Monthly Archives: May 2017

President Trump's pressuring of NATO member states to pay their fair share for a common defense is "consistent" with the message delivered by past administrations, Secretary of Defense James Mattis told "Face the Nation" in an interview on Saturday.

In a speech this week at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Mr. Trump said he was "honored" to address an alliance that has "promoted safety and peace across the globe." But in the same speech, the president also criticized "23 of the 28 member nations" for not paying enough for their national defense.

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Associated Press reporter Ken Thomas breaks down President Trump's message to world leaders at the NATO summit in Brussels.

"This is not fair to the people and taxpayers of the United States," Mr. Trump said.

The president's emphasis on member states' financial contributions to the alliance, Mattis told "Face the Nation" host John Dickerson on Saturday, is in keeping with past administrations.

"Having been a NATO officer, under President Bush and President Obama, and then having been back there in Brussels representing the Department of Defense under President Trumpthis is a consistent message that we have given the NATO nations," said Mattis.

"They get the best defense in the world, the NATO countries, and we've all got to be willing to deal with it like a bank: if you want to take something out of it you've got to put something into it."

The secretary of defense said that presidents Bush and Obama sent similar messages to NATO members.

"So what President Trump is doing is consistent with both prior Republican and Democrat administrations. And the bottom line is that nations are spending more on defense now than they were five years ago or ten years ago."

For more of Dickerson's interview with the secretary of defense, tune into "Face the Nation" tomorrow. Check your local listings for airtimes.

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Mattis: Trump's message on NATO consistent with past presidents - CBS News

Gauthier Destenay, the husband of Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, was omitted on Saturday from the caption of an official White House photo of NATO spouses.

The White House corrected the caption amid backlash and accusations of homophobia on Facebook. Facebook's edit history makes it possible to see when and how a post was changed.

The photo pictures the spouses of 10 NATO leaders in Brussels and was part of a larger collection of photos from President Trump's first trip abroad as president.

Destenay and Bettel married in 2015, making Destenay the first same-sex spouse of a head of a European Union state.

Actor Kal Penn, who served as former President Obama's associate director in the White House Office of Public Engagement, responded to Destenay's initial omission on Twitter, pointing out that such photos and captions are "carefully planned" and are approved by senior White House staff.

Responding to a question about whether the omission could have been unintentional or "non-homophobic," Penn flatly stated, "Nope."

"Nope. These things are carefully planned & worded with purpose (& with White House senior staff sign off). Nice job @IvankaTrump!" Penn wrote on Twitter.

Nope. These things are carefully planned & worded with purpose (& with White House senior staff sign off). Nice job @IvankaTrump! https://t.co/UtERfly8VE

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White House neglects one name in photo of NATO spouses - The Hill (blog)

Republicans who served in previous administrations were taken aback by President Trump's approach to NATO, with a former National Intelligence director and a former GOP senator on Sunday expressing "disappointment" and warning the president "overplayed his hand" in meetings over the weekend.

John Negroponte, who served as the first Director of National Intelligence under President George W. Bush, criticized President Trump's meeting with NATO leaders, calling it a "disappointment."

"He didn't come out with an absolutely categorical commitment to the security of the NATO countries an attack on one is an attack on all under Article 5 of the NATO charter," Negroponte told radio host John Catsimatidis. "So I think that was a disappointment. It was to me. I'm sure it was to the Europeans."

Trump berated NATO leaders on Thursday, telling them that their countries would have to amp up defense spending to meet their obligations under NATO. The organization agreed in 2014 that each country should aim to spend two percent of its GDP on defense by 2024.

Trump has frequently argued that the U.S. is shouldering an unfair burden with NATO and, as a presidential candidate, called the alliance "obsolete," though he pivoted away from that position last month.

Nevertheless, in his speech to NATO leaders, Trump did not commit to the mutual defense principle the notion that an attack on one NATO ally is an attack on all.

"Stress the friendship, stress the relationship, stress the commitment to each other's security, but also make the point, which has been made over the years that everybody should pay their fair share," Negroponte said. "I think it was a question of emphasis and I think he got the emphasis wrong."

Former Sen. Al D'Amato (R-N.Y.), also speaking to Catsimatidis, was softer in his criticism of Trump's approach to NATO, but said that the president may have been too forthright in his pressure on treaty members.

"I don't know if the president should have been as public in his chastising of the NATO members. There's a way to do it," D'Amato told Catsimatidis. "It was pretty strong; I guess he feels strongly about it."

"And certainly they have to meet their financial obligations if we're going to maintain our presence, our strength and the billions of dollars we spend tens of billions of dollars annually supporting NATO."

He added, "The second part [of the trip] was not nearly as strong as it could have been It was almost too strong in terms of demands the President made. You can make those demands in private. You don't have to do it publicly. That just embarrasses people, and it gets people angry. I think he overplayed his hand."

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Former GOP officials criticize Trump's NATO approach - The Hill (blog)

TAORMINA, Italy U.S. National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster said on Saturday that "of course" President Donald Trump backed NATO's mutual defense doctrine, despite not making an explicit reference to it during a visit to Brussels this week.

Speaking at NATO headquarters earlier this week, Trump disappointed allies by not mentioning his support for Article 5, which states that an attack on one member of the alliance is viewed as an attack on all.

During his election campaign, Trump appeared to called Article 5 into question by suggesting that NATO members who did not pay their fair share for the alliance may not deserve to benefit from it.

"I think it's extraordinary that there would be an expectation that the president would have to say explicitly that he supports Article 5. Of course he does," McMaster told reporters at the end of a Group of Seven summit in Sicily.

"He did not make a decision not to say it," McMaster continued. "It was implicit in the speech. There was no decision to not put it in there. It is a matter of fact that the United States, the president, stands firmly behind our Article 5 commitments under NATO."

(Reporting by Noah Barkin; Editing by Crispian Balmer)

BEIJING Profits earned by Chinese industrial firms rose 14.0 percent in April from a year earlier, official data showed on Saturday, slowing from March's pace and adding to concerns that the world's second-largest economy may be losing steam.

BEIJING China is determined to open its market and is positive about promoting talks on a China-EU investment agreement, a senior Chinese official said on Saturday ahead of Premier Li Keqiang's visit to Brussels for a summit with the European Union.

NEW YORK U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission chief Jay Clayton is expected to name Steven Peikin, a partner from his former law firm, to help lead enforcement at the agency, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters.

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McMaster says 'of course' Trump supports NATO Article 5 - Reuters

One has to wonder who is briefing President Trump on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or how many briefers he has ignored when he gives a speech on the alliance and focuses on the fact that 23 of the 28 member nations are still not paying what they should be paying and what theyre supposed to be paying for their defense, and again treats a goal of spending 2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) on defense as debt, saying many of these nations owe massive amounts of money from past years and not paying in those past years. Over the last eight years, the United States spent more on defense than all other NATO countries combined.

A political spending goal is just that: an effort to exhort nations to do more. They dont build up a debt. It is also pointless and somewhat dishonest to talk about total U.S. defense spending as if it was all for NATO. Unlike most of our NATO allies, we have major global commitments, and our level of spending on NATO is only a fraction of our defense effort. Even so, our level of spending on defense is well under 4 percent of our GDP and roughly half the burden on our economy that it was during the Cold War.

We had two full corps in Germany with four divisions and two brigades, some 5,000 tanks, 940 armored infantry fighting vehicles, 1,600 artillery weapons, 120 surface-to-surface missiles, and a full Air Force with 264 combat aircraft. We had 279 more combat aircraft in the U.K., and well over 100 combat aircraft in other countries, as well as a massive naval presence in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean.

Today, the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) reports in its 2017 edition of The Military Balance that we have 40,500 military personnel in Germany. This is only 17 percent of the 1990 total, and only about 3 percent of a worldwide total of 1,381,250 which in turn is only 65 percent of the 1990 total.

The U.S. Army force in a united Germany only deploys one Special Forces Group, one cavalry Stryker brigade combat team (SBCT), one armored reconnaissance battalion, one artillery battalion, and one heavy combat aviation group. The USAF deployed one fighter wing with 24 F-16C/Ds. The role of U.S. Navy and Marine forces based in the Mediterranean region has also changed to the point where almost all activity is directed towards threats outside Europe.

This is scarcely a reason for the president not to assert the U.S. commitment to Article 5, which is the cornerstone of the NATO Charter. It states, The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognized by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.

And yet, Trump is also right when he says that, even 2 percent of GDP is insufficient to close the gaps in modernizing, readiness, and the size of forces. We have to make up for the many years lost. Two percent is the bare minimum for confronting todays very real and very vicious threats. He may even understate the problem. It would take many countries years if not forever to rebuild their forces to the level needed to provide a truly secure deterrent to Russia at 2 percent of their GDP.

The fact is that the 2 percent goal is meaningless in shaping an effective deterrent defense for NATO. It is merely an arbitrary goal set to try to keep European spending higher, just as calling for 20 percent of defense spending to be spent on procurement says nothing about what should be procured or what the Alliance really needs. A study by the Scowcroft Center at the Atlantic Council, entitled Alliance at Risk Strengthening European Defense in an Age of Turbulence and Competition makes this all too clear.

Germany, whose forces should be the core of the NATO alliance has seen its defense expenditures (in constant 2013 dollars) drop from $67.2 billion dollars in 1991 to $50.62 billion in 2000 and down to $42.87 billion in 2015. Defense expenditures have dropped from 2.2 percent of GDP in 1991 to 1.49 percent in 2000, and 1.11 percent in 2015. Its military personnel have dropped from 467,000 in 1991 to 321,000 in 2000 and later down to 181,207 in 2015. Its main battle tanks have dropped from 7,000 in 1991 to 2,815 in 2000 and then to 410 in 2015. Its combat aircraft have dropped from 638 in 1991 to 457 in 2000 and down to 237 in 2015.

France is only marginally better, even though its much closer to the 2 percent goal. The United Kingdoms expenditures are too low to sustain its force posture even though it spent 2.08 percent of its GDP in 2015. Poland is on the key front in deterring Russia, and spent 1.9 percent of its GDP in 2015, But active Polish military personnel dropped from 305,000 in 1991 to 217,290 in 2000 and 99,300 in 2015. Its main battle tanks dropped from 2,850 in 1991 to 1,704 in 2000 and only 926 in 2015. Combat aircraft dropped from 506 in 1991 to 267 in 2000 and then 113 in 2015.

What we need is a set of force planning goals that will ensure enough collective spending to create a truly effective level of deterrence, and guard the most exposed NATO states near the Russian border not vacuous goals like 2 percent of GDP and 20 percent of spending on procurement.

Anthony H. Cordesman holds the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.

The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.

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NATO is more than a GDP pledge it's about the safety of our world - The Hill (blog)

Exclusive: By dunning NATO nations to chip more money into the military alliance, President Trump may inadvertently cause some Europeans to rethink the over-the-top anti-Russian propaganda, says ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.

By Ray McGovern

President Donald Trumps politically incorrect behavior at the gathering of NATO leaders in Brussels on Thursday could, in its own circuitous way, spotlight an existential threat to the alliance.Yes, that threat is Russia, but not in the customary sense in which Westerners have been taught to fear the Russian bear.It is a Russia too clever to rise to the bait a Russia patient enough to wait for the Brussels bureaucrats and generals to fall of their own weight, pushed by financial exigencies in many NATO countries.

At that point it will become possible to see through the Wests alarmist propaganda. It will also become more difficult to stoke artificial fears that Russia, for reasons known only to NATO war planners and neoconservative pundits, will attack NATO. As long as Russian hardliners do not push President Vladimir Putin aside, Moscow will continue to reject its assigned role as bte noire.

First a request:Let me ask those of you who believe Russia is planning to invade Europe to put down the New York Times for a minute or two.Take a deep cleansing breath, and try to be open to the possibility that heightened tensions in Europe are, rather, largely a result of the ineluctable expansion of NATO eastward over the quarter-century since the Berlin Wall fell in 1989.

Actually, NATO has doubled in size, despite a U.S. quid-pro-quo promise in early 1990 to Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev in early 1990 not to expand NATO one inch to the east of Germany.The quid required of Russia was acquiescence to a reunited Germany within NATO and withdrawal of the 300,000-plus Russian troops stationed in East Germany.

The U.S. reneged on its quo side of the bargain as the NATO alliance added country after country east of Germany with eyes on even more while Russia was not strong enough to stop NATO expansion until February 2014 when, as it turned out, NATOs eyes finally proved too big for its stomach.A U.S.-led coup detat overthrew elected President Viktor Yanukovych and installed new, handpicked leaders in Kiev who favored NATO membership.That crossed Russias red line; it was determined and at that point able to react strongly, and it did.

These are the flat-facts, contrasting with the mainstream U.S. medias propaganda about Russian aggression. Sadly, readers of the New York Times know little to nothing of this recent history.

Todays Russian Challenge

The existential threat to NATO comprises a different kind of Russian threat, which owes much to the adroitness and sang froid of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who flat-out refuses to play his assigned role of a proper enemy despite the Western media campaign to paint him the devil incarnate.

Over time, even the most sophisticated propaganda wears thin, and more and more Europeans will realize that NATO, in its present form, is an unnecessary, vestigial organ already a quarter-century beyond its expiration date and that it can flare up painfully, like a diseased appendix.At a time when citizens of many NATO countries are finding it harder and harder to make ends meet, they will be reluctant to sink still more money into rehab for a vestigial organ.

That there are better uses for the money is already clear, and President Trumps badgering of NATO countries to contribute ever more for defense may well backfire. Some are already asking, Defense against what?Under the painful austerity that has been squeezing the Continent since the Wall Street crash nearly a decade ago, a critical mass of European citizens is likely to be able to distinguish reality from propaganda and perhaps much sooner than anyone anticipates.This might eventually empower the 99 percent, who dont stand to benefit from increased military spending to fight a phantom threat, to insist that NATO leaders stop funding a Cold War bureaucracy that has long since outlived its usefulness.

A military alliance normally dissolves when its raison detre the military threat it was created to confront dissolves.The Soviet Union dissolved in 1991 more than a quarter century ago and with it the Warsaw Pact that was established as the military counter to NATO.

Helpful History

NATOs first Secretary General, Lord Ismay, who had been Winston Churchills chief military assistant during World War II, stated that NATOs purpose was to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.But a lot can change over the course of almost seven decades.

The Russians relinquished their East European empire after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and withdrew their armed forces.There no longer needed to be a concerted priority effort to keep the Russians out, preoccupied as they were with fixing the economic and social mess they inherited when the USSR fell.

As for keeping the Germans down, it is not difficult to understand why the Russians, having lost 25 to 27 million in WWII, were a bit chary at the prospect of a reunited Germany.Moscows concern was allayed somewhat by putting this new Germany under NATO command, since this sharply lessened the chance the Germans would try to acquire nuclear weapons of their own.

But NATO became the defensive blob that kept growing and growing, partly because that is what bureaucracies do (unless prevented) and partly because it became a way for U.S. presidents to show their toughness. By early 2008, NATO had already added ten new members all of them many inches to the east of Germany: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.

There were rumors that Ukraine and Georgia were in queue for NATO membership, and Russian complaints were becoming louder and louder.NATO relations with Russia were going to hell in a hand basket and there was no sign the Washington policymakers gave a hoot.

A leading advocate from the Russo-phobic crowd was the late Zbigniew Brzezinski, who had been President Jimmy Carters national security adviser and remained in the forefront of those pressing for NATO expansion to include Ukraine.In 1998, he wrote, Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire.

The relentless expansion of NATO greatly bothered former Sen. Bill Bradley, a longtime expert on Russia and a sober-minded policy analyst. On Jan. 23, 2008, in a talk before the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, he sounded an almost disconsolate note, describing NATO expansion a terribly sad thing a blunder of monumental proportions.

We had won the Cold War and we kicked them [the Russians] when they were down; we expanded NATO.In the best of circumstances it was bureaucratic inertia in NATO people had to have a job.In the worst of circumstances it was certain irredentist East European types, who believe Russia will forever be the enemy and therefore we have to protect against the time when they might once again be aggressive, thereby creating a self-fulfilling prophesy.

As tensions with Russia heightened late last decade, Sen. Bradley added, Right now we are confronted with something that could have easily been avoided.

Finally Saying Nyet

A week after Bradleys lament, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called in U.S. Ambassador William Burns to read him the riot act.The subject line of Burnss CONFIDENTIAL cable #182 of Feb. 1, 2008, in which he reported Lavrovs remarks to Washington shows that Burns played it straight, choosing not to mince his own or Lavrovs words: Nyet means nyet: Russias NATO enlargement redlines.

Here what Ambassador Burns wrote in his summary, which the public knows because the cable was among the thousands leaked to WikiLeaks by Pvt. Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning, for which she was imprisoned for seven years and only recently released (yet the cable has been essentially ignored by the corporate U.S. news media):

Following a muted first reaction to Ukraines intent to seek a NATO Membership Action Plan at the Bucharest summit, Foreign Minister Lavrov and other senior officials have reiterated strong opposition, stressing that Russia would view further eastward expansion as a potential military threat. NATO enlargement, particularly to Ukraine, remains an emotional and neuralgic issue for Russia, but strategic policy considerations also underlie strong opposition to NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia.

In Ukraine, these include fears that the issue could potentially split the country in two, leading to violence or even, some claim, civil war, which would force Russia to decide whether to intervene. Additionally, the government of Russia and experts continue to claim that Ukrainian NATO membership would have a major impact on Russias defense industry, Russian-Ukrainian family connections, and bilateral relations generally.

So, it is not as though then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other U.S. policymakers were not warned, in very specific terms, of Russias redline on Ukrainian membership in NATO. Nevertheless, on April 3, 2008, the final declaration from at a NATO summit in Bucharest asserted: NATO welcomes Ukraines and Georgias Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO.

The Ukraine Coup

Six years later, on Feb. 22, 2014, the U.S.-pushed putsch in Ukraine, which George Friedman, then President of the think-tank STRATFOR, labeled the most blatant coup in history, put in power a fiercely anti-Russian regime eager to join the Western alliance.

Russias reaction was predictable actually, pretty much predicted by the Russians themselves.But for Western media and statesmen, the Ukrainian story begins on Feb. 23, 2014, when Putin and his advisers decided to move quickly to thwart NATOs designs on Ukraine and take back Crimea where Russias only warm-water naval base has been located since the days of Catherine the Great.

U.S. officials (and The New York Times) have made it a practice to white-out the coup detat in Kiev and to begin recent European history with Russias immediate reaction, thus the relentless presentation of these events as simply Russian aggression, as if Russia instigated the crisis, not the U.S.

A particularly blatant example of this came on June 30, 2016, when then U.S. Ambassador to NATO Douglas Lute spoke at a press briefing before the NATO summit in Warsaw:

Beginning in 2014 were moving into a new period in NATOs long history. So the first thing that happened in 2014 that marks this change is a newly aggressive, newly assertive Russia under Vladimir Putin. So in late February, early March of 2014, the seizing, the occupying of Crimea followed quickly by the illegal political annexation of Crimea. Well, any notion of strategic partnership came to an abrupt halt in the first months of 2014.

And so, for the nonce, Western propaganda captured the narrative.How long this distortion of history will continue is the question.The evolution of Europe as a whole (including Russia) over the past half-century, together with the profound changes that this evolution has brought, suggest that those of the European Establishment eager to inject life into the vestigial organ called NATO whether for lucrative profits from arms sales or cushy spots in NATOs far-flung bureaucracy are living on borrowed time.

President Trump can keep them off balance by creating uncertainty with respect to how Washington regards its nominal NATO obligation to risk war with Russia should some loose cannon in, say, Estonia, start a shooting match with the Russians. On balance, the uncertainty that Trump has injected may be a good thing. Similarly, to the degree that his pressure for increased defense spending belatedly leads to an objective estimate of the threat from Russia, that may be a good thing too.

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. A CIA analyst for 27 years, he specialized in Russian foreign policy. He led the CIAs Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and briefed the Presidents Daily Brief one-on-one during President Ronald Reagans first term.

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Europe May Finally Rethink NATO Costs - Consortium News