Trump’s unhappy NATO visit as US and Europe drift farther apart

European leaders [are] annoyed by Trump’s calls to increase defence spending, making NATO look too obviously like a protection racket.

Having been showered with compliments in Saudi Arabia and Israel, Donald Trump’s visit to Europe where he has met the US’s formal allies in the NATO and G7 formats, have gone unhappily.

Despite efforts on both sides to patch things up, it is impossible to avoid the sense that Trump and his erstwhile “allies” don’t like each other very much. Not only has Trump had uncomfortable meetings with Merkel and Macron, and not only did his shoving aside the Prime Minister of Montenegro look like a snub, but I doubt that Trump himself realises how irritated most of his European allies are by his constant calls that they increase their defence spending.

These calls Trump made again during the summit and in blunt language and at extraordinary length:

The NATO of the future must include a great focus on terrorism and immigration, as well as threats from Russia and on NATO’s eastern and southern borders. These grave security concerns are the same reason that I have been very, very direct with Secretary Stoltenberg and members of the Alliance in saying that NATO members must finally contribute their fair share and meet their financial obligations, for 23 of the 28 member nations are still not paying what they should be paying and what they’re supposed to be paying for their defense.

This is not fair to the people and taxpayers of the United States. And many of these nations owe massive amounts of money from past years and not paying in those past years. Over the last eight years, the United States spent more on defense than all other NATO countries combined. If all NATO members had spent just 2 percent of their GDP on defense last year, we would have had another $119 billion for our collective defense and for the financing of additional NATO reserves.

We should recognize that with these chronic underpayments and growing threats, even 2 percent of GDP is insufficient to close the gaps in modernizing, readiness, and the size of forces. We have to make up for the many years lost. Two percent is the bare minimum for confronting today’s very real and very vicious threats. If NATO countries made their full and complete contributions, then NATO would be even stronger than it is today, especially from the threat of terrorism.

There is no doubt that Trump himself sincerely believes all this, and doubtless from his point it is obvious that…

More: Trump’s unhappy NATO visit as US and Europe drift farther apart — Puppet Masters — Sott.net