{"id":86990,"date":"2024-02-13T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-02-13T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=86990"},"modified":"2024-02-13T06:32:22","modified_gmt":"2024-02-13T12:32:22","slug":"pulling-the-weight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=86990","title":{"rendered":"Pulling The Weight"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Another campaign, another flap about Trump vs. NATO:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Trump still doesn&#39;t understand how NATO works, he still thinks allies &quot;owe money&quot; and he&#39;s sending a signal to Russia to attack them while the crowd cheers. An invitation to broaden the war. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/VUZUglr5kn\">https:\/\/t.co\/VUZUglr5kn<\/a><\/p>&mdash; Anne Applebaum (@anneapplebaum) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/anneapplebaum\/status\/1756603499490443601?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">February 11, 2024<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>On the one hand, Trump&#8217;s rhetoric about NATO is&#8230;not &#8220;reckless&#8221;, so much as annoying.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On the other hand?   At a policy level, Trump strenghened NATO &#8211; and his rhetorical, er, &#8220;unpredictability&#8221; seems to have caused America&#8217;s would-be enemies to sit out the aggression and wait for the US to change leadership to someone like, well, Obama and Biden.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But now, as in 2016, the NATO members complaining the hardest are the ones &#8211; like Germany &#8211; that didn&#8217;t get the <em>actual <\/em>message; <em>hold up you end of the damn deal<\/em>.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"492\" height=\"1024\" src=\"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/image-1-492x1024.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-86991\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/image-1-492x1024.png 492w, https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/image-1-144x300.png 144w, https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/image-1-768x1600.png 768w, https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/image-1-737x1536.png 737w, https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/image-1-983x2048.png 983w, https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/image-1.png 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 492px) 100vw, 492px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>To be fair, Gemany&#8217;s spending has risen by something like 30% &#8211; although th<em>e Bundeswehr<\/em> has thirty years of sloth to work off; the <em>Luftwaffe&#8217;s <\/em>fighter force at one point was 8% action-ready, the Army is a glorified Boy Scout troop that&#8217;s 1\/6 of its 1992 size, <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>(And don&#8217;t think we&#8217;re not looking at you, Canada, whose Navy is about as old and decrepit as, well, the US&#8217;s current leader).  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And then on the other hand there are the countries that didn&#8217;t need to get the message:  Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=&amp;cad=rja&amp;uact=8&amp;ved=2ahUKEwiI5MXWhaaEAxVQ6ckDHab4ATYQFnoECBsQAQ&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.politico.com%2Fmagazine%2Fstory%2F2018%2F07%2F10%2Fthey-will-die-in-tallinn-estonia-girds-for-war-with-russia-218965&amp;usg=AOvVaw0Thx4RlCk-pPE8EG-2bEax&amp;opi=89978449\">Estonia<\/a> and the other former &#8220;Warsaw Pact&#8221; nations.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Another campaign, another flap about Trump vs. NATO: On the one hand, Trump&#8217;s rhetoric about NATO is&#8230;not &#8220;reckless&#8221;, so much as annoying. On the other hand? At a policy level, Trump strenghened NATO &#8211; and his rhetorical, er, &#8220;unpredictability&#8221; seems to have caused America&#8217;s would-be enemies to sit out the aggression and wait for the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[367,368,131],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-trump","category-trump-derangement","category-war-and-peace"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=86990"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86990\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86992,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86990\/revisions\/86992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=86990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=86990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=86990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}