In his own inimitable way, American presidential candidate Donald Trump sounded the alarm. Vladimir Putin can have his way in NATO countries that do not spend 2 percent on defense. Totally drunk, of course, but essentially Trump is right.
American presidential candidate Donald Trump caused a major stir. He criticized the NATO countries that, contrary to agreements, do not spend 2 percent of their budget on defense. He would not protect them from Russian attacks. In fact, Trump said, I would encourage them (read Russia) to do what they want to do.
An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us. That is the basis on which NATO is founded. The NATO countries made another agreement in 2014: all partners would have to spend 2 percent of their gross domestic product (GDP) on defense.
At that time, there were three countries that met the standard (the US, Greece and Great Britain). There now appear to be 18 (of the now 31 NATO countries). There has been growth in ten years, especially after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Yet there are still too many countries that do not take the agreement they have made seriously. The Netherlands can also count on this. Defense expenditure has grown from more than 7 to more than 21 billion euros in ten years. But with 1.95 percent of our GDP, we are still below the agreed percentage of 2.
The United States is right to wonder why it has to pay for the defense of Europe, while the European countries themselves do not seem to take it seriously. It is also worth remembering that the agreements were made in 2014 at a time when Barack Obama was still president of the United States. And it is also good to realize that the US accounts for almost 70 percent of the total NATO budget.
In that sense, Trump is absolutely right, something that his political rival Joe Biden also agrees with. Only the latter says it in a decent way. That’s too much to ask for Trump.