NATO plan to purchase US weapons is crumbling

On July 14, President Trump, seated next to NATO’s chief Mark Rutte, announced that the EU would pay for US weapons to be shipped to support Project Ukraine. The proposal was news to some EU leaders who had not previously been briefed on the plan. The proposal then morphed into a NATO purchase and again, not all NATO members were consulted. Macron quickly opted out on the grounds that France wanted to boost its own arms industry. Italy, Spain and the Czech Republic all refused to write checks for the weapons, citing “budget constraints” as the reason. That leaves Germany, UK, the Netherlands and the four Nordic countries. Financial scandals and a struggling economy in Britain, staunch opposition among younger Germans, the need to debate the plan in various parliaments (which could take months) and the absence of any concrete purchase plan all point toward the eventual collapse of Trump’s ill-conceived and vague initiative. Finally, leaving aside the question of whether the US even has enough of these weapons in the Pentagon’s pantry is the fact that increased defense spending in various European countries will come at the expense of social programs and even hyping the phony “Russian threat” will make this a tough sale. Note: NATO was founded on April 4, 1949 to resist socialist and national liberation struggles across the globe and serve as a tool of US and European imperialism, the 1 percent of the 1 percent. Hopefully, ordinary citizens in Europe will began taking the first steps toward its dissolution.