More on NATO Slackers

Poland's former Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, Jacek Rostowski, writes that NATO members should take the Trump threat seriously and spend as much on defense as the treaty obligates them to do, a minimum of 2% of GDP. His article appears at the Project Syndicate website.

We have argued as far back as May that NATO members need to live up to their treaty obligations and stop free-riding on U.S. defense expenditures. In July, Trump said something of the sort and the left went nuts ... their usual reaction to his pronouncements.

My only argument with Rostowski is that he writes the following:

Trump is right about one thing: NATO allies should pull their weight. But that message should be sent to Germany, not Estonia. The US should tell Germany – in the same no-nonsense terms that Germany used with Greece – that it cannot defer to the US for its security while undermining Western unity to protect its taxpayers from possible intra-eurozone liabilities.

Actually, Trump has no argument with Estonia as it is one of five NATO members spending at least 2% of GDP on defense. Latvia and Lithuania, on the other hand, do not and should.

Germany definitely should get serious about defense, even if it does make the rest of the EU nervous. Memories of Germany's role in two World Wars are still relatively fresh.