Berlin – German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen on Sunday rejected U.S. President Donald Trump’s claim that Germany owes NATO and the United States “vast sums” of money for defense.
Subscribe to our Daily Roundup Email
“There is no debt account at NATO,” von der Leyen said in a statement, adding that it was wrong to link the alliance’s target for members to spend 2 percent of their economic output on defense by 2024 solely to NATO.
“Defense spending also goes into UN peacekeeping missions, into our European missions and into our contribution to the fight against IS terrorism,” von der Leyen said.
She said everyone wanted the burden to be shared fairly and for that to happen it was necessary to have a “modern security concept” that included a modern NATO but also a European defense union and investment in the United Nations.
Trump said on Twitter on Saturday – a day after meeting German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Washington – that Germany “owes vast sums of money to NATO & the United States must be paid more for the powerful, and very expensive, defense it provides to Germany!”
Trump has urged Germany and other NATO members to accelerate efforts to meet NATO’s defense spending target.
German defense spending is set to rise by 1.4 billion euros to 38.5 billion euros in 2018 – a figure that is projected to represent 1.26 percent of economic output, Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble has said.
In 2016, Germany’s defense spending ratio stood at 1.18 percent.
During her trip to Washington, Merkel reiterated Germany’s commitment to the 2 percent military spending goal.
Idiot Trumpf’s simplistic calculus that he uses for his under-educated supporters goes against the reality of NATO and makes it seem that Germany owes us money, which of course is a stupid mistske. NATO allies contribute as much as they want, and that amount makes up the budget. The 2% is proposed, but is not a mandatory fee. No countries owe the US anything for defense, unless they have a loan for arms. Trumpf’s moronic statements are clap-trap garbage for home consumption by the masses of his dupes.
I agree with #2 . The anti-Trump fanatic, Hashomer, conveniently forgets that fact that millions of GI’s have protected the Germans against the Russians for over seventy years. The cost to station the GI’s in Germany over the last seventy two years, has cost the American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars. We saved the Germans during the Berlin airlift , when they would have starved to death, and protected them during the Cold War; also, we rebuilt their bombed out cities with the Marshall plan. Hence, one would think that they would be a little more humble, and accept more responsibility in defending their own country. Germany is an economic behemoth, and should cough up more money for NATO, and for its own defense.