That is true but every country is supposed to spend 2% of GDP on defense, and only the US and 4 others actually do. How Trump handles this and talks about this is asinine, but there is a basis for it.

All countries in NATO have promised to spend 2% of GDP by 2024, yes.

But many NATO countries have had a decrease in military spending since 2006 when this agreement was signed and have shown no real intention to get up to this level. Now it's perfectly reasonable to say that this is fine and the 2006 agreement isn't that big of a deal. It's also very reasonable to say that good relations are more important than everyone meeting their goal and a clear commitment to Article 5 is essential. But sergiotapia's comment that countries should pay their fair share is also reasonable and ajross's response that NATO isn't a pool of money misses that point.

The are other contributions beyond simple military spending.

International development and accepting refugees, for example. These both help maintain peace.

With all due respect, that's missing the point. If you believe that NATO is a good thing and successfully deters aggression against its member states, Trump's near-abrogation of America's treaty commitments objectively did far, far more damage to that deterrence than Germany underfunding its army. Ergo, Trump's nonsense about "paying" and your defense thereof seems terribly insincere. Either you don't believe in NATO's mission, or you are confused about how it works.

I mean... what exactly are you arguing here?

To clarify, the NATO countries all agreed to spend 2% of GDP _by_ 2024.

And that's fine. Obama was making that case as well.

But this is international diplomacy here. You don't publicly berate and embarrass your allies especially when those countries were already on track to meeting the target.

European countries have no intentions to ever pay the 2%. For example the Belgian Government reiterated right after the G7 that it had no intention to meet that target and plans instead for 1.3% towards 2030. [1] I work in Brussels and I very often heard members of the European Commission / Parliament tell me how nice it was that the USA was paying for everything defence related.

[1] http://www.lavenir.net/cnt/dmf20170526_01010744/otan-on-ne-d...

Again, though, that's a completely insincere argument. If you are worried that NATO is being weakened and undermined by underfunded member militaries, the corrective course of action is to strengthen those militaries and very much not to announce to the world you might not necessarily honor your treaty obligations if they don't. That weakens it further.

Trump doesn't care what Belgium spends on defense. Trump is crapping on NATO because Trump (or one of his patrons, ahem) wants a weak NATO.

Disagree. I think Trump is saying, "You'd better be willing to pay for your own defense. If you won't, don't expect us to bail you out," precisely because Trump feels like NATO nations keep expecting America to pay for a strong military so that they don't have to. So he threatens them into a new mindset, where they have to beef up their military because they can't count on America riding in to their rescue any more.

You want to say it's going to backfire? Fine; you're quite likely right. You want to say it's risky? Shortsighted? Yes, and yes. But I don't buy that it's because Trump is in Putin's pocket.

That doesn't sound like disagreement to me. I didn't say anything about "pockets", just that the undeniably biggest benefactor from intra-NATO bitching like this is the nation that literally just invaded another in the region.

The US never gets paid here, so I'll saying it again: Trump is not trying to strengthen NATO here. He's trying to weaken it. You can decide for yourself why.

not all European countries

the UK, Estonia and Greece meet their obligations here, please don't lump us in with the freeloaders

The ironic thing is that a big part of what Made America Great in the first place was military protection of trading partners. Withdraw that protection and the trading partners now have less reason to give sweetheart trade deals.

The same point can even be made more cynical and still work: America's military dominance of its trading sphere led to a uniform perception of stability and thus to an environment where we could borrow essentially free money from the rest of the world. Take that stability away and the world desire for treasury bonds dries up, and suddenly it becomes harder to finance that huge military in the first place.

Basically, Trump is kicking over the house of cards as we watch.