Originally Posted by
tdracer
Exhorder, you haven't addressed the basic question:
Why should the US taxpayer pay to defend another country when that country's tax payers can't be bothered to pay for their own defense? Despite repeated promises to the contrary, Germany has not been fulfilling their NATO treaty commitments for many years.
Get Germany's defense spending up to their NATO commitment, then we can talk...
I agree. Which is what I meant when I wrote "So, as usual, there is some truth to the comments of the current US president". It's not like the German defense spending malaise hasn't been addressed time and time again over the years, by various "real" presidents as well. It took the whole Crimea/Eastern Ukraine malarkey for us to wake up, at least to a certain degree.
However, as usual with the way the current president is doing things, he is doing more harm than good with his tone and the impulsive nature of his decisions - which, in turn, makes it easy for German politicians to dismiss his remarks. Especially since he, in truth, does not give the slightest of f*cks about defense and foreign policy, if it does not serve the purpose of increasing his re-election chances. Sorry for the political rant.