NATO’s top civilian leader thanked President Donald Trump on Tuesday for pushing alliance members to boost their own defense spending, saying his blunt criticism is part of the reason why more allies are expected to hit spending targets this year.
“I would like to thank President Trump for his leadership on defense spending,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said in Brussels, according to CNN. “It is clearly having an impact. Last year on the president’s initiative we agreed to develop national plans to raise defense spending.” ...
NATO members agreed in 2006 to spend at least 2 percent of GDP on defense, but the target was largely ignored in following years, especially as governments cut military budgets during the global financial crisis. In 2014, members once again pledged to hit the 2 percent target “within a decade,” and total defense spending across the alliance began to rise the next year.
Still, just four NATO countries — the U.S., Greece, Britain and Estonia — manged to meet the 2 percent guideline in 2017. Trump has criticized the under-funding as evidence that many allies are content to shirk responsibility for their own defense while under the U.S. security umbrella.
$100 billion is about the annual spending Russia has allocated for defense. So Trump got the EU to bump up their spending enough to counter Russia. That’s winning.
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