Virus
Price for NATO Racket
By Finian
Cunningham
March
28, 2020 "Information
Clearing House"
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In a White
House briefing this week on the coronavirus
pandemic, President Trump went off script – as
usual – to rant about NATO allies “not spending
enough” on military budgets and “playing games”
with the US over defence.
Trump
complained: “They’re all playing games against
us. They've been playing games against us for
years.”
It’s hard
to know what prompted Trump to dredge up this
bugbear. It appears to be related to his
questionable notion that European countries are
not buying more medical equipment from the US.
Trump routinely complains that the European
Union is taking advantage of the US in matters
of trade, or by being overly reliant on America
for military defence.
However, just why Trump should go on a rant
about NATO at this precise moment seems
decidedly insensitive. Europe has become the
global epicentre for the coronavirus pandemic.
Italy and Spain have the highest death tolls
worldwide, with nearly 7,000 and 3,500
fatalities, respectively.
There
are genuine fears that the death rates across
Europe will accelerate in the coming weeks and
months due to public health services being
overwhelmed.
The
spectre of the deadly virus is haunting the US
too. World Health Organization officials predict
that America will become the new epicentre
following Europe’s outbreak. Potentially, the
death toll in the US could run into the
millions.
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Trump’s
insensitive comments about NATO allies show a
lamentable lack of international solidarity.
They also betray a damning indictment of this
president’s role in boosting military spending
by European NATO members – an expenditure that
is not only wasteful but which has left these
countries vulnerable to the present public
health crisis.
What the
coronavirus and its Covid-19 disease have exposed is
the reprehensible underfunding of public health
services by Western states. The lack of hospital
equipment such as ventilators and protective gear
for medical workers is greatly exacerbating the
spread of the disease and the death toll.
Spain is
reportedly now spending €430 million ($470m) to
obtain medical equipment from China in a desperate
attempt to contain a runaway epidemic. Many other
countries are in the same predicament. Trying to
hastily increase medical facilities and personnel
levels which have been let deteriorate over years
from chronic underfunding.
(The US is
no better, if not in a worse state of public health
service neglect. New York City needs 30,000
ventilators to treat virus patients but only has
7,000 machines.)
In this
context, it’s far from tangential to point out that
Spain, Italy and other European countries have been
splurging billions of dollars more every year on
military procurement in recent times. That is
because of Trump’s hectoring of America’s allies to
spend more on NATO. A lot of that extra money
actually ends up propping up the US
military-industrial complex in the form of purchases
of warplanes and missile systems.
Trump wants
– and boasts about it too – European NATO members to
spend an extra $400 billion on the military by the
year 2024. His regular shaming of them for allegedly
“taking advantage” of the US for defence is part of
this extortionate shakedown.
Spain and
Italy, for example, increased their military budgets
by 13.7 and 5.1 per cent from 2017 to 2018. That
works out at a total spend by Spain of $18.25
billion on its military in 2018. For Italy, the
figure was $27.8bn.
The same
pattern of a spike in military spending is seen for
other European states – all in response to Trump’s
boorish demands for these nations to increase “NATO
commitments”, which is a euphemism for subsidizing
America’s military-industrial complex.
The fact
that European nations have meekly acquiesced to
Trump’s bullying speaks of the servile nature of
their governments towards Washington.
Just think:
if Spain, Italy or any other European nation had
invested the billions of dollars they wasted on the
military to rather instead improve their public
health services then the current coronavirus crisis
would in all probability not be a crisis. It would
be contained by a capacious and well-funded public
health system.
That is why
Trump’s bilious attacks on European so-called allies
is so sickening. He is not only kicking them when
they are down. They are down in large measure
because of Trump’s bullying and racketeering over
obscenely wasteful military spending on NATO. How
bitterly ironic too. Spending excess billions on
security and defence has left Europe (and America)
completely wide open to attack and disaster.
Finian Cunningham
has written extensively on international affairs,
with articles published in several languages. He is
a Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and
worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society
of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a
career in newspaper journalism. He is also a
musician and songwriter. For nearly 20 years, he
worked as an editor and writer in major news media
organisations, including The Mirror, Irish Times and
Independent. "Source"
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