Enough for Trump to call them on it 3 years ago?
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-eu-summit/obama-tells...
And many US Government officials and their proxies have been sounding the alarms for years;
https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/interview/senior-oba...
And Biden temporarily waived sanctions on the pipeline as a bargaining chip to help prevent the invasion of Ukraine, they were snapped back once Russia invaded;
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/if-russia-invades-uk...
Nobody in American politics thought it was a good idea, because it clearly wasn't, but the allure of dirt-cheap energy was too much to pass up.
Were those the policies that he wanted them to end? Or was it something else?
> “Germany will become totally dependent on Russian energy if it does not immediately change course. Here in the Western Hemisphere, we are committed to maintaining our independence from the encroachment of expansionist foreign powers.”
Even the Washington Post wrote about it at the time: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2018/09/25/trump-accuse...
Now everyone can see how silly Germany is looking after not listening to what both Obama and Trump already saw on their dependency on Russian gas.
I guess Trump had the last laugh on that one.
Well, maybe not "his" words. But they are definitely words that came out of his mouth.
I somehow doubt that he will have to worry about paying energy bills (or, heck, just getting enough gas/electricity at all regardless of cost) this winter.
This is related to Germany energy policy. Trump brought up the danger of depending on Putin’s Russia to the Germans, and they laughed at him.
They aren’t laughing much now.
What you should be asking is: How was Germany so dumb that Trump saw it, but they didn’t?
Saying "Germany needs to look after it's energy independence" is synonym with "the west cant trust Russia", and saying "I'm taking the USA out of NATO" is synonym with "the west can trust Russia".
So he just claimed two opposite views and his fan it's pick and choose.
Trump was all over the place so it's hard to know what his exact positions were but he definitely bitched about European countries for not maintaining the NATO spending goal of 2 percent of economic output [0] which seemed to be his main gripe with NATO from what I remember.
One quote from the article: "Mr. Trump appeared especially annoyed, officials in the meeting said, with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and her country’s military spending of 1 percent of its gross domestic product."
[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/14/us/politics/nato-presiden...
I'm very much not a Trump fan, but no, I do not agree with your interpretation of the threat to take the US out of NATO.
Small minded.
The purpose of NATO is to serve as a force multiplier. It's not that Europe benefits at the cost of the USA. Both benefit.
(Yes, you could consider having other countries coming to your defense to be multiplying your force. But if they don't have much of a force of their own, how much "multiplying" are they doing?)
They weren't dumb. They were probably ok with helping Putin invade few more countries in Easter Europe - after all, the Germans themselves are quite far and safe, and possibly also care about money more than human lives.
I would be asking that, if we were talking about someone who's reliably correct. But since we're talking about someone who's held every position and it's opposite on any given subject, I think it's quite obvious what's going on. It's called survivorship bias.
Put it this way. Trump was right and the Germans were wrong on the biggest German crisis of the past 75 years, one that now poses an existential threat to the German (and thus European) economy and social polity.
Even were Trump wrong and Germany right on everything else, how much would that matter given the scale and, more importantly, 100% self-inflicted nature of this crisis for Germany?
* less German/European NATO spending
* greater German/European dependence on Russian gas
?
Let me repeat:
>Trump was right and the Germans were wrong on the biggest German crisis of the past 75 years
Ah yes, the other line that people pull when questioned on this topic.
First, Trump did not say that the US should leave NATO. He publicly insisted/cajoled/prodded with that signature Trump charm and style that Germany and other NATO members who don't meet the 2% of GDP spending requirement—and showed zero inclination of actually meeting the 2026 deadline (itself pushed back repeatedly after first being set in 2006)—needed to do so.
>In our day and age you should be arrested as traitor for saying that.
Beyond the strange notion that an American should be "arrested as a traitor" for his words, a "traitor" to whom?
Who benefits more from NATO membership, the US or Germany? Who benefits more, the US or Belgium? The US or Norway? The US or Italy?
Would a Russian conquest of all of Ukraine endanger US security? Not really. It is Poland that would have Russian troops on hundreds more miles of its borders. It is Poland and the Baltic states that now face the risk being cut off from the rest of NATO at the Suwalki Gap.
The funny thing is that Poland and the Baltics do meet the 2% spending requirement, and have so for years. It is the likes of the far wealthier Germany, Belgium, Norway, Italy that do not. When you say that a US president should have been "arrested as a traitor" for questioning the value ("obsolete", I believe he said) of a military alliance in which the US funded 69% of total military spending while the wealthiest other members (with the notable exception of the UK) do not, have not, and (until February 2022) would not ever meet the bare minimum expectations set for them, I ask again: A traitor to whom?
>The man is an idiot.
An idiot who was, as I yet again point out, 100% right on the biggest crisis to face Germany in 75 years.
Trump and NATO secretary-general and former Norwegian PM Jens Stoltenberg argue on camera (video <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vpwkdmwui3k>, article <https://pbs.org/newshour/politics/at-nato-trump-says-germany...>) about dependence on Russia four years ago. Who turned out to be right? Who turned out to completely, totally, 100% wrong?
Trump at the UN warns that Germany is endangering itself by increasing dependence on Russia. German envoys laugh <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfJv9QYrlwgepe>, including foreign minister Heiko Maas. Who was right, Trump or Maas?
Either answer my question, or shut up about the "idiot"/"traitor"/"Orange Man Bad".
Tons of people saw Germany was putting itself in a bad position. Every US administration since the initial direction was set said that.
https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_67655.htm
If Germany or any other country is unwilling to meet that treaty obligation then they should simply withdraw from the alliance rather than freeloading on more responsible countries.