IT WOULD have been so easy, but Donald Trump could not bring himself to do it. On May 25th, in a 900-word speech made in front of a monument to 9/11 at NATO’s new headquarters in Brussels, the president failed to mention the alliance’s Article 5—the bedrock commitment to regard an attack on one member country as an attack on all.
The assembled heads of government had expected to receive a dressing down on most member countries' failure to meet the NATO target of spending 2% of GDP on defence. That they got. Many of them agree with Mr Trump on the need to do more and can point to European defence budgets that are have been rising, albeit too slowly, as a consequence of Russia’s aggression towards Ukraine. They will, however, have been irritated by Mr Trump’s repetition of the canard that the spending shortfall means that the money is somehow “owed” and that American taxpayers have been taken for a ride.
It would have been smart of Mr Trump to have encouraged their efforts on spending while taking some of the...Continue reading
Source: United States http://ift.tt/2qWWv1U
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