President Trump was kind and didn’t ask, so the Free Beacon did! The president knew it would be an enormous amount, for a group of countries that somehow can’t find the money to pay their fair share. I loved his speech at NATO. Click here in case you missed it.
President Trump departed from prepared remarks Thursday to comment on the ostentatious new NATO headquarters in Brussels at a dedication ceremony with world leaders.
“I never asked once what the new NATO headquarters cost,” Trump said, bringing attention to the glass structure. “I refuse to do that, but it is beautiful.”
In fact, the building cost an astounding $1.23 billion, according to a budget released by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Architecture, design, and quality management cost the alliance $129 million alone. Audio visual installations ran $29 million, while construction ran $514 million, the document states.
The new building can hold:
1,500 personnel from national delegations
1,700 international military and civilian staff
600 staff from NATO agencies
frequent visitors, currently some 500 per day
The alliance bragged that the structure is also a “green building for the future.” […]
In his remarks Thursday, Trump took NATO member states to task for not paying their fair share.
“Twenty-three of the 28 member nations are still not paying what they should be paying and what they’re supposed to be paying for their defense,” Trump told leaders of the alliance countries.
“This is not fair to the people and taxpayers of the United States — and many of these nations owe massive amounts of money from past years and not paying in those past years. Over the last eight years, the United States spent more on defense than all other NATO countries combined. If all NATO members had spent just 2 percent of their GDP on defense last year, we would have had another $119 billion for our collective defense and for the financing of additional NATO reserves,” he added.
And the next question is: how much of the $$1.23 Billion did the US taxpayers pay?
I am tired of the world picking our pocket..
Hey, where’d my wallet go, Karen?
Why does a defense treaty need an incredibly large and expensive structure? How do the members picture using this? : Nuclear war breaks out, Russian tanks ford across rivers, conquering city after city, hugging the population centers to prevent themselves from being hit with tactical nukes. While this is going on commanders from NATO rush to their HQ, directly in the path of the enemy, and in one centralized easy to capture location, intent on leading from the front line?
In a nuclear war against the USSR, or some other massive threat to western civilization, which is the point of NATO, the last thing you’d want is an HQ situated on the same continent as a prospective enemy. This is why the internet was created; to decentralize command and control in case of a war with the USSR. It’s a “green building for the future”? It should be a mile-deep concrete bunker if it was to have any chance of fulfilling its supposed function. But I bet those who work there sure feel important in their $1.2b art exhibit.