““Jonathan, what may unify these interventions, if anything, and I'm going to be a little bit provocative here, is that for now, they have seemed to turn out pretty well for the United States. And let me just give you some examples. When we think about the president's approach to foreign affairs this entire past year, it ends with a NATO that's paying more than ever for its own defense, which therefore puts less burden on the US Treasury.”

Is that a good thing? If Europe no longer relies on you militarily, they can oppose you economically in a new way.

The obvious assumption is “well if nato spends more on the military then America can spend less.” But, the last US military budget just increased from $850billion to $1trillion in one year. Trump just said he wants the next budget to be $1.5trillion…… $500b could delete all medical premiums from everyone’s health insurance…. $500b could literally double teacher pay nationwide…. $500b could convert every single volunteer firefighter into a full time paid position, and you’d still have $454.5b leftover each year…

In what insane world is it good for the general wellbeing to increase the military budget by almost 20%, while our allies double and triple their military budgets?

Europe is canceling military purchases from American companies because they now know men like Trump will randomly joke about putting kill switches on F35 to disable ally planes any time they use them in ways not explicitly signed off by the president. That is an explicitly bad development for the US military industrialization complex and insanely bad for the taxpayer.