POLITICS & DONALD Annoying Orange MEGATHREAD

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Nonnel:
NATO's total budget is $2 billion, of which we pay ~20%. We could foot the whole thing and it wouldn't really matter. It's a drop in the bucket when you're considering $600 billion, (going on $700 billion now?) for military. We have more people than we need, we're buying more weapons than we need, and we're still paying to build nuclear missiles (as if we need any more than we have)
also from what i hear, there's a big disparity between the amount of money they commission and what they actually need

Cappytaino:

--- Quote from: Nonnel on January 15, 2018, 01:02:03 AM ---NATO's total budget is $2 billion, of which we pay ~20%.

--- End quote ---
And how many countries are in NATO exactly? This is unacceptable.

28 countries in NATO which would stand to benefit from the defense pact and only 5 of them pay the agreed-upon amount of 2% of GDP.

It's absolutely ridiculous that these countries are able to reap the benefits of membership without paying what they are obligated (and agreed) to pay.

--- Quote from: Foxscotch on January 15, 2018, 01:01:45 AM ---that would probably be more relevant if gdp was proportional to the need for military spending

--- End quote ---
It's entirely relevant because it's a fair method of comparative economic strength and military spending.

It's one thing to say "Oh but look at a country like Norway that only spends $6 billion annually on their military, why do we need to spend so much" and another to realize Norway has a GDP of 370 billion USD compared to 18.5 trillion USD for the United States.

Also Norway are NATO members not paying their dues, so their defense budget is being subsidized by those that do pay the dues picking up the slack.

Nonnel:
I'm sure NATO is as much of a strategic advantage to Iceland as it is to the United States.

Cappytaino:

--- Quote from: Nonnel on January 15, 2018, 01:10:43 AM ---I'm sure NATO is as much of a strategic advantage to Iceland as it is to the United States.

--- End quote ---
According to Iceland themselves, they're part of NATO in lieu of maintaining a standing army. Funny how even they admit that they're using NATO for protection while not paying the requisite dues.

Nonnel:
Looking into it, this chart is specifically about defense spending as a percentage of GDP (not money paid to keep NATO afloat,) so obviously Iceland is N/A since they don't have a standing army and we're spending more on military than we need to. So..

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