I know exactly how it works and you know exactly what I meant.
Hi avilasurfer,
Well, I can't speak for Jon, but as for myself, I'd appreciate an explanation of how you think it works and how you feel they haven't 'paid their fair share'. As I reported in my earlier post, they aren't even a NATO member nation yet. They are expected to be adopted in later this year.
President Trump has made this big issue of other nations not carrying their fair share of costs. It's a fake issue. The United States spends a lot of money carrying out military operations in many different countries. Some very small part of that is work or security that is done as a part of the NATO requests or directives. However, that's all done by choice. The U.S. doesn't have to be the big bully on the block, but we choose to be and that costs us a lot of money. But, not all of the money that President Trump is squawking about it a result of any NATO costs.
Basically, NATO's mission is to be an organization of member nations that pledge to provide, as a group, additional and necessary forces for any member nation that come under attack by any of the communist countries of Europe. NATO does maintain some small amount of forces but those forces are voluntarily 'donated' to NATO by member nations. Pretty much everything done with NATO is a voluntary action of the member nations, except the commitment to protect other member nations from attack.
So, a lot of what people see today that NATO is doing, such as looking for WMD's or investigating gas attacks and such are all voluntary measures that the member nations have voted to do through the NATO alliance because it provides some umbrella of uniformity in such work and doesn't point fingers at any one nation quite so much. Now, for a lot of these kinds of missions, the U.S. can just say that they're not going to do as much as we may have in the past. Or maybe we won't even get directly involved in some of the smaller issues. The problem honestly is that it's usually the U.S. that is encouraging NATO to get involved in much of what they involve themselves in. If not the U.S., then it is one of the larger allies such as Canada or Great Britain. These are founding members that have established a long relationship of supporting one another's requests.
The U.S. can withdraw a lot of their support for many of the day to day activities of NATO today, but we must not and absolutely should not renege on the basic NATO commitment of providing unilateral support against any attack on any member nation. If the U.S. should decide not to donate 50 American tanks to the NATO peace keeping forces, no problem. But this idea that other member nations somehow owe a bunch of money to either us or NATO because we have voluntarily given millions or billions of dollars in materials and supplies to NATO is a totally fake issue.
Just for fun, although I'm sure you know everything about it as you claim, here's a link that will give you a more clear picture of NATO's role and it's funding. You will see that NATO itself, the offices and personnel that work for NATO, only costs just over 1.5 billion dollars/year. That's really small potatoes for an organization that does all the work that it does.
NATO funding: How it works and who pays what
Here's another link that explains that despite President Trump's claim that the U.S. is paying billions 'to' NATO, the fact is that the U.S. spends less than $500,000.00 for the annual budget of operating expenses for NATO. The billions that President Trump is referring to are voluntarily provided U.S. men and equipment to go and do some of the things that 'we' or some of the founding members have asked that NATO be involved in.
Trump’s claim that the U.S. pays the ‘lion’s share’ for NATO
NATO is getting involved in the terrorist agenda and also human smuggling that aren't really the core purpose of NATO, but certainly do need to be addressed. However, all men and machines used for these operations are voluntarily donated by the member nations. If the U.S. doesn't want to be the big bad dog in these concerns, then all we have to do is sit back and allow other member nations to step up to the plate. If no member nations step up, then the operation doesn't get done. Unfortunately for the U.S. a lot of these requests come from us. We want NATO to be involved in human trafficking and poverty. We want NATO to step up and drop food and supplies into areas where one nation's individual participation might not be accepted.
God bless you,
In Christ, ted