Max Boot: ‘A Lot of Europeans Are Concerned that Trump Wants to Kill the Alliance’

EXCERPT:

BOOT: "Donald Trump has various excuses for why he’s attacking the Europeans. But I think we really need to see these as excuses. He complains, for example, about the Nord Stream 2, pipeline which is a legitimate issue but he’s not doing it in a constructive way to talk about how do we change the energy delivery to Europe. He’s doing it as a way to bash Germany, just as he does with complaints about the defense budget and their spending, which gives the impression the Europeans aren’t spending anything on defense, whereas in fact they have, about $250 billion in spending. They have about 2 million troops under arms. We, the United States has about 60,000 troops in -- in Europe. So it’s not as if the cases that we’re doing all the defense and they’re not defending themselves at all. He never acknowledges the contributions they make in places like Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. He just seems to be using these issues as an excuse to destabilize the alliance and I think a lot of Europeans are concerned that he wants to kill the alliance."