AT a Brussels summit all 29 members of NATO have just reaffirmed their commitment to the military alliance. But despite this pledge, what they have still not done is to pay for it. The United States picks up the biggest tab. Member states are supposedly obliged to spend a minimum of two percent of their GDP on their military. Only four nations hit this target; the British, the Greeks, the Estonians and the Latvians. And even the UK has made substantial inroads into its defense spending so that its top commanders have been warning that the cuts make no military sense. For instance all 72 of the Royal Air Force’s highly-versatile Harrier jump-jets have been sold to the US Marines.

For President Donald Trump, the failure of other member states to make the committed military spend has been intolerable. And in his inimitable fashion, he very bluntly made his views clear, even suggesting NATO is a waste of time and should be abandoned. Whatever Russian President Vladimir Putin may think about the threatening “defensive alliance” on his doorstep, it is clear that NATO is a US operation with all the other members to a greater or lesser degree riding on the Americans’ coat tails. The risible state of the German military is such that it has aircraft that cannot fly for lack of parts and tank commanders who have had to use black-painted broomsticks because they had no spare gun barrels.

It is clear that Trump banged heads together in Brussels. He demanded that member states spend four percent of GDP annually which French president Macron said afterwards he doubted would be possible. As it is Macron confessed France will not reach its minimum two percent spend for another six years. Germany, as one of the world’s strongest economies, is however well able to commit this amount to its military. Chancellor Angela Merkel came out of the summit describing it as “intense” and “fundamental” and admitting that her country should do more. But there remains a strong domestic suspicion of a strong military, which Merkel clearly shares. And her already strained relations with Trump will not have been improved by the President’s bald assertion that, thanks to a new multi-billon dollar gas deal with Russia, her country’s has put itself in Vladimir Putin’s pocket.

Germany’s participation in NATO’s Afghanistan ISAF mission, which ended in 2014, was not popular at home, especially when the 5,500 strong force took casualties, even though it was deployed in the quieter northern part of the country. This was the first deployment of German troops outside Europe since the end of the Second World War. Though NATO has quit Afghanistan, the Americans remain with 17,000 military personnel and the British are just sending a further 440 soldiers. Ostensibly this residual Western commitment is in non-combat rolls to support the Afghan police and army. But signals, satellite and drone intelligence, coupled with devastating US airpower, still play a significant part in the struggle against the Taliban. NATO is looking to extend its funding and training support for Afghan president Ashraf Ghani’s hard-pressed security forces until 2024. While President Trump doubtless does not expect Chancellor Merkel to send any of her broom-handled tanks, he will be assuming that Germany will do the one thing of which he reckons it is clearly capable — writing big checks.