Trump Just Keeps Winning: America’s Allies Are Boosting Defense Spending
8th December 2016
Since the founding of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the United States has carried a disproportionate share of the burden for defending the West. Indeed, today, in addition to America, only four allies meet the 2 percent of GDP NATO defense spending requirement: the United Kingdom, Poland, Greece and Estonia.
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Enter candidate Donald Trump. From March 21 to March 29, 2016, Trump made his feelings about NATO members’ failure to live up to their defense spending obligations abundantly clear. In the Washington Post, he stated: “NATO is costing us a fortune and yes, we’re protecting Europe but we’re spending a lot of money. Number 1, I think the distribution of costs has to be changed.” He told the New York Times, “NATO is unfair, economically, to us, to the United States. Because it really helps them more so than the United States, and we pay a disproportionate share.” On the Charlie Sykes radio show, Trump escalated the rhetoric: “We are getting ripped off by every country in NATO.” Then, at a rally outside Milwaukee, he laid out the consequences of continued allied inaction: “Either they have to pay up for past deficiencies or they have to get out.”
Trump’s comments on NATO were criticized by his Republican competitors, and Hillary Clinton brought up Trump’s NATO views repeatedly in the presidential debates. Trump was accused of undermining the NATO alliance and causing our allies to lose confidence in America’s commitment to them. But something amazing started happening: America’s allies began pledging to increase their defense budgets. For example, on October 15, Germany said that it was going to spend €1.5 billion on five new corvettes to patrol the Baltic Sea, and that the ships would be dedicated to NATO missions.