Donald trump, intending to bring American troops, accuses Germany of violating an agreement with the United States regarding defense spending. This argument can be understood, but in revenge of Germany, the President of the United States harms its own interests.
It is easy to lose patience when talking with Germany, which had completely forgotten about the interest of safety. Despite long-standing promises and dramatically changed situation in Europe, the German government in the past years have done nothing to fill the gap between the real military expenditure and arrangements in the NATO framework, according to which they should reach 2% of GDP in each member country of the Alliance.
Instead of Berlin, despite opposition from America and its European partners, continued to participate in gas pipeline project “Nord stream — 2”, although this increases the geostrategic continent’s dependence on Russia. All this coupled with a very conditional readiness of the Bundeswehr says about the amazing inability of Germany to recognize that the threats in Europe and to confront them.
After several years of criticism from Washington, which in Berlin was left without attention, Donald trump decided to act and announced that Germany will withdraw almost 12 thousand soldiers of the U.S. army. Half of them will return to America, and the rest will be transferred to other European countries, primarily Italy and Belgium. The President justified the decision to the stubborn reluctance of the Germans to contribute to the combat readiness of NATO, carrying out the agreement on military expenditures at 2% of GDP.
Dissatisfaction with trump’s understandable, but his argument is not too convincing. After all, Belgium, for example, spends as a percentage even less than Germany, and Rome no less hard than Berlin is refusing to increase military spending. Thus, it is less about “loyalty to the principles of” trump, and more about the intention to punish the German government.
And in General it is hardly possible to say that the withdrawal of U.S. troops makes sense. It will harm the security interests of Europe and the United States, because the reduction of American military presence will reduce the deterrent effect of NATO, for example, in relation to Russia. In addition, Germany is the main logistics hub in the movement of troops to Eastern Europe in case of attack from Russia.
In addition, the decision trump costly to American taxpayers: after all, Germany plays an important role in logistics and movement of troops to the middle East and Africa. The main command of the troops in Africa, located in Stuttgart and now he too will have to move to another place.
A substantial portion of American weapons in Germany over the last two decades have upgraded — it has cost billions and billions of dollars. So pointless, so truly succumbing to childish whims, to spend a lot of money on the creation of new military bases.
Yes, Germany in the field of security is really in many ways acts irresponsibly, sitting comfortably at the expense of Americans. But Germany will start to act more responsibly because Americans are irrational fulfill the requirement of “Yankee, go home!”, being promoted by some forces for decades to help Moscow and seeking to reduce the defense capabilities of NATO. So in matters of security, the rule of “two negatives make a positive” does not work.
The withdrawal of U.S. troops reflects the seriousness of the conflict, Berlin and Washington. Donald trump has played in this an important role, without end showing the Germans claim, and demonstrating their discontent with the policies of Chancellor Angela Merkel.
At the same time, the Federal government in recent years has really not made any steps towards Washington, having, however, an important argument in their favor, particularly in the context of military spending and the construction of the pipeline “Nord stream — 2”.
The ruling coalition thus caused great harm to the national interests of Germany. Because it works, ignoring the in German-American relations — namely, that we are talking about asymmetrical balance of power. Germany are simply more dependent on the USA in European security issues than the United States from Germany. So the “just ignore” (US interests) was a bad idea.
Now trump has decided to take revenge, why the losers would be all. Here’s a transatlantic tragedy.
