Even as Donald Trump was making his most strident complaints about NATO allies spending too little on defence, some member nations — Canada, the Netherlands and Germany, in particular — seemed largely unmoved by the now-former U.S. president’s broadsides.
Over the past two weeks, Russia’s war on Ukraine — with all of its brutality and capricious destruction — seems to have succeeded where Trump and his predecessor Barack Obama failed.
At the best of times, debates about defence spending as a percentage of gross domestic product are sterile affairs that engage accountants, statisticians and those interested in the military — and almost no one else.
