You were wrong already two years ago, as the following NATO-members (apart from the ones you already mentioned) where already at or over 2% then - Estonia, France, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro, Portugal, Romania, Turkey - and you'll be wrong in ten years time as well.
Virtually all European nations started increasing their defence spending after 2014, when Putin annexed Crimea and started the phoney "republics" in eastern Ukraine to try to destabilize that country.
My own country of Sweden - though not a member of NATO - did too. As did Finland.
We are well aware of our Russian neighbour and follows his actions, obviously.
But building an effective defence takes time and isn't just a question of spending money.
It would be easy for any nation to hit 2% any year - just buy a bunch of fighters or tanks and stack them in a warehouse somewhere - but that obviously wouldn't increase a country's actual defence capability.
Force has to be trained and bases has to be built - and that takes time.
So the process of increasing defence spending was already occurring when Trump showed up in 2017 and proceeded to kick in the open door, acting like a bully to all your NATO allies.
All, because even those countries that did spend 2% at the time he came into office were told that the alliance they had with the US wasn't really worth the paper it was written on, as Trump branded NATO as obsolete and vacillated on whether the US under him would actually honor its commitments under the treaty.
Because - as I've said - Trump is a MORON who thinks bullying others makes him look strong. And since he's a narcissist that's ALL he ever cares about - how HE looks and what others think of HIM, or how it can benefit HIM.
That it was incredibly damaging to the US and it's vital national security interest of keeping the NATO-alliance functioning well meant nothing to him - and it still doesn't.
And if voted into office again, he'll behave in the exact same way again.
Bullying, threatening the US enemies and allies alike, only based on his own ideas about how it makes HIM, personally, look - or if it will benefit HIM, personally.
That's why he withheld arms for Ukraine - approved by congress - in an attempt to extort their president Zelinsky into providing false dirt on Biden's son in an attempt to hurt his political opponent in the presidential election.
He used the presidency and hurt your country's national security interest to benefit HIMSELF, personally.
That's why he was impeached - the first time.
Virtually all American national security experts criticized him for acting like he did at the time - this is the first hit I got when I googled "national security experts on trump" just now - and these are only republican ones, willing to instead publicly endorse Biden before the last election:
0
@Dorsai
You were wrong already two years ago, as the following NATO-members (apart from the ones you already mentioned) where already at or over 2% then - Estonia, France, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro, Portugal, Romania, Turkey - and you'll be wrong in ten years time as well.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS
Virtually all European nations started increasing their defence spending after 2014, when Putin annexed Crimea and started the phoney "republics" in eastern Ukraine to try to destabilize that country.
My own country of Sweden - though not a member of NATO - did too. As did Finland.
We are well aware of our Russian neighbour and follows his actions, obviously.
But building an effective defence takes time and isn't just a question of spending money.
It would be easy for any nation to hit 2% any year - just buy a bunch of fighters or tanks and stack them in a warehouse somewhere - but that obviously wouldn't increase a country's actual defence capability.
Force has to be trained and bases has to be built - and that takes time.
So the process of increasing defence spending was already occurring when Trump showed up in 2017 and proceeded to kick in the open door, acting like a bully to all your NATO allies.
All, because even those countries that did spend 2% at the time he came into office were told that the alliance they had with the US wasn't really worth the paper it was written on, as Trump branded NATO as obsolete and vacillated on whether the US under him would actually honor its commitments under the treaty.
Because - as I've said - Trump is a MORON who thinks bullying others makes him look strong. And since he's a narcissist that's ALL he ever cares about - how HE looks and what others think of HIM, or how it can benefit HIM.
That it was incredibly damaging to the US and it's vital national security interest of keeping the NATO-alliance functioning well meant nothing to him - and it still doesn't.
And if voted into office again, he'll behave in the exact same way again.
Bullying, threatening the US enemies and allies alike, only based on his own ideas about how it makes HIM, personally, look - or if it will benefit HIM, personally.
That's why he withheld arms for Ukraine - approved by congress - in an attempt to extort their president Zelinsky into providing false dirt on Biden's son in an attempt to hurt his political opponent in the presidential election.
He used the presidency and hurt your country's national security interest to benefit HIMSELF, personally.
That's why he was impeached - the first time.
Virtually all American national security experts criticized him for acting like he did at the time - this is the first hit I got when I googled "national security experts on trump" just now - and these are only republican ones, willing to instead publicly endorse Biden before the last election:
https://www.defendingdemocracytogether.org/national-security/
But hey, oppositon to Trump was really all about "mean tweets" - right?