EU buys $60 bn of American weapons each year! America gets 105 TIMES more out of NATO than it costs!

Fantine · Mar 26, 2025

If the country they purchase weapons from is untrustworthy, they are better off developing other sources--because a country they can't trust could break contracts at any time.

eclipsenow · Mar 26, 2025

Exactly! But it should happen over the long term.
If it happens too quick - Putin might get over confident and start something that suddenly escalates to 'nuclear war by accident'.

Sure - the EU is a weird organisation with national self-interest of member countries preferring to set their own military agendas. But it also didn't help that American Presidents also encouraged them to remain dependent on Uncle Sam.

What I cannot believe is how many Americans walk around with Trump in their head bleating "We're being ripped off! NATO are delinquent!" etc, when:-

Most of the money 'invested' in NATO is paying the salaries of Americans staying there - which funds their families back home. So the most of the money comes back home anyway.
European dependence on American weapons repays America over 105 TIMES.

The Liturgist · Mar 27, 2025

eclipsenow said:
Hi all,

I edited this OP to correct my original error of saying the EU purchased $190 billion in American weapons each year. This is wrong and I apologise. It is only $60 bn as far as I can tell - and that ramped up in the last year or so. But that is STILL more than 105 times more than America invests in NATO each year!

This time I slow down and show my sources.

If anyone finds better information - please tell me.

America spent only $567 million on NATO in 2023.
https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/us-contributes-16-nato-annual-budget-not-two-thirds-2024-05-31/

Part of the deal as understood and promoted by all previous Presidents before Trump was that the EU did NOT need to harmonise and form their own European Army.

Why not? It's a great idea! Rather than 178 chaotic, different, bespoke weapons platforms from 27 different national commands - they could have one EU command streamlining and mass producing something like 30 co-ordinated weapons platforms as America does. It would make them vastly more cost effective - giving them literally more ‘bang for their buck.’ The NATO alliance between an EU Army and USA would have been even more formidable!

Question: So why would previous American President’s discourage this?
Answer: Good old fashioned self-interest. Jobs at home!

The EU has recently been spending about €90 bn on military hardware.
https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/defence-numbers/

63% of this is spent in America.
EU buys too much defense equipment abroad, especially from US: Report

That’s €56 bn or converted to USD $60 bn.
Let’s spell it out.
America’s income from this deal = $60,000 million.
America’s annual NATO cost? = $ 567 million.
That means 105 times more income than expense.
America wins.

So can we please drop this Trumpian charade that America is being ripped off by NATO? Financially - it's almost exactly the other way around. Let's also remember - every taxpayer dollar going to an American stationed in Europe to defend NATO is still a tax payer dollar going to an AMERICAN. It's still an American job! In a way it's not leaving the country.

In other words - here is a free $60 bn from Europe - you win!

Remember - the whole point of NATO is not money, but defence. It's about the reputation and reality of being the biggest most successful military alliance in history. The more Trump talks it down, the less effective that reputation and reality are. The more likely it is Putin might advance towards NATO to retake former Soviet nations he wants back. The more chance we have of Putin overstepping - and something really nasty happening to us all!

As the New York Times says:

“It Isn’t Just Trump. America’s Whole Reputation Is Shot.”

Many years ago, I asked a friend who had been hired as a senior foreign policy official what he’d learned in government that he didn’t know beforehand. He replied: “I used to think policy-making was 75 percent about relationships. Now I realize it’s 95 percent about relationships.”

It’s very hard to do big things alone. So competent leaders and nations rely on relationships built on shared values, shared history and shared trust. They construct coalitions to take on the big challenges of the age, including the biggest: whether the 21st century is going to be a Chinese century or another American century.

In that contest the Chinese have many advantages, but until recently America had the decisive one — we had more friends around the world. Unfortunately, over the last month and a half, America has smashed a lot of those relationships to smithereens.
President Trump does not seem to notice or care that if you betray people, or jerk them around, they will revile you. Over the last few weeks, the Europeans have gone from shock to bewilderment to revulsion. This period was for them what 9/11 was for us — the stripping away of illusions, the exposure of an existential threat. The Europeans have realized that America, the nation they thought was their friend, is actually a rogue superpower.

In Canada and Mexico you now win popularity by treating America as your foe. Over the next few years, I predict, Trump will cut a deal with China, doing to Taiwan some version of what he has already done to Ukraine — betray the little guy to suck up to the big guy. Nations across Asia will come to the same conclusion the Europeans have already reached: America is a Judas.
This is not just a Trump problem; America’s whole reputation is shot. I don’t care if Abraham Lincoln himself walked into the White House in 2029, no foreign leader can responsibly trust a nation that is perpetually four years away from electing another authoritarian nihilist.

So what’s going to happen?

NATO is over. Joe Biden spent four years defending the postwar liberal order. That order grew out of a specific historical experience: Isolationism after World War I led to the horrors of World War II; internationalism after World War II led to 80 years of superpower peace. You tell that narrative to the younger generations and many look at you as if you’re talking about the 14th century. The postwar order was a historic accomplishment, but it was a product of its time, and we are not going back to it. It does no good to try to revive the ghost of Dean Acheson; we have to think of a new global architecture.

The West is (temporarily) over. What we call “the West” is a centuries-long conversation — Socrates searching for truth, Rembrandt embodying compassion, Locke developing enlightenment liberalism, Francis Bacon pioneering the scientific method. This is our heritage. For all of our history America understood itself as the culmination of the great Western project. The idea of the West was reified in all the alliances and exchanges between Europe and North America.
But the category “the West” does not seem to be in Donald Trump’s head. Trump is cutting America off from its spiritual and intellectual roots. He has completed the project that Jesse Jackson started in 1987 when he and a bunch of progressive activists at Stanford chanted, “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western Civ has got to go.”

The new civilizational struggle is between hard and soft. Don’t overthink this. Trump is not playing four-dimensional chess and trying to pry Russia from its alliance with China. American foreign policy is now oriented to whatever gets Trump’s hormones surging. He has a lifelong thing for manly virility. In the MAGA mind, Vladimir Putin codes as hard; Western Europe codes as soft. Elon Musk codes as hard; U.S.A.I.D. codes as soft. WWE is hard; universities are soft. Struggles for dominance are hard; alliances are soft.

More on Europe etc. Article continues....

The difference is that NATO costs are paid by the taxpayer, whereas weapons purchases from NATO go to private companies.

Also it seems unlikely we will remain competitive in this respect. As it presently stands we do not export submarines or surface combatants, and there is now a silly conspiracy theory being circulated by those in positions of influence in Europe suggesting the F-35 Lightning II has a kill switch (which ignores the fact that countries can develop their own software for the F-35, which Israel has actually done, this being the chief difference between the F-35I and the F-35 variants being sold to Europe)*

*Now, while I wish the US had indeed put a kill switch in the Lightning, and also wish that strategic measures exist in the targeting and guidance packages of Trident missiles exported to foreign governments, and while it is remotely possible that it exists, this does not seem credible, and one would also note that a remote kill switch on the Lightning would be discoverable through extensive analysis by security researchers. On the other hand, the UK leases Trident missiles from Lockheed which are maintained by Lockheed, so if anything has a safety countermeasure to prevent it from being used against the US, it would be the Trident missile and not the F-35.

Aryeh Jay · Mar 27, 2025

FireDragon76 said:
I am afraid the reality is worse than that. There will be no returning to normal. Trump is just at the cusp of deeper structural problems in American society. The only question is whether US society manages to "flatten the curve" and achieve a soft landing, similar to Britain, or whether we undergo a violent and chaotic collapse, like many empires before us.

The sad truth is as long as there's people who are much less educated than me and make far less than me keep electing politicians who only care about votes and enriching themselves, I no longer care. I benefit from it, my quality of life goes through the roof, and any economic downturn hurts me as much as, well it doesn't. I bought a quarter million dollar machine gun in 2022 and a half million dollar yhat last year. I am glad people voted against their best interests and am looking forward to my next purchase. To sum it up, the American people want me to have my life style. I guess loosing a child can really change someone's mental state.

eclipsenow · Mar 27, 2025

The Liturgist said:
The difference is that NATO costs are paid by the taxpayer, whereas weapons purchases from NATO go to private companies.

Dude - so you do not think that getting 105 TIMES more money back might just include some tax revenue? You know - just a little?

The Liturgist said:
Also it seems unlikely we will remain competitive in this respect.

Competitive isn't the issue - you are the only guys with F35s
Reliable is the issue!

The Liturgist said:
As it presently stands we do not export submarines

That's just not true?

I'm Australian - we were about to buy over $350 bn in nuclear powered submarines. Not heard of AUKUS?

We might be looking elsewhere after Trump.

If you can just happily state things that are factually incorrect - what am i to make of the rest of your assertions here?

Laodicean60 · Mar 27, 2025

eclipsenow said:
Dude - so you do not think that getting 105 TIMES more money back might just include some tax revenue? You know - just a little?

You still don't get it. I don't care how much aerospace makes; not everyone benefits from this industry. You say some tax revenue, and that's my primary concern. The money given to Ukraine and NATO and everyone else is taxpayer money. If all the 105 TIMES money is put back into government coffers, then I wouldn't complain about the government spending as much.

7thKeeper · Mar 27, 2025

Laodicean60 said:
You still don't get it. I don't care how much aerospace makes; not everyone benefits from this industry. You say some tax revenue, and that's my primary concern. The money given to Ukraine and NATO and everyone else is taxpayer money. If all the 105 TIMES money is put back into government coffers, then I wouldn't complain about the government spending as much.

Well to add some clarity to this, majority of the "money" to Ukraine never left the USA as it was money put back in to replace items sent. And what exactly do you mean by money given to NATO? That's kind of a general statement so I have no idea what's actually referred to or meant by this.

Fantine · Mar 27, 2025

eclipsenow said:
Dude - so you do not think that getting 105 TIMES more money back might just include some tax revenue? You know - just a little?

Competitive isn't the issue - you are the only guys with F35s
Reliable is the issue!

That's just not true?

I'm Australian - we were about to buy over $350 bn in nuclear powered submarines. Not heard of AUKUS?

We might be looking elsewhere after Trump.

If you can just happily state things that are factually incorrect - what am i to make of the rest of your assertions here?

Interesting that defense contractors aren't outsourcing to China (the patent stealer) or India. But if they wanted, they could build factories or set up subsidiaries overseas.
Unless the planes are designed by the government, a defense contractor can share its designs with others.

The Liturgist · Mar 27, 2025

eclipsenow said:
we were about to buy over $350 bn in nuclear powered submarines

We have yet to actually deliver a single submarine to your country, and it has been decades since we sold a newly built nuclear vessel (we did on the other hand sell the Oliver Hazard Perry class frigates, used, however; in retrospect given the trainwreck that was the LCS project we should have kept them, as decrepit and obsolete as they were, and perhaps bought some of those rather nice stealthy frigates in use in some European navies.

However, until an submarine sets sail from Groton or Newport News flying your naval ensign, I cannot truthfully say we export them. Merely that it has been agreed to export them, but that deal might not now happen.

Australia should buy our submarines, to be clear, it would be a better deal than the diesel electric submarines you were going to purchase in terms of endurance and defensive capabilities, but it hasn’t happened yet.

The UK builds its own submarines, although they really need to get moving on replacements for the V boats.

Pommer · Mar 27, 2025

Laodicean60 said:
You still don't get it. I don't care how much aerospace makes; not everyone benefits from this industry. You say some tax revenue, and that's my primary concern. The money given to Ukraine and NATO and everyone else is taxpayer money. If all the 105 TIMES money is put back into government coffers, then I wouldn't complain about the government spending as much.

The reason that they’re cutting government expenditures is so that the tax-cuts the wealthy will enjoy won’t push up the deficit too much.

Lukaris · Mar 27, 2025

FAITH-IN-HIM said:
In 2008 during the Georgia-Russia conflict, and in 2014 during the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Europe's reliance on Russian energy meant sanctions had little effect. Europe is still 10% dependent on Russian energy, but this might change soon. Only when Europe is no longer reliant on Russian energy can stronger economic sanctions be effectively implemented.

Neither President Bush nor President Obama could effectively counter Russian aggression because Europe was not prepared to confront Russia. It appears that Europe has finally understood that unless they stand up to Russian aggression, Russia will continue to invade their territories.

President Biden's approach to Putin's aggression was effective. Although it may not have been perfect, he played a crucial role in uniting Europe and facilitating Finland and Sweden's entry into NATO. If the Republican House had provided aid to Ukraine in a timely manner, the situation could have improved further for Ukraine.

All of the Russian aggression happens with the “effective” policies from 2009-2017 & 2021-2025.

Laodicean60 · Mar 27, 2025

Pommer said:
The reason that they’re cutting government expenditures is so that the tax-cuts the wealthy will enjoy won’t push up the deficit too much.

I don't like it either, but the TCJA seems to be popular with the rich, which includes Biden and the Trump administration. We whine about the rich, but as I've seen, thirty years it hasn't gotten any better. The rich are getting richer, and the others are getting poorer.

eclipsenow · Mar 27, 2025

Laodicean60 said:
You still don't get it. I don't care how much aerospace makes; not everyone benefits from this industry. You say some tax revenue, and that's my primary concern. The money given to Ukraine and NATO and everyone else is taxpayer money. If all the 105 TIMES money is put back into government coffers, then I wouldn't complain about the government spending as much.

You still don't get it.

First - there's defence. Ukraine is a special emergency - about holding the line so that Russia does not recreate the Soviet Union.
NATO is about defending allies, because regarding security - what goes around, comes around.

Second - your NATO funding is largely paying AMERICAN soldiers in Europe.

NATO funds pay American taxpayer dollars to American soldiers on American bases in Europe.
Those salaries pay for American wives and children to live their lives back home in America.
How much money is being lost to NATO in the first instance?

Third - how did China get so rich so fast? Selling to the outside world.
It creates jobs which pay taxes to the government. Do the maths - and there are income taxes going to your states and Federal taxes going to your Federal government. Basically divided $60 bn by your tax rates on military salaries and military personal and the entire civilisation supply chain of jobs - and that's how much tax revenue is collected from this. If we do the 2 for me, 1 for him ratio - that is - about a third tax rate - that's $20 bn in tax. That alone is 35 TIMES more tax money incoming to the trite investment in NATO.
But - all those jobs! You might not be in those industries - but there's a whole civilian supply chain to Aerospace jobs that runs at about 4 jobs per million dollars spent.

Have you ever seen the economics essay, "I, Pencil"? Here's the abridged version at 6 minutes - the full essay is 13 minutes to read out loud and goes into mind-numbing detail about the manufacture of the chemicals for the different parts of the pencil.

This famous essay illustrates how no individual knows all the steps involved in making something as simple a pencil. Instead, thousands of specialists work on the different ingredients and industries that go into a pencil. Millions of other workers supply the food and clothes and medical advice and entertainment the ‘front line’ pencil workers need.

It’s a growing web of co-operation and interaction that ultimately means no one human being can possibly know how even a pencil is really made! It’s a global supply chain – writ large across our civilisation. Most do not even know they are making pencils! This spontaneous order emerges out of basic human needs to work so they can feed the family and pay the bills. It’s roughly guided by price signals and self interest. Yet it enables co-operation to build everything from the humble pencil to the internet and space-stations.

How do these connections form? Imagine a guy that comes up with a cheaper chemical mix for the rubber on the end of the pencil. He phones a lady he knows who can show him the money – and she knows someone else who has a small chemical factory that just closed – and can be bought and repurposed for his new chemical product. They then employ people who can market these rubbers, and these marketing types put ads online and go to expo’s. A pencil manufacture eventually notices these new rubbers – and buys some product to test it. Eventually new supply lines are established, and one tiny node in a large global chain is tweaked. It is self-adapting.

If no one person really knows how a simple pencil is made - from start to finish on all the parts - what is it like trying to analyse the supply chain for something like a missile or F35?

NOW tell me you don't work in Aerospace! NOW tell me you do not benefit from $60 bn in American jobs making American stuff in America!

TRADE

It also gives that nation's currency validity to import other goods from the outside world. A balance of trade, and all that.

So YOU MIGHT NOT CARE about incoming civilian money - but it pays 35 times more tax than you are spending, legitimizes you as a trading partner, and ultimately PROVIDED SECURITY in both the power and the pretence of NATO.

Trump has lied about everything - and even smart people like yourself who spend their times thinking on forums rather than just watching endless TV or sports have been caught up in it all.

eclipsenow · Mar 27, 2025

Lukaris said:
All of the Russian aggression happens with the “effective” policies from 2009-2017 & 2021-2025.

Yes. The western world blinked over parts of Georgia. In the 2008 Bucharest Summit Declaration, NATO had declared both it and Ukraine would one day join NATO. This may have prompted Russia to attach both Georgia 4 months later - and Ukraine in 2014.

However, Ukraine was a bit different in that Russia itself had PLEDGED in the Budapest Memorandum to protect Ukraine in exchange for all her 1/3 of the former Soviet Nuclear arsenal. They handed it over on guarantees from the UK, USA, and Russia.

Russia breaking this pledge was hardly a surprise. Trump breaking an international pledge by NOT supporting Ukraine even with military aid - not even boots on the ground? That's utterly unacceptable. At least Biden was doing that!

Which leads us back to David Brooks conclusions in his NYT article.

President Trump does not seem to notice or care that if you betray people, or jerk them around, they will revile you. Over the last few weeks, the Europeans have gone from shock to bewilderment to revulsion ...

...NATO is over. Joe Biden spent four years defending the postwar liberal order. That order grew out of a specific historical experience: Isolationism after World War I led to the horrors of World War II; internationalism after World War II led to 80 years of superpower peace. You tell that narrative to the younger generations and many look at you as if you’re talking about the 14th century. The postwar order was a historic accomplishment, but it was a product of its time, and we are not going back to it. It does no good to try to revive the ghost of Dean Acheson; we have to think of a new global architecture.

The West is (temporarily) over. What we call “the West” is a centuries-long conversation — Socrates searching for truth, Rembrandt embodying compassion, Locke developing enlightenment liberalism, Francis Bacon pioneering the scientific method. This is our heritage. For all of our history America understood itself as the culmination of the great Western project. The idea of the West was reified in all the alliances and exchanges between Europe and North America.

But the category “the West” does not seem to be in Donald Trump’s head. Trump is cutting America off from its spiritual and intellectual roots. He has completed the project that Jesse Jackson started in 1987 when he and a bunch of progressive activists at Stanford chanted, “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western Civ has got to go.”

Lukaris · Mar 27, 2025

Isolationism for the US from WW 1 was the right policy and choosing sides in that conflict was the foundation of future disaster. Wilson, a democrat, failed to stay out of European affairs and also with the Versailles treaty and the League of Nations.

The US was compelled to have to defeat the Axis in WW 2 and to be perpetually stuck in Europe & often hated for being there while having to be the garbage man ( for ex.)

Fifty Years Later, France Is Still Debating the Legacy of Its 1968 Protests

In an activist era, millions of French students and workers demanded radical change

www.smithsonianmag.com

France can come and go with NATO but not the US. Oh no never

France and NATO - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

eclipsenow · Mar 27, 2025

Lukaris said:
Isolationism for the US from WW 1 was the right policy and choosing sides in that conflict was the foundation of future disaster. Wilson, a democrat, failed to stay out of European affairs and also with the Versailles treaty and the League of Nations.

The US was compelled to have to defeat the Axis in WW 2 and to be perpetually stuck in Europe & often hated for being there while having to be the garbage man ( for ex.)

Fifty Years Later, France Is Still Debating the Legacy of Its 1968 Protests

In an activist era, millions of French students and workers demanded radical change

www.smithsonianmag.com

France can come and go with NATO but not the US. Oh no never

France and NATO - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Way to go! Simplifying an extremely complex set of sociological equations - dumbing it down to make Trump's word salads almost comprehensible!

While Hitler marched across Europe, it emboldened Japan to enact Pearl Harbour. What goes around comes around.
Then the Cold War started - leaving the west terrified of the incredibly fast rise of the USSR! For all their horrors of human rights abuses, internal genocides, government propaganda, etc, which I of course condemn utterly, it was an amazing experiment. Not that I'm sympathetic to that style of Socialism - and I remain Ordo-Liberal myself. But it brought a largely 18th century peasant population out of almost subsistence trading into the modern world in a generation. Only China has done more on a larger and faster scale!

Now - the west was terrified of the USSR - the bear that roared when they tested their own nukes just 3 years after Oppenheimer. Who got into space first!

So America went into Vietnam - and Australia followed - because the USA asked us.

Those students were mainly protesting against Vietnam!

But here's where it gets tricky - and I don't know much about it. Apparently they were also protesting against "Gaullism – the conservative policies and centralized executive power with which President Charles de Gaulle ruled."

This further divides what is happening. Because de Gaulle never trusted America after the west failed to turn up in time to stop Hitler invading France. de Gaulle was prescient - and always maintained that France could not trust America to defend her - where everyone else wanted to! It's why France have their own nukes!

America was in Europe for America - to strengthen NATO against the terror of a rising USSR that built bombs and sent scary little satellites into space - making weird pinging noises - what WAS Sputnik about? (Harmless - but watch the kid's show "The Iron Giant" to see a great illustration of how much it freaked out America. That FBI agent was losing it over the satellite!)

America was in Europe to help her rebuild, have the Bretton Woods accord which made the US the world's reserve currency, and generally get something out of all this. Like have Europe depend on American weapons for the next few generations. Repaying 105 TIMES the money spent on American soldiers in Europe.

And as for de Gaulle?
He was right to fear American betrayal.
I just wish the entire west had been listening.

Lukaris · Mar 27, 2025

eclipsenow said:
Way to go! Simplifying an extremely complex set of sociological equations - dumbing it down to make Trump's word salads almost comprehensible!

While Hitler marched across Europe, it emboldened Japan to enact Pearl Harbour. What goes around comes around.
Then the Cold War started - leaving the west terrified of the incredibly fast rise of the USSR! For all their horrors of human rights abuses, internal genocides, government propaganda, etc, which I of course condemn utterly, it was an amazing experiment. Not that I'm sympathetic to that style of Socialism - and I remain Ordo-Liberal myself. But it brought a largely 18th century peasant population out of almost subsistence trading into the modern world in a generation. Only China has done more on a larger and faster scale!

Now - the west was terrified of the USSR - the bear that roared when they tested their own nukes just 3 years after Oppenheimer. Who got into space first!

So America went into Vietnam - and Australia followed - because the USA asked us.

Those students were mainly protesting against Vietnam!

But here's where it gets tricky - and I don't know much about it. Apparently they were also protesting against "Gaullism – the conservative policies and centralized executive power with which President Charles de Gaulle ruled."

This further divides what is happening. Because de Gaulle never trusted America after the west failed to turn up in time to stop Hitler invading France. de Gaulle was prescient - and always maintained that France could not trust America to defend her - where everyone else wanted to! It's why France have their own nukes!

America was in Europe for America - to strengthen NATO against the terror of a rising USSR that built bombs and sent scary little satellites into space - making weird pinging noises - what WAS Sputnik about? (Harmless - but watch the kid's show "The Iron Giant" to see a great illustration of how much it freaked out America. That FBI agent was losing it over the satellite!)

America was in Europe to help her rebuild, have the Bretton Woods accord which made the US the world's reserve currency, and generally get something out of all this. Like have Europe depend on American weapons for the next few generations. Repaying 105 TIMES the money spent on American soldiers in Europe.

And as for de Gaulle?
He was right to fear American betrayal.
I just wish the entire west had been listening.

America had no obligations to France in 1939 and betrayed nothing. Japan had been attacking China since 1937. The USSR collective farm policies caused the deaths of millions of Ukrainians ( & Russians).

Holodomor - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Millions died in China during the Maoist “great leap forward” in the early 1960s.

Great Leap Forward - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

France & Britain were pledged to assist Poland in 1939 & either couldn’t or wavered. France had a small incursion into Germany & soon withdrew.

Saar Offensive - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

John 16:33

eclipsenow · Mar 27, 2025

I agree that the French and English betrayal of Poland was an awful, awful thing. They made assurances and told Poland not to mobilize - and assured Poland that they had a diplomatic solution that would stop Hitler. The popular history podcast "The rest is history" has been covering this story just this January - and it's awful.

But France's general scepticism to the US is also bound up in its observation of what happened with France and England. They wanted their own nukes to guarantee their own independence.

Lukaris said:
America had no obligations to France in 1939

If you say so. Because - defending a club of western democratic nations from the rise of a dictatorial empire is such a bad idea. I know - let's defend the rise of dictators instead! Then we might be able to scare other annoying democracies that ask things of us into complying with our own unreasonable demands as we head in that direction ourselves!
Oh ... wait...

That sounds like David Brooks again! I've had to quote him a few times today already!

This is not just a Trump problem; America’s whole reputation is shot. I don’t care if Abraham Lincoln himself walked into the White House in 2029, no foreign leader can responsibly trust a nation that is perpetually four years away from electing another authoritarian nihilist.

So what’s going to happen?... NATO is over ... The West is (temporarily) over.

BPPLEE · Mar 27, 2025

eclipsenow said:
Hi all,

I edited this OP to correct my original error of saying the EU purchased $190 billion in American weapons each year. This is wrong and I apologise. It is only $60 bn as far as I can tell - and that ramped up in the last year or so. But that is STILL more than 105 times more than America invests in NATO each year!

This time I slow down and show my sources.

If anyone finds better information - please tell me.

America spent only $567 million on NATO in 2023.
https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/us-contributes-16-nato-annual-budget-not-two-thirds-2024-05-31/

Part of the deal as understood and promoted by all previous Presidents before Trump was that the EU did NOT need to harmonise and form their own European Army.

Why not? It's a great idea! Rather than 178 chaotic, different, bespoke weapons platforms from 27 different national commands - they could have one EU command streamlining and mass producing something like 30 co-ordinated weapons platforms as America does. It would make them vastly more cost effective - giving them literally more ‘bang for their buck.’ The NATO alliance between an EU Army and USA would have been even more formidable!

Question: So why would previous American President’s discourage this?
Answer: Good old fashioned self-interest. Jobs at home!

The EU has recently been spending about €90 bn on military hardware.
https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/defence-numbers/

63% of this is spent in America.
EU buys too much defense equipment abroad, especially from US: Report

That’s €56 bn or converted to USD $60 bn.
Let’s spell it out.
America’s income from this deal = $60,000 million.
America’s annual NATO cost? = $ 567 million.
That means 105 times more income than expense.
America wins.

So can we please drop this Trumpian charade that America is being ripped off by NATO? Financially - it's almost exactly the other way around. Let's also remember - every taxpayer dollar going to an American stationed in Europe to defend NATO is still a tax payer dollar going to an AMERICAN. It's still an American job! In a way it's not leaving the country.

In other words - here is a free $60 bn from Europe - you win!

Remember - the whole point of NATO is not money, but defence. It's about the reputation and reality of being the biggest most successful military alliance in history. The more Trump talks it down, the less effective that reputation and reality are. The more likely it is Putin might advance towards NATO to retake former Soviet nations he wants back. The more chance we have of Putin overstepping - and something really nasty happening to us all!

As the New York Times says:

“It Isn’t Just Trump. America’s Whole Reputation Is Shot.”

Many years ago, I asked a friend who had been hired as a senior foreign policy official what he’d learned in government that he didn’t know beforehand. He replied: “I used to think policy-making was 75 percent about relationships. Now I realize it’s 95 percent about relationships.”

It’s very hard to do big things alone. So competent leaders and nations rely on relationships built on shared values, shared history and shared trust. They construct coalitions to take on the big challenges of the age, including the biggest: whether the 21st century is going to be a Chinese century or another American century.

In that contest the Chinese have many advantages, but until recently America had the decisive one — we had more friends around the world. Unfortunately, over the last month and a half, America has smashed a lot of those relationships to smithereens.
President Trump does not seem to notice or care that if you betray people, or jerk them around, they will revile you. Over the last few weeks, the Europeans have gone from shock to bewilderment to revulsion. This period was for them what 9/11 was for us — the stripping away of illusions, the exposure of an existential threat. The Europeans have realized that America, the nation they thought was their friend, is actually a rogue superpower.

In Canada and Mexico you now win popularity by treating America as your foe. Over the next few years, I predict, Trump will cut a deal with China, doing to Taiwan some version of what he has already done to Ukraine — betray the little guy to suck up to the big guy. Nations across Asia will come to the same conclusion the Europeans have already reached: America is a Judas.
This is not just a Trump problem; America’s whole reputation is shot. I don’t care if Abraham Lincoln himself walked into the White House in 2029, no foreign leader can responsibly trust a nation that is perpetually four years away from electing another authoritarian nihilist.

So what’s going to happen?

NATO is over. Joe Biden spent four years defending the postwar liberal order. That order grew out of a specific historical experience: Isolationism after World War I led to the horrors of World War II; internationalism after World War II led to 80 years of superpower peace. You tell that narrative to the younger generations and many look at you as if you’re talking about the 14th century. The postwar order was a historic accomplishment, but it was a product of its time, and we are not going back to it. It does no good to try to revive the ghost of Dean Acheson; we have to think of a new global architecture.

The West is (temporarily) over. What we call “the West” is a centuries-long conversation — Socrates searching for truth, Rembrandt embodying compassion, Locke developing enlightenment liberalism, Francis Bacon pioneering the scientific method. This is our heritage. For all of our history America understood itself as the culmination of the great Western project. The idea of the West was reified in all the alliances and exchanges between Europe and North America.
But the category “the West” does not seem to be in Donald Trump’s head. Trump is cutting America off from its spiritual and intellectual roots. He has completed the project that Jesse Jackson started in 1987 when he and a bunch of progressive activists at Stanford chanted, “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western Civ has got to go.”

The new civilizational struggle is between hard and soft. Don’t overthink this. Trump is not playing four-dimensional chess and trying to pry Russia from its alliance with China. American foreign policy is now oriented to whatever gets Trump’s hormones surging. He has a lifelong thing for manly virility. In the MAGA mind, Vladimir Putin codes as hard; Western Europe codes as soft. Elon Musk codes as hard; U.S.A.I.D. codes as soft. WWE is hard; universities are soft. Struggles for dominance are hard; alliances are soft.

More on Europe etc. Article continues....

Unless the weapons don’t cost anything at all to manufacture you can’t use the total sales amount to compare to what is spent.

eclipsenow · Mar 27, 2025

BPPLEE said:
Unless the weapons don’t cost anything at all to manufacture you can’t use the total sales amount to compare to what is spent.

Unless the money 'spent' on NATO was a total loss donated to foreign soldiers using foreign weapons in foreign bases owned by foreign governments, you can't use the total money 'donated' to NATO as a 'donation' or loss when it is taxpayers money going to American soldiers on American bases using American kit funding American wives and children back home in America!

As we say in Australia - 'same diff.' (Which is 'same difference' or '6 of one - half a dozen of the other.')

But hey - it sure is nice that those NATO 'costs' go largely to American salaries who pour a lot of it back into money back home - and THEN you get 105 times that money invested in your Aerospace industries as well!

( Shhhh - I won't tell anyone Trump was massively misrepresenting the money if you don't! :oldthumbsup:

)

Or maybe we should just go full Jerry Maguire - and let everyone know how they've been had?

EU buys $60 bn of American weapons each year! America gets 105 TIMES more out of NATO than it costs!

Dona Quixote

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Dona Quixote

Traditional Liturgical Christian

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Orthodox Christian

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Scripture is God's word, Science is God's works

Scripture is God's word, Science is God's works

Orthodox Christian

Scripture is God's word, Science is God's works

Orthodox Christian

Scripture is God's word, Science is God's works

Well-Known Member

This time I slow down and show my sources.​

Scripture is God's word, Science is God's works

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This time I slow down and show my sources.

This time I slow down and show my sources.