Trump’s NATO disconnect

Re “Trump’s beef with NATO,” July 11

As I understand it, President Trump is complaining vociferously about how much the United States is putting into military spending protecting other countries.

It’s not just the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, of course. Why do we have troops in South Korea, Japan and elsewhere?

But what I don’t understand is that if Trump is going to dramatically scale back our military commitments to all these countries and alliances, then why does he seek such a massive increase in defense spending? Why do we need a factory in Ohio building more Abrams tanks? Erica Hahn

Monrovia