"as secretary general calls him ‘daddy’" Jesus, Ratte give it a rest
this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2025
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Trump praises Nato states as summit prepares to lift defence spending target
(www.theguardian.com)
It's not something to be proud of, that's obvious.
But Rutte was not made secretary-general because of his personal pride. I wasn't happy to have him as prime minister, at all, for all those years, but he is very good at one thing: getting everyone in the room to agree and making everyone in the room feel heard.
This is how you get Trump to be enthusiastic about your project. He is using Trump's ego to get him om board with NATO. This is top-tier manipulation, and it's working!
Rutte is the perfect man for this job, and this is exactly why. No pride, no ego, just doing whatever it takes to keep the unity in NATO and to ensure we are strong enough to deter Russia.
There's no appeasing a bully. He'll come back for more if you give in. And now it seems whatever moronic idea born from his late night twitter mental diarrhea festivals, Ratte is gone eat up. Still, not surprising at all, Ratte was always a rat and a hypocrite
I don't think this is appeasing a bully, this is actually giving him very little. Appeasement would have involved actually giving him something. The increase to 3.5% is back to around cold war levels, which seems very appropriate for the current geopolitical situation. The final 1.5% is essentially an accounting trick to make whatever expenses you like count towards the 5%, like road maintenance or technological R&D, it would be hard not to reach this target. Plus this money can now be increasingly spent on Europe's own companies instead of sending 1-2% of yearly GDP straight to the US economy, especially once economies of scale start picking up.
This is just what Europe was planning to do on its own, but framing it in a way that strokes Trump's ego and lets him claim it as his victory. Especially after a few years this will not be a positive change for the US. I'll happily sacrifice Rutte's pride if it means Europe gets exactly what it wanted.
5% is Insanity. That's right now 50% of the German State Budget.
Have they all gone stupid?
It’s actually not the worst idea, 5% is a lot, way more than needed, but it’s pretty decent to play catch up.
EU states are pretty far behind with their militaries, pumping it to 5% for a few years and dropping it back to 2-3% when we’re caught up with other superpowers seems like a good idea.
Which other super powers are going to attack us??
We will never spend enough to defend against USA, and China is not going invade us first.
And Russia just proved that it is a laughing stock that can't even conquer Ukraine with conventional weapons.
And surprise: against nuclear weapons everything is useless. And France and UK still have them themselves.
I'm all for modernising our armies, especially the German one. But that doesn't need more money thrown into the fire, but a big change on organisational structure.
And half our tax income that goes away? That is money away from school, poor people, everyone! Except the owners of military industrial companies.
Russia has the support of China, otherwise they would’ve lost already, so the answer to your question is china via russia. Because we are competitors, it makes sense for them to have russia bleed us economically.
Why is that insane?
No one says you can't also raise the state budget in general. No one says you can't make new debts to pay for it.
Neoliberals have simply manufactured too much consent to normalize austerity and demonize deficit spending.
Where should the 200-300 billion for Germany for example come from? Don't say debt, because that is not answering the question since it is not sustainable.
Debt is sustainable as long as it doesn't outpace GDP growth. Debt is how the world has run since global markets and capitalism. Only since the rise of neoliberalism have debts been cursed and politicians would rather let their countries stagnate with a lack of investments.
If you really want more income, you can always squeeze the super rich and multi-national corporations. And prevent them from leaving the country with draconic punishments. One thing that China does well in that regard is that any billionaire who does not follow, will be disappeared. That is the only way to treat those thieves.
As if you need more evidence that rutte is on washington's payroll
It costs nothing* to kiss some ass, it buys the US nothing, and yet it can get Trump (and thus the US) to support you. To do anything else would be irresponsible, TBH.
*Not even your pride, in this case, because everyone can see that Trump is the baby for needing it, and everyone knows you don't need to mean it.
Yeah, but I dont think we should trust anything trump says