Is This the End of NATO?
politico.eu
politico.eu
Their soldiers shed blood during our very long occupation in Afghanistan as part of their treaty obligations. They have been negligent in the 2% gpd spending target. This is hardly a good reason for us to discard the alliance and our relationship with our allies. We’ve threatened to annex Canada and Greenland. It’s not a winning strategy to threaten your allies.
If Putin had an FSB agent as President would that person materially have done anything different than Trump has done these past 4 weeks? We are being led by traitors.
No non European nation in the history of ever has done more for the safety and prosperity of Europe then America.
And we have benefited greatly by doing this. It wasn’t pure altrusim on our part.
Not everybody has the luxury of running the worlds currency, and running 3-4 trillion dollars deficits unchecked for 20 years in a row.
But reading US press, one could think it's a small, struggling group of countries, sliding into insignificance. This is mostly based on somewhat false narratives, and stock market capitalizations, which are currently at historical bubble levels in the US.
While in reality, Europe is an economic powerhouse, very strong in a lot of important industries (guess what company has a de-facto worldwide monopoly on machines used to make computer chips ?), has an excellent education system and fairly stable institutions.
We just need an electrochoc. Trump / Vance may just have delivered this much. They may be surprised by what's coming next though.
"False or misleading statements by Donald Trump" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_or_misleading_statements...
"..Donald Trump has made tens of thousands of false or misleading claims, including during his first and second terms as President of the United States. Fact-checkers at The Washington Post documented 30,573 false or misleading claims during his first presidential term, an average of 21 per day.The Toronto Star tallied 5,276 false claims from January 2017 to June 2019, an average of six per day..."
(and without the notorious US-made military equipment kill-switches)
And while we're at it, this time will be different: Instead of the membership criteria being anti-communism, it should be effective Liberal Democracy. So, to be part,
1. Compulsory ICC membership - hence no exceptionalistic US, and no exceptionalistic Israel.
2. No "Illiberal Democracies": say, for example, composite of a minimum 0.67 score on the WJP Rule of Law Index and others: therefore no Orbanic Hungary, and no illiberal others like it. Poland, Slovakia, Italy: you better watch your ways if you want in.
3. Democratic backsliding removes you rights in the Alliance, and, can proportionally lead to outright expulsion.
Not one more new military equipment purchase from the US, (or other non-qualifying nations). Member nations should use their - substantial - industrial capacity to equip themselves with indigenous military materiel.
Hey, it would be actually great for their economy!
Initially European scope, but bridges to a broader global scope (or even a secondary sister-Alliance) with open-ended partnerships with Canada, Australia, New Zeland, Japan, South Korea, and yes: Taiwan.
US and/or Israel want to join, if a more Democratic future selves? Simple: fully join the ICC, and meet the Alliance's full criteria as every other member.
Same applies for prospective new members.
Not interested? Bye, your problem.