Source: reason.com - Thursday, May 25, 2017 At the NATO summit in Brussels today, President Trump reiterated a demand that NATO members increase their defense spending to counter threats presented by terrorism, immigration, Russia, and those on NATO's southern borders. The demand has lost some of its punch since Europe more or less called the President's bluff after Defense Secretary James Mattis first insisted American taxpayers could no longer "carry a disproportionate share of the defense of western values" in February. Trump told NATO leaders at the unveiling of the Article 5 and Berlin Wall memorials in Brussels "23 of the 28 member nations are still not paying what they should be paying and what they're supposed to be paying for their defense." NATO guidelines require members to spend 2 percent of their GDP on defense. "These grave security concerns," Trump said, "are the same reason that I have been very, very direct with [NATO] Secretary [Jens] Stoltenberg and members of the alliance in saying that NATO members must finally contribute their fair share and meet their financial obligations." NATO leaders re-iterated a promise at the NATO summit in 2014 in Wales to work over the next decade to meet the 2 percent guideline. At the time just the U.S. and Estonia met the target. Today, Poland, the United Kingdom, and Greece have been added. Poland and the Baltics countries have incentive to spend more on defense since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014 prompted the All Related
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