Originally Posted by
Beamr
Sir, I really want to emphasize that only 21 out of 27 EU countries are actually members of NATO. You can't use either of those numbers when talking about countries that have both NATO and EU membership.
Regarding the spenditure (which seems to be your main concern): when Trump was ranting about the defence expenditure, he was going with numbers from years ago. Underneath I've attached the most recent defence spenditure estimates for 2020 within NATO countries. Every single NATO country has increased their budget, majority of them very significantly too. Some have more than doubled their spenditure. As of today, 10 countries are over the threshold, 5 countries are very close. In 2014 only 3 countries were over the threshold and 1 was very close (by close I mean within a two tenths of a percentage point). So the spenditure is picking up, and has picked up very well. Do you think there is a very sound reason to be so aggressive about the spenditure at this point since we all know that governmental budgets can't be shifted over night and change is significant?
Source:
https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2...020-104-en.pdf
One might observe that most nations' GDPs fell in 2020, so a pre-determined level of defence spending will represent a greater % of their overall expenditure. Although, as noted, the 2020 figures are estimates. How about a 2019 graph?
(Also of interest on that linked doc. is the graph showing the UK spends close to the least on personnel as a proportion of overall defence spending, 'beaten' only by Luxembourg.)