Germany - G20 meeting: Merkel Signals She’ll Snub Trump’s Demand to Spend More on Defense - by Arne Delfs

Chancellor Angela Merkel signaled that Germany will refuse U.S. demands to bring forward planned increases in defense spending, saying that extra outlays are already being made.

President Donald Trump, who has said that Germany “owes vast sums of money” to NATO, is due to travel to Europe later this month for a meeting in Brussels of North Atlantic Treaty Organization leaders, including the German chancellor.

Merkel, speaking in Berlin on Thursday after talks with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on the goals of the May 25 meeting, said the German government was committed to raising spending to 2 percent of gross domestic product by 2024 “and is working on it.”

“In past years we have shown that we have made increases, so I see no need for further provisions on May 25,” the chancellor said.

Germany increased its defense budget by 8 percent this year to about 37 billion euros ($40.1 billion), though it still falls far short of the 2 percent of GDP target. Merkel also argues that development aid should be taken into account as a security component.

In a tweet sent a day after hosting Merkel at the White House, Trump said the U.S. “must be paid more for the powerful, and very expensive, defense it provides to Germany!”

Note EU-Digest: this is another indication that Europe needs its own defense force with a different mandate and budget than that of the NATO. Europe should also not get involved in sending additional European Troops (as part of NATO) into the Afganistan "swamp", and a war there that has now been going on for 15 years - as is presently being discussed in the Pentagon.

Read more: Merkel Signals She’ll Snub Trump’s Demand to Spend More on Defense - Bloomberg

USA: Trump's obsession with 'all things big' could be dangerous: by Rosemary Westwood

Some questions, you’d think, shouldn’t need to be asked.

For instance, “Is America’s military big enough?”

And yet, the New York Times this week dutifully asked the question, since the president of the United States not only considered it — or perhaps, overheard it on conservative talk radio — and answered yes.

As it is, the U.S.’s $596 billion military budget is greater than the next seven countries combined, more than double China’s and roughly nine times Russia’s. Past presidents have beefed up military spending for actual wars. Donald Trump appears happy to beef up spending for imagined ones, or for posturing, or, perhaps, just to make the military bigger.

Enter his recently released “skinny” budget, which is, you understand, an old Washington term related to a lack of detail, and not, you understand, a reference to its lack of muscle. It’s very robust. Extra tough. Super strong(™).

The New Yorker dubbed it his “Voldemort” budget. Budget director Mick Mulvaney deemed it “compassionate.” And it would, among other things, defund Meals on Wheels, cut support for affordable housing in cities, shrink the Education Department’s budget, throw pretty much every federal arts program out the Air Force One window, and thrust an extra $54 billion towards military spending.

In the same breath, the White House is hoping to “compassionately” relieve 24 million Americans of their health care coverage under its proposed American Health Care Act.

Trump is not, it turns out, simply “doing everything he promised,” because that included making life better for many of his devoted voters, and, at one point, promising a health care plan that would cover every single American.

Instead, with now trademark-inconsistency, he’s coated a dovish American-First rhetoric around the exact opposite: a hyper-militarized vision of the country, complete with walls, and no doubt, if it was en vogue, a giant snaking moat.

Under Trump’s leadership, “Is America’s military big enough?” becomes a rhetorical question of the Tim-the-Toolman-Taylor variety, with the same mindless worship of size.

Trump is nothing if not obsessed with all things big.

He’s lied about the number of floors in Trump buildings, so they appear taller. He exaggerated the size of his electoral win, and then exaggerated his inauguration day crowd. “Big league” is a favourite phrase. His 2008 book was called “Think Big.” The London terror attack was “Big news” and the day before his health care bill faced a vote in the house of congress was a “Big day.”

He even wants to appear, physically, big. Since Trump took office, many have missed not only Barack Obama the man, but also his taste in suits, compared to Trump’s ‘80’s era shoulder pads tailoring reminiscent of a tent.

Perhaps Trump, as man, is so devoid of elegance because he has no concept of proportion (in suits, hairstyles, or otherwise). Slinging around outlandishly vulgar insults, stalking his election opponent Hillary Clinton around the debate stage, responding to critical media coverage by calling it “fake news,” and reportedly suing a San Francisco teenager for creating a website where you can make kittens punch Trump in the face: This is not a man well-acquainted with the concept of degree. And that is very bad news for America.

If Trump gets his way, and there are big cuts to health, education, arts, and programs supporting the elderly, disabled and poor, and a big old boost to military spending, something else is bound to be big: the damage.

Read more: Trump's obsession with 'all things big' could be dangerous: Westwood | Metro News

US Military Spending: US spends more on defense annually than the next 10 countries combined but Poll shows 37% believe that is not enough

The United States spends more on defense annually than the next 10 countries combined, but more voters than ever don’t think that’s enough.

Thirty-seven percent (37%) of Likely U.S. Voters believe the United States does not spend enough on the military and national security, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

That’s the highest level measured since tracking began in February 2011. Just 29% now say the United States spends too much money in this area, while nearly as many (27%) say it spends about the right amount. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Read more: 37% Believe U.S. Doesn’t Spend Enough on Military, National Security - Rasmussen Reports™

Americans ignorant as Europeans protest US wars

While Americans struggle to answer how long the US has been in Iraq or Afghanistan, how much money has been spent, and how many lives lost, Europeans feeling the cost of US wars at home take to the streets in protest. In the US, despite two combat missions costing thousands of lives, more than a trillion dollars, and nearly ten years, for many average Americans the realities of US wars aren't hitting home.

“I’m trying to think Afghanistan, Iraq, I don’t know if it’s over or still going," said Rene Moreno when interviewed on the street in Times Square, a California resident visiting New York.The details, for instance, how long the US has been fighting in Afghanistan aren't known.

Still polls show 62 percent of Americans are now against the war in Afghanistan. More prominent voices are rising up against the US military stance in the world. “We’re at the sundown as an imperialist power and we can’t have credit card imperialism, we can’t be the policeman of the world anymore because we can’t afford it, we’re going to have to cut defense dramatically," proclaimed David Stockman, former budget director for President Ronald Reagan, in an interview with ABC. While Bill Maher on his TV show "Real Time said: “We have an empire and over half a million of our troops in other people’s countries.”

This argument doesn’t appear to pass muster with lawmakers in Washington. But with hundreds of military bases spread over the world and more than half of the US discretionary budget spent on defense, amidst a sluggish economy and $13 trillion dollars of debt, increasingly critics see it coming at this price.

Discontent with US policies has now spread overseas where in Portugal thousands of protesters took to the streets during the NATO conference there to protest against US military bases, and against European defense spending on US wars .

For more: Americans ignorant as Europeans protest US wars — RT