U.S. President Donald Trump was correct to single out NATO members that aren’t pulling their weight, according to one Baltic nation that’s planning to eclipse the military alliance’s spending target in the coming years.
Reaching NATO’s expenditure goal of 2 percent of gross domestic product benefits the whole Western world by enhancing security, according to Lithuanian Defense Minister Raimundas Karoblis. The country of 3 million people plans to meet the threshold next year, and may push further, to 2.5 percent by 2020, he said in an interview in Vilnius, the capital.
“Mr. Trump was very right to send messages during the election campaign that Europe needs to invest more in defense,” Karoblis said Friday. “It’s really a wake-up call for all European Union member states.”
Trump’s rise has rattled U.S. allies from the Baltics to Ukraine, with both forced to watch on as the new American leader’s rapport with Russian President Vladimir Putin blossoms. The European Council agreed late last year that EU member states should comply with NATO’s defense-spending guidelines. Security has once again come to the fore amid a flare-up in eastern Ukraine between government troops and Kremlin-backed insurgents.
“The security situation doesn’t allow us to relax,” Karoblis said.
While Trump has called NATO “obsolete,” he now says he backs the alliance. “We strongly support NATO,” Trump said Monday at MacDill Air Force Base near Tampa, Florida. Even so, the U.S. “wants full and proper” contributions from NATO allies and many have been “not even close” in reaching the targets, he said.
Estonia, which -- like Lithuania -- shares a border with Russia, is already exceeding NATO spending guidelines. And it’s confident the U.S. will remain a reliable partner.
Questioning Commitment
“Obviously we’re not happy when there are rhetorical statements that could raise doubts about the commitment of Americans to meet their allied duties in case the Europeans aren’t contributing more,” Estonian Foreign Minister Sven Mikser said Monday in a television interview. “But I believe there are enough people in the new administration that have knowledge and experience about the needs and peculiarities of European security."
Estonia is allocating a record 481 million euros ($500 million), or 2.2 percent of GDP, on defense this year, excluding the cost of hosting troops from NATO allies. It will buy 12 self-propelled howitzers from South Korean Hanwha Techwin in coming years for about $100 million in a joint procurement with Finland, the Postimees newspaper said Tuesday, citing media reports from the Asian nation.
Karoblis said Lithuania’s defense needs are “really quite significant,” with tasks including developing infrastructure, increasing military staff and modernizing weapons. The Defense Ministry plans to open a centralized procurement agency early next year to boost efficiency. Equipment purchases swallow about a third of the military budget.
Aside from spending, other questions may arise over NATO functions, according to Karoblis. They could include efforts to boost the alliance’s counter-terrorism focus, he said.
“Instead of making doubts or worries of the U.S. administration, we need to work with Mr. Trump,” Karoblis said. “They also need allies.”
Keep these in mind as you contemplate the direction of the American government over the past 50 years and especially since the Obama election.
The Goals of Communism
(as read into the congressional record January 10, 1963, from "The Naked Communist" by Cleon Skousen)
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
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