First, let’s talk about how NATO is funded. Despite what you have heard from the GOP, NATO is neither the Rotary Club nor a protection racket. There is only a very small common pot into which member nations pay to support NATO’s Military Budget of €1.29 billion ($1.38 billion) which funds specific operations, the NATO strategic command center, training, and research. This pales in comparison to individual member states’ defense expenditures.
This is what Tommy Vietor said about this on Pod Save the World yesterday:
For the 100,000th time NATO members don’t pay dues to the organization, none of these countries owe the US or NATO money. We all agree to spend 2% of GDP on our own defense. It’s a target not an obligation by the way tand the goal was supposed to be hit in 2024. IN 2023 11 NATO members hit the 2% spending target. That means 20 of them did not.
You should take a listen to this podcast– the part about NATO starts about 29 minutes in. Before that, the hosts spend about 27 minutes on Gaza updates. Click below to listen.
NATO also manages a civilian budget of €234.4 million ($252 million). This budget primarily supports the NATO headquarters in Belgium and administrative functions.
Because NATO is a collective defense organization, each member nation is expected to maintain robust military capability. The alliance sets an official target for defense spending: 2% of GDP. However, this target is more of a guideline than a strict requirement, and there are no penalties for falling short. This money does not go into some collective pot to be distributed by NATO; it is part of each member country’s budget.
Here’s how well the NATO member nations are doing with regard to their commitments to NATO.
But here’s the tricky part. The metric is the percentage of each member nation’s budget that goes toward defense, not the percentage that is available to defend Europe. For the European members of NATO, their military expenditures are focused almost totally on the defense of Europe. The position of the United States is different. Although the United States funds fully half of NATO expenditures, the US GDP is equal to about half that of the other member nations combined. In addition, the defense interests of the United States extend far beyond Europe; I’ve found estimates that only about 5% of the U.S. defense budget goes to direct European defense. This means that although the US exceeds the NATO spending requirement for its total defense budget, less than 2% of the U.S. GDP goes to NATO and related activities.
So, unlike the Rotary and other civic organizations, NATO member nations that have not spent 2% of their GDP on defense are not somehow in arrears, and they don’t owe NATO (or the United States) any money. The NATO 2% commitment acknowledged that budget decisions should align with strategic planning, not mere haste to spend. Countries must allocate funds wisely, focusing on equipment and capabilities. The alliance also recognized that Governments face competing demands for resources. Striking a balance between defense spending and other critical areas remains a complex task. If the world changes and the European members of NATO feel that they cannot trust the U.S. to be the linchpin of this organization, they cannot magically find the money to rapidly ramp up their defense spending to accommodate the shortfall. Europe and the world will be less safe for the foreseeable future — certainly for the rest of my life — if #P01135809 has his way.
The comments of #P01135809 are deeply worrying and destabilizing. Since the end of World War II, the military strategy of the United States has depended on “forward defense,” meaning a commitment to base United States forces around the world to tamp down potential military attacks before they reach the shores of the United States. This policy was built on the traditional United States isolationist strategy, which took advantage of the geographic isolation of the United States to distance the nation’s policies from the rest of the world.
The World Wars of the 20th century and the advances in communications and transportation technology in the years since World War II have rendered the geographic isolation of the United States less significant, so the strategic position of the US has been to draw its defensive perimeter as far from the United States as possible by encouraging European and Asian allies to enter into collective security agreements that mean the earliest conflict in the next World War would happen far from the shores of the United States.
The mob boss #P01135809 sometimes seems to think (and the word “think” is a stretch) that NATO is some kind of protection racket – that failure to pay means that the mob boss no longer provides for your security. We should remember that the only time the Article 5 (collective defense) provision of the NATO alliance has been activated was in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, when NATO nations provided military support to the U.S. in its war in Afghanistan. It’s not surprising that the Mob Boss that was POTUS (MBPOTUS?) thinks of the world that way. The elected officials that support him know better, but they are for some reason still thinking that they can ride him back into political power. I’ll write tomorrow about the recent special elections that make this less likely as time goes by.
In the global game of chicken that we call deterrence, perception is the only reality that matters. Putin is deterred from attacking Latvia, for example, because he believes that the NATO alliance will pull together to defend a member of the alliance. If he ceases to believe that the largest and most powerful member of NATO is committed to the Article 5 requirements of the NATO charter, all bets are off as to what he may decide to do in Europe.
A podcast I was listening to today reported comments from defense officials from NATO countries, universally condemning #P01135809’s bloviating. Meanwhile, a recent Danish intelligence service report concludes that Putin is likely to invade a small, non-compliant NATO nation (like Latvia?) within the next several years. If #P01135809 is returned to the White House, Putin will be emboldened to do more – and sooner. He would assume (probably correctly) that MAGA America would not support going to war over Latvia — whatever and wherever the hell that is they would add.
Another European official commented that he’s not sure what the European members of the alliance would do if #P01135809 is reelected and follows through on his promise to withdraw from NATO. “This is all we know,” he commented. No government official alive today remembers a world without NATO and the stability it has guaranteed. No one wants to test what that world would look like.
It's not too difficult to imagine a situation in which European members of NATO might decide to tell the US to take its troops and skedaddle if they’re not willing to play nice with its European allies. This would wreak havoc on American strategic thinking and would fundamentally remake the world order that has maintained peace (somewhat shakily defined) for the past 80 years.
But MBPOTUS (and his political allies along with the cheering rubes that provide the backdrop for his rallies) don’t care about this. Marco Rubio, who knows better, says he’s not worried about a second term in office for #P01135809. No prominent Republican has criticized the MBPOTUS statements. I don’t understand how someone can sell his soul so completely over the course of eight years. The lust for power is a potent addiction.
Thank you for this excellent explanation!
Why dont we hear the facts of the situation and other lies we hear? I'm tired of "misinformation"