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Get ready for some epic squealing from perfidious Europe: they may be about to be left to fend for themselves for the first time in nearly a century.
The Trump administration is considering a plan to punish some members of the NATO alliance the US President believes were unhelpful to the US and Israel during the Iran war, according to administration officials.
The proposal would involve moving US troops out of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation member countries deemed unhelpful to the war effort and station them in countries that were more supportive of the US military campaign. The proposal would fall far short of Donald Trump’s recent threats to fully withdraw the US from the alliance, which by law he can’t do without congress.
But it will be enough for mendicant European nations, meaning nearly all of them, to squeal like stuck pigs.
After all, having been saved from themselves by outside forces for the third time in 150 years, humility and gratitude were not exactly Europe’s notable responses. The US, having defeated the Nazis and Fascists (solely European inventions), promptly spent billions more of its own money rebuilding Europe, and defending half of it from the onslaught of communism (another European invention).
And how did Europe respond? With 80 years of sneering and freeloading.
Even though NATO legally requires its member states to commit at least two per cent of GDP to their defence, almost no European nation has ever done so. At least, not until the last time Trump threatened to walk away from an increasingly raw deal for the American taxpayer.
Instead, they wasted the money building cradle-to-grave welfare states that were a vast sugar pile to the invading ants of the Middle East and Europe. Still, grifter Europe could always rely on the US to protect them.
Perhaps not for much longer. America has put up with a lot from Europe, but the active bastardy of the past month, with not a single European nation stepping up to help overthrow the Iranian regime that has persistently exported terror to Europe for 50 years, may be the last straw.
“It’s quite sad that NATO turned their backs on the American people over the last six weeks when it’s the American people who have been funding their defence,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Wednesday. She said Mr Trump plans to have a very “frank and candid conversation” with [NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte].
Hopefully, something along the lines of, ‘You’re on your own now, you freeloading bastards.’
The US has around 84,000 troops stationed across Europe, though the exact number varies from military exercises and rotational deployments. US bases in Europe serve as a critical hub of global US military operations, as well as provide an economic boon to the host country through investment. Bases in Eastern Europe also serve as a deterrent against Russia.
And in return?
Spain – the only NATO country that has not pledged to spend five per cent of its GDP on defence – blocked US planes involved in the Iran operation from using its airspace. Administration officials are also frustrated with Germany after top officials criticised Mr Trump’s war, though Germany serves as one of the largest and most important hubs for the US military to support its operations in the Middle East.
Italy also briefly blocked the US use of an air base in Sicily, and the French government agreed to only allow the US to use a base in southern France after it guaranteed planes that were not involved in Iran strikes would land there.
Still, those countries who have held up their end of the NATO deal can expect to benefit.
Countries that could benefit because they are viewed as supportive include Poland, Romania, Lithuania and Greece, the officials said. The Eastern European countries have some of the highest defence spending rates in the alliance and were some of the first to signal they would support an international coalition to monitor the Strait of Hormuz. After war broke out, Romania quickly approved US requests to allow its bases to be used by the US Air Force.
Sharing borders with first the Soviet Union and now Russia no doubt has sharpened their minds somewhat.
As Trump has said, the US needs nothing from NATO. It’s increasingly obvious that it gains nothing, either. It’s long past time to cut perfidious Europe loose and let them destroy themselves yet again.
