re: I would be in favor of Trump pulling us out of NATO. What are your thoughts?

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This is the way

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That way makes no sense, because outside of maintaining offices, there is no NATO "contribution". Each nation pays for its own military. Reducing our defense funding to the lowest member spending on its own military would be a disaster.

absolutely, get us out of NATO and the UN as well

Burn it to they ground - all of it

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Hell yes. NATO only exists to create conflict and tension. It does nobody any good.

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It stopped the expansion of communism in Europe. NATO guaranteed peace in Europe which prevented a 3rd world war in the 20th century. But now that we have an aggressive China and Russia on the world stage you want to disband it. You do realize that when the US-China war eventually comes we will need all the allies we can get, don't you?

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Not right now. Keep that arrow in the quiver.

The people are behind figuring out government waste. He needs to stay on this track. His popularity is high and that is keeping the RINOs in line. If his popularity takes a nose-dive, we could see RINO defections that keep him from getting through his legislative agenda.

If the Democrats and RINOs think they have a case for impeaching Trump because he has overstepped his bounds, they will. He's gonna need to keep the RINOs in line. Right now, the Democrats don't know what to attack him on.

Dropping out of NATO is not going to be popular - either with the Europeans or the American People. It is going to take some finesse.

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i have long been of the opinion we should .....but i agree...now is not the time at all.

prolly not in the trump term.

now UN...maybe but it is going to take longer than 4 years to accomplish our overall goals so we need to continue to do popular things and advertise the frick out of it. Lowest hanging fruit type thing

in the mean time...tariff nations that dont put in their share and advertise it as......these people want your sons and daughters to die protecting them and are not willing to pay their share...you tug at the heart strings of americans to get them on your side

eventually...frick yes we leave nato. frick nato. frick europe...but now isnt that time.

i also think there needs to be stipulations that they all need to have same aircraft....example f35 and all need the same tank i.e. abrams and all need same guns etc to boister our military sales. all of europe should be buying from us...or we are out.

atleast get something out of it

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He can however cut US funding and we can watch it crumble into oblivion.

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Direct U.S. funding for NATO as an organization is effectively peanuts (about $600M this year). We contribute about a sixth of the overall operating budget of $4.0B - Germany matches us dollar for dollar.

It's basically a rounding error in our defense spending.

Now, if you are talking strategic realignment where we remove American units full stop from places like Vicenza (where the 173rd Airborne is based), Aviano (31st Fighter Wing), and Sigonella (from where 6th Fleet is supported) in Italy, Baumholder, Grafenwoehr, Vilseck (2nd Cavalry), and Rammstein in Germany, Lakenheath (35th Fighter Wing and many drones) and nuclear submarine support in Faslane in Britain (among many others), Kosciuszko in Poland, so on and so on, then that is a different conversation.

Those are American units supporting American priorities and strategy. You could either bring those back to the States, and we will no longer have forward-deployed capabilities to do anything of importance (even special operations or air and drone strikes) in places like Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. And you are still paying for them. Or you could cut them out of the military completely and lose a fairly sizable chunk of hard combat power.

We also already did an exercise like this after the end of the Cold War (it was called BRAC - look it up). It ended up saving something on the order of $5 - 10B a year. Not meaningless, but certainly not significant.

Yes, but only after they pull out of the UN.

Under some circumstances, yes.

I’d like to see Trump rearrange the Western alliance to include Europe, Eastern Europe, Russia, Japan, a South/Central American block, Australia, S Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Canada, The United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and a few others.

You’d keep NATO but it would be realigned to face China, Iran, N Korea and specifically any Marxist nations. It would have some core values that member nations would abide by, but they could be mildly authoritarian.

Protection of intellectual property would be one, fair trade amongst members would be another, opposition to Marxism would be a third.