I hate that Trump said that, and I deeply hope he loses in November, but I must say I am glad that one of the outcomes of that idiocy appears to be that Europe is actually, truly starting to take its own strategic and military security seriously.
It has nothing to do with Trump. Even theoretically that can’t be the case European budgets haven’t suddenly changed in the last couple of days.
I agree with the article here that the increased spending has more to do with the Russian invasion. On the other hand Trump’s comments on NATO in 2016 were where we saw NATO sentiment explode as people saw supporting NATO as resisting Trump. It really was key to rehabilitating the image of NATO after Libya and Afghanistan.
I think it’s a little of both, to be honest. Eastern Europe was taking things seriously since last February. Most of the rest of Europe took a while to really get their heads in the right place. There’s still a lot of work to do, though.
