The current annual military spending of the US national economy is about $600 billion -- about half of total government expenditure. Without this gargantuan taxpayer-subsidized lifeline to the American military-industrial complex, the whole economy would collapse.
Less than two months into his presidency, Trump realizes this fundamental reality of the US economy -- if he hadn't already. That is, it is a military behemoth with an insatiable addiction for public financial fixes to the tune of $600 billion a year.
Trump increasingly shows he is a militarist in the same way that all his other predecessors have been. An American president cannot be anything other than that under prevailing conditions of US corporate capitalism.
This gives proper insight into what Trump has meant by his previous chiding of NATO as "obsolete."
Last week saw the unedifying spectacle of senior Trump administration officials telling European NATO members to "pay up or else."
Speaking in Brussels, Defense Secretary James Mattis warned that America "would no longer protect the children of Europeans" unless their governments lived up to earlier commitments of increasing financial contributions to NATO to a requisite level of two percent of GDP.
The ultimatum was underscored by Vice President Mike Pence at the subsequent Munich Security Conference when he told European members of NATO that they had "one year" to get their acts together with a plan on how to boost their military spending.
Both Mattis and Pence, by the way, were adamant about President Trump's "unwavering commitment to NATO," scotching any earlier speculation about his leeriness toward the pact.
It is also significant that while Trump may have appeared indifferent toward NATO -- hinting at one stage for instance that the US may not automatically come to the defense of certain allies if they didn't pay more dues -- the practical reality is that the US-led military escalation in Eastern Europe continues apace. In recent weeks, US tanks and troops have poured into Poland and the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.
And just this week, the Balkan state of Montenegro said the US Congress is ready to ratify its accession to NATO to become the 29th member -- after making outlandish claims of Russian subversion.
Therefore, any notion that Trump's previous declarations of NATO as "obsolete" might have meant a withdrawal of US militarism from Europe looks foolhardy.
What Trump really means is that the post-Second World War financing of NATO is obsolete. Formed in 1949, the US has traditionally been the financial lynchpin of NATO, constituting about 70 percent of the total budget.
As Trump points out, only five members of NATO -- the US, Britain, Poland, Estonia and Greece -- actually meet the designated target of two percent of GDP being spent on the military. The EU's average spending is about 1.5 percent, with Germany's defense budget below that at 1.2 percent.
It is estimated that if all European states hit the NATO target of two percent of GDP, as demanded by the Americans, then that would result in an extra spend of nearly $100 billion a year. That's still only about a sixth of what the US allocates. Nevertheless, such a boost in European military spending would substantially feed into the Pentagon, from new orders for F-16 fighter jets, Abrams tanks and accommodating US troops on European soil.
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