Merkel and Media Throw Fit Over Europe Paying Fair Share

President Donald Trump’s admonishment of NATO members to start paying more for their own defense is driving German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the U.S. media bonkers.

With the added indications that Trump will likely pull out of the 2015 Paris accord on climate change, their mood is downright apocalyptic. Merkel and the media make a potent pessimistic combination, at least in U.S. news, with suggestions that Trump is leaving Europe to fend off the Russian wolves at the door, while abandoning European schemes, such as the Paris accord, a voluntary agreement to cut down on carbon emissions.

“We Europeans must really take our destiny into our own hands.”

Germany — indeed Europe — is on its own, Merkel suggested in a recent speech after Trump returned to America.

“The times in which we could rely fully on others, they are somewhat over,” said Merkel, during a Munich campaign event for her fourth term. “This is what I experienced in the last few days. We Europeans must really take our destiny into our own hands.”

That was a relatively kind assessment of Trump’s tough love aimed at European leaders. Scott Bixby of the Daily Beast wrote that Trump behaved “like a drunk tourist” on his first overseas trip.

“After indulging the royals of Saudi Arabia with assurances that he was ‘not here to lecture’ — in exchange for gold chains and glowing orbs — Trump took a much harder stance toward major Western democracies, distancing his administration politically and, in some cases, personally from some of America’s oldest and closest allies,” Bixby wrote.

The New York Times’ Alison Smale and Steven Erlanger wrote that Trump risked losing Germany . . . to France, and its new (and very young) president, Emmanuel Macron. (France is also a member of NATO.)

“Ms. Merkel’s strong comments were a potentially seismic shift in trans-Atlantic relations,” The Times wrote. “With the United States less willing to intervene overseas, Germany is becoming an increasingly dominant power in a partnership with France.”

What Trump is trying to do, however, is something long desired by past presidents faced with global challenges and tight budgets: to get NATO members more active in their own defense, and the defense of allies worldwide.

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Robert Kaufman, a professor of public policy at Pepperdine University and a foreign policy expert, said Trump is simply applying the rhetorical paddle to Europe’s NATO slackers.

“Trump has stimulated the free-riding Western European members of NATO to take their responsibilities more seriously,” said Kaufman.

NATO members are also generally obligated to come to the aid of other members if they are attacked. Since the treaty was forged in 1949, Article V of that treaty has only been invoked once, after the terrorist attacks against the United States of Sept. 11, 2001.

Long dormant allies helped the United States attack al-Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan. But in other battles where the United States urged action for non-NATO members, NATO allies stood aside.

France, Germany, Turkey and even Canada stayed out of the Iraq War in 2003. All had taken part in the Persian Gulf War, which drove Iraqi forces out of Kuwait.

The neutrality in Iraq likely does not bother Trump, who is no supporter of America’s last war. But as Europe increasingly rallies U.S. troops to train in Europe to counter aggressive moves by Russia, as led by President Vladimir Putin, U.S. leaders see increasing strain upon the Pentagon — and less strain on the budgets of Germany, France and Canada — all of whom spend less than 2 percent of their gross domestic product on annual defense spending.

Only the United States, Greece, the United Kingdom, Estonia, and Poland spend at least 2 percent a year. The United States spends 3.6 percent a year, far and away the most. NATO’s 23 other members slack. (Montenegro joins NATO in June.)

Strain on U.S. missions and budget has been apparent for years. Just before U.S. Army training in Eastern European nations, President Obama’s Army secretary, John McHugh, told an October 2015 gathering of Army officials and defense suppliers that military forces stood “at the ragged edge of readiness.”

Meanwhile, Canada spends 1 percent of its GDP on defense; Germany spends 1.2 percent; and France, 1.78 percent.

Merkel and others are also worried about something perhaps more jolting to Europe than Trump’s surprise presidential win in 2016: the British exit from the European Union.

British voters, who had never approved the Euro currency and never enjoyed EU regulations, formally approved a “Brexit” in mid-2016. Merkel said she will be less focused on team play now.

But Russian aggression in the Ukraine and Georgia in the past 10 years has moved European nations. Latvia increased its defense budget by 42 percent in 2016, according to CNN. Its neighbor, Lithuania, boosted defense spending by 34 percent.

One conservative foreign policy expert said Trump reaffirmed his belief in NATO during the past few weeks.

“As a staunch defender in the need for NATO and U.S. leadership in it, Trump has pleasantly surprised me by strengthening the credibility of the alliance by reaffirming its importance, replenishing [the] American military might Obama’s defense build-down imperiled, and taking on Putin in Syria,” said Kaufman.

Kaufman also said the Germans are historically liberal, of late, and skeptical of U.S. motives. This is despite the strong and longstanding presence of U.S. military bases in Germany — there are 60,000 U.S. troops in Germany today.

“During the 1980s, West Germans preferred (former Soviet leader Mikhail) Gorbachev to (former U.S. President Ronald) Reagan, by a margin of 2 to 1,” said Kaufman, noting that Reagan went on to peacefully liberate East Germany from communism, leading to German unification.