Tuesday, May 30, 2017

NATO 5-30-2017

30, May 2017                                    NATO  

In his latest effort to win “friends and influence people,” President Trump admonished European leaders to contribute their fair share to NATO. What hypocrisy, what chutzpah! This is the man who used every possible loophole to avoid paying his fair share of taxes. If everybody emulated Trump’s “smart” example, our infrastructure and national defense would be in shambles.

When Trump equivocated on America’s commitment to mutual defense and played coy to its Article 5 commitment, Germany’s, Angela Merkel, seized the moment stating, “we Europeans must really take our fate into our own hands.” Speaking to journalists, she made no effort to hide her utter contempt for Trump and his entourage. Britain’s departure from the EU is also interpreted as an unambiguous retreat from the world stage. Germany is generally considered to be “the new leader” of the liberal world. Perhaps, NATO members should be more wary of the US role in world affairs. The politics of NATO is fraught with many risks. Invocation of Article 5 resulted in needless NATO deaths resulting from US policy blunders in Iraq and Afghanistan. It should only be used when a NATO ally is in imminent danger of being attacked.


Trump rounded off a disastrous NATO meeting by shoving the prime minister of Montenegro to ensure that he was front and center of a photo op. Such bullying, boorish, behavior is a national embarrassment and re-invokes the specter of the “ugly American”. 

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