Germany spends just 1.24% of its GDP on defence
did not mince his words. “We cannot continue to pay for the military protection of Europe while thestates are not paying their fair share and living off the fat of the land. We have been very generous to Europe and it is now time for us to look out for ourselves.” A tweet from Donald Trump? In fact the words were John F. Kennedy’s, speaking to his National Security Council in 1963.
“You should note that Vladimir Putin sees that increase,” says Mr Pompeo. But he also stresses that “there remains tremendous work to be done.” It is not even clear that Mr Trump will be satisfied with 2%. At the Brussels summit last year he caused a stir by mentioning a figure of 4% of. Whatever the aim, it is the big countries that count, and several of these fall woefully short of 2%, including Canada, Italy and Spain . But the most notable laggard is Germany, which has the largest economy.
Despite Russia’s deployment in Kaliningrad of nuclear-capable missiles that can reach Berlin in less than five minutes, Germans do not seem to feel unduly threatened. As Jan Techau of the German Marshall Fund in Berlin puts it: “We have exactly the kind of armed forces we want: basically unusable.”
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