Trump’s latest 4AM rage tweet concerns the "vast sums of money" that Germany supposedly owes us for participating in NATO. What could possibly be the point of this latest outburst? Does Trump actually have a plan to dun money out of Germany for NATO, much as he wants to dun money from Mexico for the wall?
Perhaps there is some wider strategy in play here. There is a model that you could construct starting from this premise that Germany, and all of Europe, and really , all of the world that supposedly benefits from the US military, that leads to an actual model of the “rightful” place of the US in the world.
The model is literally ancient history. Greek city states banded together to defeat the Persian invasion of the Greek mainland. Then Athens, the one great naval power among them, liberated dozens of more city states around the Aegean. These small cities joined Athens in a military alliance to keep the Persians from coming back. Gradually the small cities found it more convenient to supply a sum of money annually to Athens for that city to maintain the fleet needed to fight off the Persians, rather than send ships to the combined fleet. The Athenian fleet became so powerful, and that of the small cities so weak, that eventually the annual payments become mandatory, tribute and not voluntary contributions. The Delian league became the Athenian Empire. Athens had this huge and expensive fleet that was paid for by the small cities it was "protecting". This Athenian Empire was a tributory empire, a protection racket on the international level.
That's the idea here. The rationale for this huge and expensive military the US has maintained since it didn't demobilize after WWII, has always been the defence of weaker allies against the threat of takeover by some enemy power. The USSR was great at fitting the bill of the external threat, because it actually was something of a threat. But since that real threat is gone, what we're left with is the smaller members of NATO very reasonably not willing to maintain the large conscript armies they had during the most threatening periods of the Cold War, or the same level of continuing cycles of expensive R&D and re-equipment costs. The US, meanwhile, has kept higher levels of expenditure, to less and less clear purpose as needed to defend anything, itself or Europe.
It was only a matter of time before some US politician would figure out how to use this situation to the obvious political advantage to be gained squeezing our "allies" for cash in exchange for the "protection" we provide. How can we ask a single mother to fork over tax dollars to keep Germany safe, while the Germans themselves spend only about a third, per capita, that we do on "defense"? Why not set up a system whereby the people who benefit from our protection supply all the costs of our military? The US supplies the arguably greater sacrifice, in terms of the military service of its citizens, while the rest of the world merely has to sacrifice some cash to fund our military. How much could the Income tax be slashed if US taxpayers didn't have to pay for the US military? Why wouldn't the US electorate go for this idea?
This is not to say that Trump is that politician. I would be surprised if he had this all plotted out. But surely among the boatload of Fourth Reich enthusiasts he has brought to the WH there must be people who do have all this plotted out. What happens after the Trump administration crashes and burns on the domestic front? Does Trump accept being a failure, or does he turn to the military adventurism that fits his self-image so much better than the negotiation and compromise needed to produce some paltry domestic success? At that point, facing the prospect of being a sad loser if he doesn't find some way out, that's when the Fourth Reich enthusiasts around him make their pitch.