[eggy]

Do you the think the EU and its individual country members from 1949 to present carried their fair share of the NATO spending ($55 to $60T), or troops and equipment deployments, or did they "default" on their side of the treaty? The US has paid 65 to 70% of the total of $1.4 to 1.5T/year from 2018 to 2025. That's 9.8T in 8 years (2018 included). Our soldiers, not theirs, carried the weight. If you go per capita, The US has spent an overage of $13 to $16T in 2025 dollars. Let's credit the account for that and see who owes who...

[5upplied_demand]

> did they "default" on their side of the treaty?

I'm pretty sure they all answered the call when the US invoked Article 5 after the 9/11 attacks, no?

> The US has paid 65 to 70% of the total of $1.4 to 1.5T/year from 2018 to 2025.

Are you suggesting that the US has paid over $1 trillion into NATO each year? That would be difficult because the US military budget has never crossed $1 trillion. The DoD budget is going to be $900.6 billion in FY2026. [0]

[0] https://www.meritalk.com/articles/senate-passes-fy26-defense...

[adrian_b]

The share of the European countries in supporting NATO has been higher than the official numbers.

For instance, when the East-European countries have been admitted into NATO they were forced to pay dearly for this, with many billions of $ for various lucrative and overpriced contracts assigned to some well-connected US companies (e.g. Bechtel), either for various infrastructure projects or for military acquisitions.

Those billions of $ do not appear in the US budget, but they have enriched certain US businessmen.

It is normal for a regular US citizen to believe that NATO has not been beneficial for himself/herself, because this is true, but what regular citizens are not aware of is that NATO has been a great source of profits for some US citizens who are more equal than the others.

[beardyw]

The intention of NATO is mutual support.

Did you forget that the one and only Article 5 call to date on NATO to members was for the USA following 9/11?

[kyboren]

1. "The decision to invoke NATO's collective self-defense provisions was undertaken at NATO's own initiative, without a request by the United States, and occurred despite the hesitation of Germany, Belgium, Norway, and the Netherlands." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_NATO_Article_5_contingenc...

2. "I helped pass the bucket when you were putting out that brush fire, and now you tell me you won't run into my burning house to save my children?!"

3. Mutual support is more like "I'll help you with your main adversary and you'll help me with mine". What we have now is "Fuck no I won't help you with your main adversary, we oughta stay out of it--wait, how dare you suggest you won't fight my main adversary for me?!"

[beardyw]

Comment modified to "for the USA".

[spamizbad]

You're counting the entire US military budget as "NATO spending" which is not a useful way to look at things. We only contribute roughly $800M to NATO's shared budget (about 16%)[1]

[1]https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/us-contributes-16-nato-an...

[epolanski]

Also, from what I recall, the reason why US military budget appears so high is also because pensions for retired personnel (the highest invoice) are included in the military budget, whereas they are not e.g. in Italy where it's a different budget.

[Hikikomori]

Why are we counting US spending on dumbass wars?