https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=195&v=eMLNvThfqcg
AARON MATE: It’s The Real
News. I’m Aaron Mate.
Heading into this week’s NATO
summit, the prevailing fear among prominent U.S. media and political figures
was that President Trump could possibly destroy the decades-old military
alliance. But Trump went in a different direction. He ended the summit Thursday
claiming he has gotten NATO members to agree to a longtime U.S. demand: that
they spend more on their militaries.
DONALD TRUMP: Tremendous
progress has been made. Everyone’s agreed to substantially up their commitment.
They’re going to up it at at levels that they’ve never thought of before. Prior
to last year where I attended my first meeting, it was going down; the amount
of money being spent by countries was going down, and down very substantially.
And now it’s going up very substantially, and commitments were made. Only five
of 29 countries were making their commitment, and that’s now changed. The
commitment was at 2 percent. Ultimately that will be going up quite a bit
higher than that.
AARON MATE: Now, some
NATO members are already disputing Trump’s claim that they’ve committed more.
But regardless, lost in the anxiety over Trump’s commitment to NATO is whether
or not this military spending he’s bragging about would be a positive thing,
and how that money could be spent otherwise.
Well, joining me to discuss is
Bill Hartung, director of the Arms Security Project at the Center for
International Policy. Welcome, Bill. If we could start just by your thoughts on
this question of does NATO need to be spending so much money on the military,
as President Trump claims?
WILLIAM HARTUNG: Yeah. As
usual, Trump’s numbers are all off. But as you said, the real question is: does
NATO need to spend more? And the answer is a resounding no.
If you look at the Stockholm
Peace Research Institute stats, NATO’s spent $900 a year to about $66 billion
by Russia. And even if you take out the United States, the top four European
spenders outspend Russia two to one. So if it’s about money plenty, there’s of
money sloshing around in NATO. There’s no need to increase it.
But even beyond that, we’re
not in the Cold War anymore. It’s not an issue of blocking Soviet tanks coming
across the border, or having, you know, aerial dogfights, or so in the sense
that there’s competition, it’s a political; perhaps there’s some cyber issues.
Nothing to justify a huge increase in military expenditure. And if Trump wants
to save money, what he really needs to do is end the U.S. wars around the
world, because that’s where the money is going. If that’s his concern, it’s not
about getting NATO to spend more; it’s about the United States spending less on
this global militarized foreign policy.
AARON MATE: In terms of
Russia, just to throw out some more figures, the recent Pentagon budget that
was pushed through Congress, the, its increase from last year is more than the
total Russian military budget combined. Right? And Russia, meanwhile, has been
reducing its military spending in recent years, if I have that correct.
WILLIAM HARTUNG: Yes,
that is correct. I mean, there’s questions that can be debated about Russia’s
role in Ukraine, and its connections with right-wing parties in Europe, and so
forth. But as I said, if there was a spending race, Russia is far behind. It
doesn’t even seem to be trying to compete. So you could pour all that money
into Europe. It would probably mean more purchases of U.S. weapons, like the
F-35. It would probably mean that Russia, perhaps, would decide to increase its
spending, or spend more on nuclear missiles, or otherwise respond to what it
might perceive as a new threat. But it certainly wouldn’t make anybody safer.
AARON MATE: In terms of
the U.S. spending on the military, as I mentioned, the latest budget was an
increase over last year. What are some of the things that we could be doing
with that money instead?
WILLIAM HARTUNG: Well,
just the increase alone from 2017 to the new proposed budget this year, that
would be enough to buy two whole State Departments. So you could double the
budget of the State Department. You’d still have $40 billion left over to
invest in nutrition, and transit, and cultural programs. If you cut it by a
third, you could meet all of the infrastructure needs that America. Transit,
roads, alternative energy over the next 10 years. So it’s a huge amount of
money that’s being wasted. And you know, people forget that Donald Trump
claimed he was going to be the infrastructure president. He’s put no money into
that. He hasn’t fought for it. His infrastructure program basically is pumping
up the Pentagon, which is the least effective way to build your economy.
AARON MATE: So in terms
of spending money on weapons, President Trump is in Britain right now, meeting
with Prime Minister Theresa May. After he leaves next week there’s going to be
a military trade show called The Farm Bureau air show in the UK, and Trump is
sending not defense officials, as far as I understand, but actually his top
trade official. And I’m wondering your thoughts on the significance of that.
WILLIAM HARTUNG: Well
usually there’s at least a little bit of cover for the fact that they used
these trade shows as an attempt to sell U.S. weaponry. There’ll be some defense
officials, there’ll be some discussions with foreign militaries. Buy Trump’s
sending Peter Navarro, who’s his trade adviser, who’s behind all the different
economic policies, including the tariff policies. And so that’s just a signal
to say we’re only about selling. And that’s what we’re here to do. And
security, other issues related we’re not really interested in. I think that’s
the main signal that is sent. And of course at the NATO meeting, as he always
does, Trump was bragging about the superiority of U.S. weapons. He talked about
arms sales when he met with the Saudi crown prince in the White House. He
talked about it when he visited Japan. So among other things, Trump is
America’s number one arms salesman.
And so sending Navarro, I
think, is part and parcel of that. But it means that there’ll be very little
discussion of any kind of broader issues of security, or even economic policy.
It’s going to be sell sell sell.
AARON MATE: OK. So
speaking of economic policy and sell sell sell, at the same time as he is
trying to ramp up U.S. military sales around the world, he is engaged in this
trade war; imposing tariffs on many countries, including key U.S. allies who he
wants to sell weapons to. Is there a major contradiction there?
WILLIAM HARTUNG: Yes. I
think he, if you’re going to insult countries and undercut their economies,
it’s going to be harder for them to turn around and buy your weapons systems.
Or anything else, for that matter. And we’ve seen on a small scale what’s
happened here before this round of tariffs. There was a dispute with Canada
over sales of civil aircraft, and they tried to slap big tariffs on Bombardier
planes. Canada turned around and canceled a $5 billion purchase of U.S. F-18
combat aircraft. So you may see more of that as this trade war escalates. You
know, U.S. companies put a lot of money into building these weapons. They’re
also related to building defense relationships with the United States. So it’s
going to be a tension in the policy. In some cases it may diminish Trump’s
ability to sell arms. In other cases the deals may go through. I mean,
certainly places like Saudi Arabia are going to still buy in huge amounts, as
the United States backs them in their brutal war in Yemen.
AARON MATE: Bill Hartung,
director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International
Policy. Thank You.
WILLIAM HARTUNG: Thank
you.
AARON MATE: And thank you
for joining us on The Real News.
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