Future of the European Union

[Husar]

Well, to be honest nearly all US presidents have brought up the clause that all NATO members have to expend 2% of their budget for the military. That is neither new, nor something that Trump made up. It even makes sense because if we look at the mess that the Bundeswehr is then even the old Spiegel magazine with it’s "bedingt abwehrbereit" articles from decades ago had no idea how low the standards and equipment of the german army could sink.

And "pacta sunt servanda" works both ways - by breaking the contract through not expending the promised amount of funds on military most european states have sacrificed their own ability to defend themselves AND their ability to come to the aid of their neighbours.

Way to miss my point. How many of the others threatened to leave countries alone if they didn't pay up?
Trump and you also appear to miss the part where the budget is far from the biggest problem of the Bundeswehr.

https://www.wiwo.de/politik/deutschl.../21204968.html

Germany's plans to increase the military expenditures also date back to Obama, here an article from shortly before the 2016 election:

http://www.dw.com/en/merkel-germany-...get/a-36054268

To reduce the problem to some one-dimensional "spend more money" is really silly when the army doesn't even use its entire budget because the industry just can't deliver and when the requirements for the gear are completely broken regarding its missions. Take the transport helicopters that can only land on very flat ground due to the low ground clearance or the Tiger that doesn't have a swivel gun and can barely hit the taliban with gun pods on the wings because we ordered a tank buster and wanted to save money on the gun.
Of course we could try to buy so many Tigers that they can fire so many gunpods that the bullet storm become inescapable, that would be one way to fix the issue...
And then maybe they can use the missiles to create a nice, flat glass parking lot for the transports to land on.

And besides, nobody forces the US to spend 4% of its GDP on defense, that is entirely their own choice to maintain force projection capabilities. If they can't defend us on a lower budget, maybe that would incentivize us to arm up by ourselves, but they want us to arm up to support their foreign adventures with more of our bullet sponges to make the adventures more palatable in the US.

We might just as well agree to a lower goal for all nations anyway.

http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs...elevant-target

According to that the British meet the 2% goal and I still heard lots of complaints about how they're ruining their navy.

And what exactly do we all need these large armies for anyway?