The Potato and NATO.
As usual, when a controversy arises no one looks at the moon, and only the details are looked at. Of Patatone, who says he would invite the Russians to attack NATO, much attention is paid to "he would invite the Russians", but no one notices something bizarre: Patatone believes that the money from the famous 2% was money that "we had to pay to NATO ”, if not even to the USA.
Here now you will say "but he is wrong, because 2% is military spending, maybe one does everything at home and NATO doesn't get a penny". In fact, he's not wrong at all. It is absolutely known, in fact, that every treaty between us and the USA comes with a series of "tacit pacts". For example, that no American will ever end up in an Italian prison, whatever he does, is a tacit pact with Italy. Also the fact that Italy will send Carabinieri on any American mission, to compensate for the well-known inability of Americans to interface with non-Americans.
And there is actually an unspoken agreement regarding that two percent.
There is a tacit agreement that NATO countries must spend 2% of their GDP on American armaments. Not in simple American spending. In American weapons systems.
This serves to save a military industry like the American one, which is oversized, corrupt and useless.
You can see what I'm saying by asking yourself "but if tomorrow Germany spent 2% of its GDP on a military nuclear program, like the French one, would it be okay with it?". The answer is that "no", it wouldn't suit him: when some European countries were talking about acquiring atomic weapons, like Italy and Germany, the USA forced them to sign a non-proliferation treaty, in exchange giving atomic weapons to both Italy than Germany.
After all, now even third world countries are making the atomic bomb, so it would easily be within the reach of countries like Poland, Italy or Spain, but also Sweden or Holland. But no one is doing it.
Interesting.
After all, if you look at how Trump does the math when he mentions the numbers, he doesn't act as if European countries are under 2%; but ultimately not much. It acts as if they are at 0%. And this is due to the fact that spending on armaments is almost always internal, if not intra-European. And Trump is angry with Germany because since the Patriot days it has bought almost nothing and has made its own systems.
He doesn't have much resentment towards Italy, because in the end we sell them the F-35s.
That's simply the point. Trump is not saying anything strange: he is just making official something that everyone pretends not to know: the agreement is not to pay 2% in military spending, but to pay 2% in American-made systems.
In Trump's mind, Europeans must pay money to NATO, i.e. the USA. So, he says, if they don't pay, "they owe me a lot of money": to tell the truth, if we are under the agreed amount, at most we owe the money to our military industry.
It's really funny that the Italian press never feels obliged to talk about these "tacit" agreements. They exist and they are American style: it is not for nothing that Putin continues to say that there was a tacit pact with NATO not to advance towards the east. Obviously the US says “but who? we? mavala'?”.
The trend of US tacit pacts is certainly not unknown: there is no obvious treaty between the US and Saudi Arabia, or between the US and Israel. Yet, if you look a little, American military aid is pouring in.
The point is really simple: Donald is right. The agreement is to pay protection to the USA for the protection of NATO.
Otherwise if some bad guy sets fire to our shop, he won't defend us.