The foreign policy establishment got the vapors when Donald Trump suggested, during the campaign, that NATO allies should be doing more to pay for their own defense. But it appears that the right people got the message:
The NATO chief urged allies on Tuesday to step up their defense spending, a day ahead of the first meeting between new U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and his 27 NATO counterparts in Brussels.
U.S. President Donald Trump suggested during his campaign that he might not defend allies who refuse to contribute their fair share. His comments have alarmed European nations, particularly those near Russia’s border, like Poland and the Baltic states of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia.
“Fair burden-sharing and increased defense spending underpins the trans-Atlantic alliance,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters. “If we reduce defense spending in times when tensions are going down, we have to be able to increase defense spending when tensions are going up, as they are now.”
While the Trump administration is weighing its defense commitments to Europe, NATO leaders have already committed to halting spending cuts and raising their military budgets to 2 percent of gross domestic product.
Once again, Trump has achieved tangible success simply by standing up for American interests. The fact that this keeps happening confirms what many of us have thought for years; that is, that we did not have an administration that even tried to defend American interests and American taxpayers.
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