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Trump Strengthened NATO With Tough Love

After four years of the Trump administration the NATO alliance has been made significantly stronger and our European allies are now paying more of their fare share. President Trump pressed for this in 2017, “NATO members must finally contribute their fair share and meet their financial obligations…for 23 of the 28 member nations are still not paying what they should be paying and what they’re supposed to be paying for their defense.”

Analyst Deroy Murdock reported for FNC: “High above the West Coast, flying home from a diplomatic mission to Asia, National Security Adviser Robert C. O’Brien reflected on the notion that tough love is the finest love of all. Sometimes only a close friend has the concern or the courage to say what others won’t: Put down the fork, put away the bottle, or pay your bills — before you get into deeper trouble. Far better to hear such advice from a friend than from a boss, business partner, or banker.

“It’s counterintuitive to some on the left, who believe that subservience, acquiescence, and enabling our friends somehow helps them,” O’Brien told me Monday, as the clouds zipped past his cabin aboard the customized 757 with UNITED STATES OF AMERICA emblazoned across its fuselage. “What helps them is to be candid, truthful and frank with them about what we can and can’t do, and what we need them to do.”

O’Brien cited an example of Trump’s tough love. “It’s NATO increasing their defense spending by $400 billion over a 10-year period. That makes the West safer. It makes Europe safer.”

Another analyst, Daniel Kochis of the Heritage Foundation, chimes in, “Many allies are heeding Trump’s calls to lift the free weights. In 2016, only four NATO members (including the U.S.) met the benchmark to spend 2 percent of GDP on defense.” Now ten do.

 

“Since 2016, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg noted that European allies and Canada will have added $130 billion to their defense budget,” said Kochis.

O’Brien: “This is one reason Trump finally decided to pull several thousand U.S. troops from Germany this year and redeploy some to the more vulnerable Baltic nations and frontline NATO ally Poland on Russia’s border. This also gives the NATO countries the capacity to help in military operations, not just in Europe, but around the world. Right now, there are more NATO troops in Afghanistan than U.S. troops. In Africa and the Sahel, there are 5,000 French troops, additional NATO troops, and less than 1,000 U.S. troops fighting an al-Qaeda affiliate there called JNIM” or Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin…That’s the type of burden-sharing that’s great for America, where we bring our unique capability, where we bring our enablers, our close-air support, our combat-medical support, our intelligence, our surveillance, and we can do that in smaller numbers, and our allies can provide a large number of the troops. And that’s how it should be. And that’s something that’s been developed under President Trump.” Redeployment of troops to the Russian border. Wow. The president sure is a Russia stooge.

This piece was written by David Kamioner on November 27, 2020. It originally appeared in LifeZette [3] and is used by permission.

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