OAN Commentary by: Theodore R. Malloch
Monday, March 17, 2025
Sitting in a high-end restaurant, have you ever called for the bill and then had a scene over who was going to pay for all those expensive entrees, appetizers, drinks, and delicious desserts?
Fighting over the bill is one thing. Not paying your fair share or refusing to put down your credit card and expecting someone else to pick up the tab is altogether another.
Why is it that NATO members don’t and won’t pay for the defensive alliance they have signed up to and agreed to in longstanding legal treaties?
Members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) spend money on their own defense. The money they send to NATO directly accounts for less than 1% of overall defense spending by members of the alliance.
Here’s how it works.
NATO is based on the principle of collective defense: an attack against one or more members is considered an attack against all. So far that has only been invoked once — in response to the September 11 attacks.
To make the idea work, it is important for all of the 32 members to make sure their armed forces are in good fighting shape. So, NATO sets an official target on how much they should spend. That currently stands at 2% of GDP, although the US believes it should be moved up considerably to at least 3.5% or preferably 5%..
Here is the list of deadbeats, as it currently stands.
France 1.7%
Turkey 1.6%
Germany 1.2%
Italy 1.1%
Canada 1.02%
Belgium, Spain, Luxembourg, less than 1%
The truth is only five of NATO’s members — the U.S., Greece, Poland, Estonia and the U.K. — meet the current meager 2% target.
If you are at the aforementioned restaurant when the bill comes what do you do?
The U.S. has been footing the bills since the end of WWII. It has been taken advantage of since the very founding of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization on April 4, 1949. It never ends. A treaty that evolved into the U.S. taking the unappreciated role of military protector of most of the entire continent of Europe, never seems able to shift responsibilities. In a cost-benefit analysis, the U.S. gets all the costs and few of the benefits, while Europe has all the benefits and very little shared cost.
Frankly, the stated purpose of NATO ended in 1991 when the collapse and breakup of the Soviet Union transpired. I would know, as I was there and at the very Berlin Wall days after it fell. We were supposed to get a peace dividend! But it never quite happened as anticipated.
Is there something wrong with the idea that Europeans should defend Europe?. Full Stop. It should have occurred way back in 1992 when the European Union came into being. Why were we, the rich sugar Daddy needed any longer? Put another way: why don’t the rich European countries want to pay?
The first “out-of-area operation” to liberate Kuwait was a profitable eenterprise, with the Gulf states happily kicking in to support the overwhelming force Gen. Schwarzkopf led into Baghdad. NATO tagged along, but was (as ever) a “nice-to-have” rather than real backup. Next up were the Balkan wars where Europe’s censorship regime was born – so people couldn’t mention how badly the “hour of Europe” turned out. Euros love to mention Afghanistan, but forget to point out their main contribution was schooling for little girls, not hard power. All dust in the wind now the Taliban are back in power.
Well, it was a combination of European duplicity and American myopia that kept American-dominated NATO alive and expanding by adding 14 new members –and all on Russia’s border, including the Caucasus where they keep the nukes they used to keep in Ukraine..
All the sophisticated European elites continued to harbor near total disdain for the US, its President, and people. They have played us and sopped us for our wealth and military hardware so they could build a socialist utopia. We are long overdue a phase out of NATO and a radical reduction of our military footprint and troops that remain stationed for no good reason in Europe.
NATO has stood as a bulwark of collective security against the specter of aggression, with the U.S. playing the most important role in its financial and strategic underpinnings. But the benefits are not equally distributed.
The foundation of NATO, motivated by the need to secure Western Europe against the looming threat of Soviet expansion, required political and financial solidarity. Europe was and remains a free rider.
Over the past 76 years, the U.S. contributed $21.9 trillion to NATO’s defense budget, according to its yearly Defense Expenditure of NATO Countries report.
That is a lot of money, and it has subsidized Europe, its generous social welfare states and gives them a standard of living that they would otherwise never achieve. In effect, the US taxpayer has been footing the huge bill for three generations now. Are we dopes?
Why would we do this for limited benefit, nearly no appreciation, constant harping and so many variants of anti-Americanism. It should have ended many decades ago. Are Americans sadists?
I think President Trump should commence a commission that analyzes the entire situation and presents the countries of Europe with a full accounting and bill for their defense. Europe was and remains a free rider. Over the past 76 years, the U.S. contributed $21.9 trillion to NATO’s defense budget, according to its yearly Defense Expenditure of NATO Countries report.
The result would be two-fold.
We present the Europeans with a bill they can refund to us for roughly $10 trillion dollars; and we announce that we are phasing out of NATO in three or less years’ time and move the U.S. troops out of the continent which they should defend themselves.
(Views expressed by guest commentators may not reflect the views of OAN or its affiliates.)
Theodore Roosevelt Malloch is a scholar-diplomat-strategist who has worked in the US State Department, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and at ambassadorial level in the United Nations Europe. His book Trump’s World spells out in detail Trump’s foreign policy.