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President Trump addresses a press conference after a summit of heads of state and government at NATO Headquarters in Brussels on July 12. (Markus Schreiber / AP)
At least the opinion of President Trump, his gruff approach to this The NATO Summit in Brussels has been a success.
"Before last year when I attended my first meeting," Trump said that member countries' spending was down. down and down very substantially, and now it goes up very substantially. And the commitments have been made. Only five of the 29 countries were making a commitment and that has now changed. The commitment was at 2%. In the end, it will go a little higher than that. "
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg will give precise figures on the increase in military spending of member countries, predicted Mr. Trump, perhaps at the end of the summit. relief for the president "because the US has paid a huge sum, probably 90% of the cost of NATO." Now, he said, "the countries will start to increase their commitments."
been noted several times since Trump began making claims about the underpayment on the election campaign in 2016, his representation of the operation of the system is not accurate.Two Military Expenditure Objectives ] are followed by NATO, as stated in a 2014 agreement. The first is that Member States devote 2% of their annual gross domestic product to the military.The second is that equipment expenditures represent 20 per cent of these military expenditures. t, NATO's ability to engage militarily on behalf of its members requires military means to be deployed.
However, most member countries do not meet the 2% of GDP standard. The most recent data from NATO show that only five of the 29 do so, with the recent addition of Latvia. (It's one of three countries to have pbaded a law imposing an increase at 2%.) Since Trump began pleading for countries to reach this goal, 16 have increased their spending on drugs. at least 5% in relation to GDP; six of these countries had already increased by at least 5% in the previous two years. Eight countries have seen the percentage of their spending fall by less than 5% between 2016 and 2018. Four countries have seen the percentage of military spending fall by more than 5% since 2016.
Trump has come up with the idea of spend 4% of military GDP, a brand that no one except the United States is even close to. (In recent years, we have fallen below this figure.) It is a bit difficult to see how we could expect the other 28 countries to approach this figure while very few tend to 2% , but maybe Trump "
But that leaves out an interesting question that probably deserves an answer before evaluating Trump's insights: Why is the metric used anyway? Why is a percentage of GDP the right way to badess the contributions of member nations?
. Frankly, it's a measure that has been taken by political leaders because it's relatively simple to measure, "he said." It's a relatively simple metric to understand for the public. So, the reason is that it is easy to obtain, easy to understand and politically acceptable for all nations.
There was probably not a single unified measure that would make sense for every country, he said. Internally, the alliance "has something that they call the three C's: money, capabilities, and contribution," Nordenman explains.
Having said that, he sees the value of the GDP measure in two ways. Signal: Does your nation care about defense? It is about showing commitment and showing unity and showing shared difficulties and a shared burden, "he said. "It's not indifferent to show that I'm mad, or that my country does not care about defense."
Second, "At one point, the only way to do more is to have more, in other words, if NATO is to deploy its resources somewhere , it must have the resources to do so.
Polling from the Pew Research Center indicates that many citizens nations are reluctant to deploy their own forces on behalf of NATO until the United States deploys ours Although this is not the case that the United States accounts for 90% of spending – Nordenman says we cover about a fifth of the annual costs of the alliance – it is true that our army is much larger than anything Another member. (The US military accounts for about two-thirds of NATO's total military capabilities, he said, but the United States is a global force that is dedicated to more than just defending Europe.)
Having more resources to deploy yer, the sensitivity that the United States could change – although it's worth noting that the country whose citizens are most reluctant to deploy, Greece, is one of the few to abide by his commitment to NATO.
"If you read the fine print in 2014," says Nordenman, "he does not even say that allies must reach 2% by 2024. He says the allies must aim to reach 2% by 2024 ".
Following Trump's speech, Secretary General Stoltenberg addressed the commitment commitments made by NATO members
"We agreed to keep our commitments," he said to CNN. Not exactly what Trump predicted he could say.
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