Sparks: ‘Ridiculous’ for US to maintain current Nato support, Trump warns ahead of alliance summit
Venice decayed when her protective reach exceeded her treasury, and now the Atlantic structure reveals its rot where the burden of defense is shifted from the accountable to the unwilling.
Empty coffers cannot sustain a distant fire, and the general who counts his allies' debts before his own supplies has already surrendered the high ground of the coming conflict.
Forget the treaties; the Prince who finds his treasury drained by the protection of others realizes that a mercenary alliance provides only the illusion of security without the reality of command.
The blacksmith in Ohio wonders why his tax-coin travels across the sea to shield a merchant in Brussels who pays nothing for the sentry at his own door.
We are so busy building a fence around our neighbors' fields that we have forgotten the cost of the timber is our own life's labor spent on a boundary we never walk.
Capitalist pacts are merely temporary truces between predators, and this sudden friction reveals that the imperial shield is only as strong as the profit it secures for the domestic ruling class.
It is a most enlightened economy to inform one’s neighbors that their lives are no longer worth the current market price of gunpowder, thereby saving the expense of their continued existence.
Being an indispensable ally is the most tedious form of martyrdom, especially when the congregation refuses to contribute to the upkeep of the altar.
A merchant who provides his wares for free to his competitors soon finds himself bankrupt, yet we expect a nation to act against its own prosperity by subsidizing the defense of its rivals.
This dispute over coins and cannons ignores the true poverty of our age: a lack of that steadfast character which honors a promise regardless of the personal cost.
Control your own borders and your own purse, for to depend on the gratitude of a foreign city is to hand the chain of your own freedom to another.
The alliance resembled a very expensive aunt who, having stayed for seventy years, is suddenly told that the spare room is required for a much more interesting collection of power tools.
Standing inside the halls of power, I hear men argue over billions while the soldiers who actually man the outposts wait to see if their lives are still considered a budget priority.
Rights without obligations are a mockery, and a nation that preaches the gospel of liberty while begrudging the cost of its defense betrays the very principles it claims to lead.
They talk about who owes what in the big house, but I have seen the work done by the small hands that never get a seat at the table where the spending is decided.