{"id":177568,"date":"2019-08-15T20:40:00","date_gmt":"2019-08-16T01:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/08\/15\/there-is-a-briar-patch-metaphor-here\/"},"modified":"2019-08-15T20:40:00","modified_gmt":"2019-08-16T01:40:00","slug":"there-is-a-briar-patch-metaphor-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/08\/15\/there-is-a-briar-patch-metaphor-here\/","title":{"rendered":"There is a Briar Patch Metaphor Here"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The US ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, us <a href=\"https:\/\/www.defencetalk.com\/us-envoy-tells-germany-spend-more-on-defense-or-we-move-troops-to-poland-72456\/\">threatening to move US troop installations to Poland if Berlin does not increase defense spending<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>So, the US is saying that Germany would not have to deal with the noise from the jets, the tanks blocking streets when they deploy for war-games, and the other issues that arise from large deployments of foreign troops on their soil, because they would be just on the other side of the border and just as available for their defense needs.<\/p>\n<p>I do not claim to be an expert on the German zeitgeist, but you have to be pretty dense not to get this:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">An envoy of U.S. President Donald Trump suggested on Friday that Chancellor Angela Merkel\u2019s unwillingness to boost defense spending might give the United States no choice but to move American troops stationed in Germany to Poland.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The comments by Richard Grenell, the U.S. ambassador to Germany, signal Trump\u2019s impatience with Merkel\u2019s failure to raise defense spending to 2% of economic output as mandated by the NATO military alliance.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u201cIt is offensive to assume that the U.S. taxpayers continue to pay for more than 50,000 Americans in Germany but the Germans get to spend their [budget] surplus on domestic programs,\u201d Grenell told the dpa news agency.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Germany\u2019s fiscal plans foresee the defense budget of NATO\u2019s second-largest member rising to 1.37% of output next year before falling to 1.24% in 2023.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Eastern European countries like Poland and Latvia, fearful of Russia after it annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, have raised their military spending to the 2% target, drawing praise from Trump who wants Germany to do the same.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>No nation wants foreign troops on its soil, it&#8217;s a price that they are willing to pay for other benefits.<\/p>\n<p>The Trump administration just offered the benefits with none of the costs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The US ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, us threatening to move US troop installations to Poland if Berlin does not increase defense spending. So, the US is saying that Germany would not have to deal with the noise from the jets, the tanks blocking streets when they deploy for war-games, and the other issues that &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[371,588,394,379,410],"class_list":["post-177568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-europe","tag-fail","tag-foreign-relations","tag-military","tag-nato"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177568"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177568\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}