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by actionfromafar 402 days ago
...biggest pushers for European nations to rely on the US, to be precise. If that's no longer the objective, fine, but there's no need to rewrite history and call it "mooching". It was a strategic choice, to avoid a repeat of WWII.
2 comments
jack_h 402 days ago
Relationships change over the course of a century. The 2% GDP defense spending agreement came about during the Riga summit in 2006. So the objective did change twenty years ago and many member nations never abided by that agreement; much to the frustration of both Bush and Obama. What you're espousing is more of a history rewrite by assuming we have had a static relationship going back to the end of WW2 and that this defense spending agreement is newer than it actually is.
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actionfromafar 402 days ago
So the correct response to that is brownian motion in foreign affairs?
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Yeul 402 days ago
The Netherlands during the cold war had an entire tank division stationed in Germany waiting for the USSR to invade.

Where does this idea come from that Europe wasn't spending any money on defense?

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