{"id":59716,"date":"2016-07-25T05:00:22","date_gmt":"2016-07-25T10:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=59716"},"modified":"2016-07-24T22:18:29","modified_gmt":"2016-07-25T03:18:29","slug":"pay-your-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=59716","title":{"rendered":"Pay Your Way"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Donald Trump said if he is elected President and NATO is attacked, the United States would <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/world\/national-security\/trump-says-us-wont-rush-to-defend-nato-countries-if-they-dont-spend-more-on-military\/2016\/07\/21\/76c48430-4f51-11e6-a7d8-13d06b37f256_story.html\"><span class=\"s2\">defend the countries that are doing their share<\/span><\/a> to defend themselves.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Liberals and Neo-Cons are aghast.\u00a0 What?\u00a0 Expect European nations to pay their fair share of their own defense?\u00a0 Outrageous.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"s1\">Except that was the original deal, as explained in this article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/2016\/07\/21\/trumps-isolationism-shows-why-britain-is-right-to-renew-trident\/\"><span class=\"s2\">from the London Telegraph<\/span><\/a>, and shown in the helpful chart.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p class=\"p1\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" src=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/content\/dam\/news\/2016\/07\/21\/NATO_spending_resized-large_trans++Az3ogyoD1YDpdxYGZ0Xf4vG3OKYTeFSo_ZoY0DpvP4I.JPG\" width=\"712\" height=\"445\" \/><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"> Notice who\u2019s NOT paying their way?\u00a0 France. \u00a0Norway.\u00a0 Germany.\u00a0 Denmark.\u00a0 Countries that could afford to pay, but choose not to pay so they have lots of money to spend on freebies for citizens.\u00a0 Free riders can indulge in risky behavior knowing the United States is standing ready to bail them out of any fights they pick.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"s1\">It\u2019s bad policy to let your \u201callies\u201d stiff you and even worse to provide them with a moral hazard that all too easily ends up as: \u201cLet\u2019s you and him fight.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"s1\">Trump is exactly right: a deal is a deal.\u00a0 If you don\u2019t hold up your end of the deal by paying your share, we have no obligation to hold up our end of the deal by running to your aid.\u00a0 Does that mean we pull out of NATO entirely and hand the continent over to Putin?\u00a0 Probably not, in the end.\u00a0 But there\u2019s no harm in reminding deadbeats they need to clean up their past due bill if they want to receive future credit.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"s1\">Joe Doakes<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p class=\"p1\">One notes that Trump in particular singled out the Baltic states &#8211; who have been increasing their defense spending at an emergency pace; they, along with the Poles (whose spending is near NATO&#8217;s guideline, and whose military shows it), remember Russian rule in particular.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: Donald Trump said if he is elected President and NATO is attacked, the United States would defend the countries that are doing their share to defend themselves.\u00a0 \u00a0 Liberals and Neo-Cons are aghast.\u00a0 What?\u00a0 Expect European nations to pay their fair share of their own defense?\u00a0 Outrageous. \u00a0Except that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=59716"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59716\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59717,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59716\/revisions\/59717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}