Donald Trump has never been one to mince words.
On the campaign trail, Trump called NATO “obsolete” and once elected continued chastising NATO member nations for not meeting their financial obligations to the organization.
Watch below:
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.
But 23 of the 28 member nations are still not paying what they should be paying and what they are 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.
It definitely wasn’t the speech these leaders were expecting.
In jest at the end, Trump noted:
And I never asked once what the new NATO headquarters cost. I refuse to do that. But it is beautiful.
So basically if we pulled out of NATO they would be broke – and would still owe us a pile of money. I saw a bunch of them snickering at President Trump. I wonder how they snicker – especially Merkel – if President Trump put an embargo on products from their countries. I’ll bet the Germans would make Merkel unemployed very quickly.
I agree with all of the comments already made and in my opinion the money we have given them should go toward security in the U.S. and toward building the wall.
Tough! If they can’t take the heat get out of the Kitchen.
It’s getting to be a very dangerous World out there now. The day is coming where one of these slackers are going to need our help. I hope that the President asks them to pay up before we send one set of boots out on their soil!! That should be the way it works!! These countries should be ashamed of themselves, when the other Countries, who scrape the money together, literally, to make the payment that they need to, to come up with their fair share, and these other Countries pay far less than their 2%, and act as if they’re too good to make the payment. I would think twice about having their Ambassadors in our Country, too!!
I very much admire President Trump for his ability to get right to the crux of the matter. He doesn’t mince words, he just comes out with it! Personally, I believe that the United States should pull out of the U.N. or at the very least move the headquarters out of the U.S.!
I agree with you, except if we have to be stuck with the U.N. we need to have them close at hand where we might be able to have more control. They have become threatening to us because of Trump’s stance on the funding issue; which I also firmly agree with Trump’s stance.