At the NATO summit in The Hague, European nations agreed to increase military spending to 5% of GDP, responding to President Trump's demands linked to U.S. support. Trump asserted that the U.S. would not defend NATO allies unless they met this spending benchmark. Richard Seymour commented that Trump's approach reflects a transactional style of politics and a strategic management of what he describes as 'imperial decline.' Meanwhile, Spain pushed back against this goal, deeming it unreasonable, illustrating tensions within NATO over military expenditures.
Trump wants to move towards a much, much more instrumental and crudely material, transactional politics. I think this is a version of imperial decline that Trump is trying to manage.
I've been asking them to go up to 5% for a number of years, and they're going up to 5%. That's a big - from 2%. And a lot of people didn't even pay the 2%.
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