing — that in matters of security and defense, the Europeans are freeloaders, slackers, leeches.
“Free riders aggravate me,” Obama remarked in March. And time and again he emphasized the point that at the summit conference in Wales, NATO needed to demonstrate it is making progress toward the established goal of dedicating 2 percent of gross domestic product to defense expenditures. He noted, “And I’ll be honest, sometimes Europe has been complacent about its own defense.”
Trump goes even further, calling NATO obsolete, yesterday's snowfall that costs the United States a fortune for which America picks up almost the entire tab. He notes that “it’s costing us too much money. And frankly they have to put up more money. They’re going to have to put some up also. We’re paying disproportionately. It’s too much. And frankly it’s a different world than it was when we originally conceived of the idea.” He went on to say, “The countries we are defending must pay for the cost of this defense, and if not, the U.S. must be prepared to let these countries defend themselves.”
Free riders? Like Trump, Obama misses the target altogether. Here are three facts:
As the growing number of threats necessitates new defensive measures, the 2 percent guideline mentioned in the NATO communiqué is scheduled to be implemented “in the next ten years,” i.e., by 2024. It's true that the target percentage figure is currently short by some $75 billion to $100 billion but defense budgets are currently being ramped up everywhere. It's far too early to lament about missing the target. In any case, it would be more important to spend currently available funds more wisely than to automatically raise budget figures just to fit some plan.
The notion that Europe is only contributing an unfairly low amount to its own defense is one that has haunted headlines in the United States for a long time. Obama's first secretary of defense, Robert Gates, complained that during the Cold War era the U.S. paid half of the NATO defense bill and since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the bill had gone up to 75 percent – an obvious naive miscalculation. Naturally the Europeans ramped down their defense budgets after the Berlin Wall came down – the enemy was gone and the front had disappeared. The increase in America's share was due mainly to the ballooning Pentagon budgets between 2000 and 2010: From $280 billion (3.1 percent of GDP) to $712 billion (4.9 percent of GDP). It was the wars that George W. Bush's administration wanted and the ensuing militarization that caused the financial imbalances in NATO budgets.
Meanwhile, the U.S. defense budget has been reduced to $523 billion, still higher than pre-9/11 levels. Still to be added is about $250 billion for combat operations, homeland security, intelligence operations, cybersecurity, nuclear weapons research and development (administered by the Department of Energy) and care for veterans. Even Obama has been unable to significantly reduce the defense budget. So the Pentagon will add another 1,700 F-35 fighter-bombers to its inventory at a cost of $100 million each and Obama himself plans to replace practically each and every missile, submarine, long-range bomber and nuclear warhead at a cost of $1 trillion – $1,000 billion! The NATO Europeans should not even consider comparing their own defense contribution to such insanity.
U.S. military presence in Europe has been significantly reduced since the end of the Cold War — from nearly a half-million soldiers to not even one-tenth that number. Only some 5 percent of total U.S. troop strength is still stationed here along with 200 nuclear weapons.
The United States Now Uses Europe Principally as an Intermediate Facility
During the East-West conflict, the Americans didn't defend just the Europeans; rather, they defended themselves and their global position as well. And still today, the main purpose of their continuing presence is hardly the defense of Europe. Their deployment plays the smallest part in deterring Russia but serves mainly as a symbol of the defense of American interests in other parts of the world.
Absent their prepositioned European facilities, without the harbors, the airports, the hospitals and the command centers in Italy, Spain, Germany and Turkey, the U.S. would be essentially incapable of functioning. The same holds true for Africa. (Which begs the question, why is the U.S. Africa Command's headquarters located in Stuttgart, Germany? But be that as it may …) Europe is also an indispensable intermediate base for supporting military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan; 95 percent of personnel and equipment have been and will continue to be brought there from Europe.
But the military isn't the sole currency of power. The European contribution to security also takes the form of the European Union – the world's largest trade organization. It furnishes two-thirds of all global development assistance. What it provides Ukraine in the way of debt relief and economic assistance is tenfold what Kiev receives from the United States. And the Minsk peace process — not yet a success but not yet a failure either — is essentially now in the hands of the Europeans.
The Europeans aren't slackers, shirkers or freeloaders. They don't have to take accusations to the contrary from Donald Trump or from Barack Obama.
President Barack Obama and wannabe president Donald Trump, as much as they may differ, do agree on one thing — that in matters of security and defense, the Europeans are freeloaders, slackers, leeches.
“Free riders aggravate me,” Obama remarked in March. And time and again he emphasized the point that at the summit conference in Wales, NATO needed to demonstrate it is making progress toward the established goal of dedicating 2 percent of gross domestic product to defense expenditures. He noted, “And I’ll be honest, sometimes Europe has been complacent about its own defense.”
Trump goes even further, calling NATO obsolete, yesterday's snowfall that costs the United States a fortune for which America picks up almost the entire tab. He notes that “it’s costing us too much money. And frankly they have to put up more money. They’re going to have to put some up also. We’re paying disproportionately. It’s too much. And frankly it’s a different world than it was when we originally conceived of the idea.” He went on to say, “The countries we are defending must pay for the cost of this defense, and if not, the U.S. must be prepared to let these countries defend themselves.”
Free riders? Like Trump, Obama misses the target altogether. Here are three facts:
As the growing number of threats necessitates new defensive measures, the 2 percent guideline mentioned in the NATO communiqué is scheduled to be implemented “in the next ten years,” i.e., by 2024. It's true that the target percentage figure is currently short by some $75 billion to $100 billion but defense budgets are currently being ramped up everywhere. It's far too early to lament about missing the target. In any case, it would be more important to spend currently available funds more wisely than to automatically raise budget figures just to fit some plan.
The notion that Europe is only contributing an unfairly low amount to its own defense is one that has haunted headlines in the United States for a long time. Obama's first secretary of defense, Robert Gates, complained that during the Cold War era the U.S. paid half of the NATO defense bill and since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the bill had gone up to 75 percent – an obvious naive miscalculation. Naturally the Europeans ramped down their defense budgets after the Berlin Wall came down – the enemy was gone and the front had disappeared. The increase in America's share was due mainly to the ballooning Pentagon budgets between 2000 and 2010: From $280 billion (3.1 percent of GDP) to $712 billion (4.9 percent of GDP). It was the wars that George W. Bush's administration wanted and the ensuing militarization that caused the financial imbalances in NATO budgets.
Meanwhile, the U.S. defense budget has been reduced to $523 billion, still higher than pre-9/11 levels. Still to be added is about $250 billion for combat operations, homeland security, intelligence operations, cybersecurity, nuclear weapons research and development (administered by the Department of Energy) and care for veterans. Even Obama has been unable to significantly reduce the defense budget. So the Pentagon will add another 1,700 F-35 fighter-bombers to its inventory at a cost of $100 million each and Obama himself plans to replace practically each and every missile, submarine, long-range bomber and nuclear warhead at a cost of $1 trillion – $1,000 billion! The NATO Europeans should not even consider comparing their own defense contribution to such insanity.
U.S. military presence in Europe has been significantly reduced since the end of the Cold War — from nearly a half-million soldiers to not even one-tenth that number. Only some 5 percent of total U.S. troop strength is still stationed here along with 200 nuclear weapons.
The United States Now Uses Europe Principally as an Intermediate Facility
During the East-West conflict, the Americans didn't defend just the Europeans; rather, they defended themselves and their global position as well. And still today, the main purpose of their continuing presence is hardly the defense of Europe. Their deployment plays the smallest part in deterring Russia but serves mainly as a symbol of the defense of American interests in other parts of the world.
Absent their prepositioned European facilities, without the harbors, the airports, the hospitals and the command centers in Italy, Spain, Germany and Turkey, the U.S. would be essentially incapable of functioning. The same holds true for Africa. (Which begs the question, why is the U.S. Africa Command's headquarters located in Stuttgart, Germany? But be that as it may …) Europe is also an indispensable intermediate base for supporting military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan; 95 percent of personnel and equipment have been and will continue to be brought there from Europe.
But the military isn't the sole currency of power. The European contribution to security also takes the form of the European Union – the world's largest trade organization. It furnishes two-thirds of all global development assistance. What it provides Ukraine in the way of debt relief and economic assistance is tenfold what Kiev receives from the United States. And the Minsk peace process — not yet a success but not yet a failure either — is essentially now in the hands of the Europeans.
The Europeans aren't slackers, shirkers or freeloaders. They don't have to take accusations to the contrary from Donald Trump or from Barack Obama.
You wrote: “And still today, the main purpose of their (American) continuing presence is hardly the defense of Europe. Their deployment plays the smallest part in deterring Russia but serves mainly as a symbol of the defense of American interests in other parts of the world.”
On the contrary, the only reason why we are in Europe is to defend NATO countries, and the U.S. remains the only power that protects Europeans from the Russians 🙂