St Century: Nato States and Merkel

st century: Merkel told representatives from her Christian Democratic Union youth organizations that Germany would be increasing its military spending to 2 percent of GDP, in line with an agreement that NATO states reached in 2014, according to Deutsche Welle. The country currently spends around 1.2 percent of GDP on the Bundeswehr. "In the 21st century, we won't be getting as much help as we got in the 20th," Merkel said. "We need to greatly increase the Bundeswehr budget to get from 1.2 to 2 percent." To meet that target, Germany defense spending would have to rise to some 60 billion euros . The current planned military budget for the year 2020 is 39.2 billion euros. That was one message that Chancellor Angela Merkel had at a conference of young conservatives this weekend in the city of Paderborn. Merkel cited pressure from US president Barack Obama. And there has been criticism from across the political spectrum, including from both Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and onetime Democratic hopeful Bernie Sanders, that America NATO allies allow the US to shoulder an unfair share of the mutual defense burden. According to the Center for American Progress, the United States spent over $600 billion - or 3.4 percent of its government-estimated GDP of $17.947 trillion - on defense in 2015. (news.financializer.com). As reported in the news.