Trump said it loudly and in plain terms, but this is a popular bipartisan view in the US. It is a fact that many wealthy NATO members do not meet the defense spending commitments that membership entails. Obama pressured NATO members to meet their obligations, and Biden will likely do so as well.
https://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/obama-nato-pay-fair-s...
These days NATO is most clearly recognized as a list of countries that the USA as global military hegemon is ready to go to war to defend, and this is hugely beneficial to a country that wants to be a global military hegemon. Wars are expensive and ideally you don’t want to fight any. The existence of an organization like NATO means that (a) none of the member nations are going to fight each other, (b) none of the member nations are going to try to rival the military hegemon, (c) nobody outside of the organization is going to start a war with any of the members. For a military hegemon whose main interest is ensuring global peace so that it can continue to reap the rewards of a global economic system that it is also hegemon over, getting to mark off a large chunk of the developed world as “no wars here” is well worth paying for. In a very, very loose sense it’s sorta like an olden-days imperial power with tributaries, but the “tribute” is realized in the form of the fact that the US government’s position as military and economic hegemon means that it can manufacture dollars for free and other countries will trade goods and services for them.
On top of that, concentrating the defense spending of the alliance within the US is good for the US economy and critically important for maintaining the R&D efforts that the US military relies on to maintain a technological edge over potential rivals outside of the alliance.
Not necessarily. Greece and Turkey have been an intra-NATO flashpoint for decades, and tensions there have recently flared up again.
https://www.cato.org/blog/old-nato-nightmare-returns-possibl...
So for example: Trump and Sanders (and Tulsi and a number of more fringey candidates) are generally opposed to international intervention.
Immigration considerations are another one (in particular, dem immigration platform is at odds with trade union preferences but aligned with large corporate interests).
There are big, relevant, issues that voters care a lot about that don't conform to the party lines.
1. The 2% target is a non-binding guideline. 2. Germany has (for some time) a plan in place to increase the defense budget to meet the 2% target. It will increase on a year-by-year basis. 3. Germany spends quite a lot on foreign aid, which 'could' be understood as a risk preventing defense spending.
I was skeptical, so I looked it up. You are correct—Germany does spend a large percentage of its GNI on foreign aid [0]. However, as you put it 'could.' Ultimately you are comparing apples and oranges. Defense spending is different from foreign aid spending, although they may be related. So, this is not a strong argument IMHO.
> 1. The 2% target is a non-binding guideline.
Not fulfilling a non-binding obligation is also not a strong argument. It's a non-binding obligation for me to to wash my hands at home after touching raw chicken. It would still be irresponsible of me not to.
> 2. Germany has (for some time) a plan in place to increase the defense budget to meet the 2% target. It will increase on a year-by-year basis.
IMHO this is your strongest argument, but the fact that the level is not there yet after so many years of NATO, leaves the policy rightly open to criticism.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_development_aid_countr...
Well, if Trump thought it's such a good idea he should have pushed to make it an actual obligation with punishment when its not met.
Instead, he complained with the same misleading statements for 4 years straight.
He also claimed that other countries take advantage of the USA while not understanding that in exchange for not contributing as much, the USA has had (traditionally) more privileges when it comes to setting the direction of foreign policy.
I wasn’t saying anything about Trump. I was just responding to your arguments about Germany’s spending on NATO. Not sure where you read anything about Trump from my comment.
In some places, spending 2% GDP on defense (meaning cutting back on something else) would be political suicide. So that government is kicked out and it remains 1.2% or something. What happens then? Nato kicks out the member state? That hardly helps any more than a member paying 1.2% and promising to help with Article V!
Compared to almost any non-superpower status nation, the US Defense budget is strictly insane.
If they had just shifted a third of that budget towards education under early Obama, I doubt Trump could ever have come this far.