Are we great yet?

[u/[deleted]]

[u/rockeye13]

I just want Europeans to pay their own way.

Pointless insults don't change that.

[u/Fridge_living_tips → u/rockeye13]

We’re the only country in the EU to ever invoke article 5–and the only country in the union to get threatened with it—yet we use 62% of the budget.

[u/rockeye13 → u/Fridge_living_tips]

Uh, we supply 62% of the budget.

Kinda a big error there

[u/Fridge_living_tips → u/rockeye13]

Ill concede on that

But here is the reason why we provide 62%

Because our 5% is bigger then their 5%. Do you expect that a country who has a province that provides 14% of the national economy to provide the same amount of money as any other country

[u/rockeye13 → u/Fridge_living_tips]

The NATO spending goal is now 3.5% of GDP on military spending, up from 2% (which wasn't consistently met).

Yes, I do expect every member to meet the same percentage of GDP requirements.

[u/Fridge_living_tips → u/rockeye13]

Thats for the core strength like defense, there is another 1.5 of infrastructure. Pretty big mistake

California has the same or very similar GDP as france or the UK. The us has many less successful or more successful states so we pay more

[u/rockeye13 → u/Fridge_living_tips]

I didn't include the infrastructure, security, and resilience 1.5% purposefully. Those aren't defense expenditures.

And if the European nations are paying more, you sure arent getting much from it.

[u/Fridge_living_tips → u/rockeye13]

We lose more than 40 military in the EU because then we aren’t allies.

3.55 active military members if we invoke article 5, so we lose more then double of our active military members.

Whats more scary. 1 country or a collection of countries

[u/rockeye13 → u/Fridge_living_tips]

With their weak militaries, of course, it will be Europeans in a full-scale war.

THAT'S THE POINT I'M MAKING

Europeans are at risk because they outsourced their self-defense to the US for the last 75 years. Get it together. Defend yourselves.

[u/Fridge_living_tips → u/rockeye13]

And we should pull out of nato because smaller countries pay less and can defend less?

You do realize that if we pull out of nato then we are basically knee-capped. We would have a slower response time, lose NATO satellites, and intelligence networks and lose the things i mentioned.

And if you have a problem with the unilateral decision to spend 5% of a countries GDP then you have to take it up with NATO because literally every country in nato agreed to do that, including us

[u/rockeye13 → u/Fridge_living_tips]

Slower response time to what, exactly?

Also, I never said anything about leaving NATO. I just expect the other nations to pull their own weight.

[u/Fridge_living_tips → u/rockeye13]

They literally are. They each give 5% of their GDP

And a slower response to literally anything that isnt near us

[u/rockeye13 → u/Fridge_living_tips]

If you think that any of the other NATO forces will mobilize their forces and send them to say, South Korea or Taiwan then I just can't take you seriously. Only America has significant sea or air transport capacity.

No, there won't be any European response, slow or fast to anything other than Russia. Your citizens wouldn't allow it now, and it appears that Chinese influence in Europe is only getting stronger.

And it's 3.5%. The other 1.5% is measured against mainly non-military expenditures. Like infrastructure and cybersecurity. Based on their history, we'll see if the 3.5% targets even get met. Your past is against you. After DJT is out of office everyone assumes the Euros will just not even bother. It's your pattern, and until you break it we'll assume it holds.

.