On the other hand, if Trump is talking about indirect spending on NATO, which exceeds direct funding, he begins to have a point. U.S. officials have
long complained that other NATO members are not pulling their weight in the alliance; President Obama
recently asserted to Atlantic Monthly’s Jeffrey Goldberg that some European allies are “free riders,” a term that Trump echoed in his CNN interview.
NATO documents show that a majority of NATO members fail to meet NATO’s guideline, established in 2006, that defense expenditures should amount to 2 percent of each country’s gross domestic product. The median spending in 2015 is just 1.18 percent of GDP, compared to 3.7 percent for the United States, NATO says. Just four other countries currently exceed the 2 percent guideline.
“The volume of the US defense expenditure effectively represents 73 per cent of the defense spending of the Alliance as a whole,”
NATO says in a discussion of indirect funding. “This does not mean that the United States covers 73 per cent of the costs involved in the operational running of NATO as an organization, including its headquarters in Brussels and its subordinate military commands, but it does mean that there is an over-reliance by the Alliance as a whole on the United States for the provision of essential capabilities, including for instance, in regard to intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; air-to-air refueling; ballistic missile defense; and airborne electronic warfare.”
NATO concedes this imbalance has been an issue since the start of the alliance: “The combined wealth of the non-US Allies, measured in GDP, exceeds that of the United States. However, non-US Allies together spend less than half of what the United States spends on defense.”
“To the extent that NATO is a collective security pact, the Europeans pay less than their fair share,” said
Andrew Bacevich of Boston University, who said there is “merit to Trump’s claim” despite his imprecise language. “Are Europeans free-riders when it comes to security, counting on the U.S. to pick up the slack? Yes, without a doubt.”
can't lie I want to see the "******" talk so black folks can end this one sided love affair with the Clintons
How is the the most nationalistic candidate in history, who says the U.S should be paid to be in NATO or else we will leave the organization, the best representative of repairing America's foreign policy?
...Remember what happened in Ukraine a little while back.
