Trump's NATO blunder

By Washington Examiner 1/18/17

A debate over NATO's mission, or how to update the organization, would normally be welcome, but President-elect Trump's suggestion that the alliance is obsolete is clumsy and reckless. Trump's statement dropped like a grenade into the already-roiling post-election debate over his fondness for Russia's dictatorial president, Vladimir Putin.  Trump seems to regard NATO as a geopolitical favor that America does for the rest of the world. "Countries aren't paying their fair share," he told the Times of London on Monday, "a lot of these countries aren't paying what they're supposed to be paying, which I think is very unfair to the United States.".........Only five of the 28 member-states spend the 2 percent of gross domestic product that they should on military preparedness. America is left by its European allies to pay $650 billion a year, 70 percent of the total bill and more than double the combined contributions of the 28 other member countries.   But those numbers do not touch the bigger questions of America's moral duty and strategic interest.........To Read More.....

My Take - Trump is right and if NATO is going to continue to exist - will have to do it without much involvement from the US.  The US may find some strategic reasons for getting involved on some occasions, but the US has no moral obligations to these countries at all...get over it.  No matter who was elected it was inevitable there was going to be a contraction in American involvement internationally because we can no longer afford to defend the world, especially since they've been absolute ingrates about it.  And yes  - NATO was a gift to the world by the US based on the Bretton Woods concept.  We gave them protection because so many of them are either hordes land nations or easily attacked via the North European Plain, causing these nations to spend a large part of their money on defense.  Money they needed to rebuild Europe. 

That was part of the bargain, just as the US Navy has patrolled the world's oceans to keep them open from commerce, especially for oil, we opened our markets running massive trade deficits for years.....all because of the Bretton Woods thinking.  We also used this to contain communism, which is why China was brought under the Bretton Woods umbrella by those two globalists Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, to help contain Russia.  We don't need China or Europe any longer, because the EU, China and Russia are all broke, and so are we.  They need to be on their own. 

I keep reading how Putin plans on attacking the Baltic states along with Poland and Germany.  Why?  Putin's population is getting to the point he only has enough population to man three of Russia's seven defensive gaps.  And that age group has some serious problems with drug resistant TB, HIV and alcoholism.   And what value would he have attacking any of these countries?  Even if he wins in ten years Russia would be worse off than it already is, and moreover he couldn't hold his gains.  His economy is a mess, and he's becoming more and more unpopular. 

One more thought. Why did the Soviet Union collapse?  They went broke and it's occurred to me over the years if we had let them take over even larger parts of the world in the 1950's communism would have failed much earlier.  Just a thought.