No. of Recommendations: 9
We pay the bills and all they have to do is generously provide a couple of acres here and there for US troops to hang out. What's not to love?
Yeah - because military bases that allow us to project power and control the military theater throughout continental Europe are just "a couple of acres here and there for US troops to hang out." That's why we cared so much about the Chagos Islands military facility, right? It was just a "couple of acres" to let troops hang out in?
They don't have the bucks or the political will for that.
They're already starting to do that. Across Europe, one response to Trump's insistence on their increasing defense spending and signaling that the US isn't interested in being the Boss of Europe's military theater any more is that all those countries are prioritizing increasing their domestic military defense manufacturing capacity. Some of that incremental spending will go to the U.S., to be sure - but most of the nations that are increasing their military budgets are sharply prioritizing domestic military capacity and building up their defense industries, not just their budgets.
What, did you think that we could insist that they need to spend more on defense and stand on their own and not count on the U.S. to have their back, and they wouldn't take that to heart and do it in a way that actually lets them stand on their own?
