US and NATO at a Crossroads
The NATO alliance has recently wrapped up its 75th anniversary summit in Washington, DC. While most members of the trans-Atlantic foreign policy establishment took the occasion to celebrate the alliance’s longevity and call for another seventy-five years, the United States is at a crossroads with NATO.
On the one hand, at the Munich Security Conference in February 2024, Vice President Harris defended the alliance, saying, “NATO is central to our approach to global security. For President Biden and me, our sacred commitment to NATO remains ironclad. And I do believe, as I have said before, NATO is the greatest military alliance the world has ever known.” On the other hand, former President Trump has said, in response to an unnamed NATO ally that had failed to meet the NATO 2 percent of GDP defense spending target established in 2014, “You didn’t pay? You’re delinquent? No I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them [Russia] to do whatever the hell they want. You gotta pay. You gotta pay your bills.” These are two radically different views on the United States’ oldest military alliance. One suggests that the US commitment to NATO is “sacred” while the other suggests that US allies in NATO aren’t paying their fair share. So which is right?
The outcome of the 2024 US election will, of course, play a critical role in determining NATO’s future, but we can already see alternative paths that NATO can take. The first path is the status quo. On this path, the United States continues to massively outspend its NATO allies, subsidizing its wealthy partners’ security even though they have a vastly greater collective population and economy than Russia. The European allies’ militaries would continue to dwindle and become even more hollow. In FY2024, the United States spent $842 billion on defense, about 3.4 percent of its GDP. This means that the United States alone spends 66 percent of the total amount that the NATO allies spend collectively on defense. The European and Canadian members of NATO collectively spend just $507 billion on defense, 2.02 percent of their combined GDP. Of the 32 NATO members, just 23 states meet the 2 percent of GDP threshold; this is a very recent development, since just 10 members of NATO met this threshold in 2023.
Since Russia is Europe’s main security problem, and the threat that NATO was designed to defend against, it is only fair to compare the capabilities of NATO with Russia. Excluding the United States, NATO has 1.9 million troops in service, compared with 900,000 in the Russian military (which has another 500,000 in paramilitary units used for internal security). Current European defense spending is $430 billion, compared with Russia’s $140 billion. The European population of NATO is 636 million, compared with Russia’s 145 million. The total European membership of NATO has a combined GDP of $20 trillion, compared with Russia’s GDP of $2 trillion. Even without the aid of the United States, the European portion of NATO is wealthy, populous, and already outspends its only adversary by significant and comfortable margins. It is hard to argue that the United States must continue to subsidize its wealthy allies’ security. Doing so allows them to “cheap ride” by generously funding social welfare and other programs to benefit European populations while enjoying heavily subsidized US security protection for the last seventy-five years.
The second path that NATO could embark upon is one of increased burden sharing, with an eye toward shifting the burden of European defense to the Europeans. Much attention has been given to holding NATO members accountable to a 2 percent of GDP threshold for defense spending. This was initially a useful yardstick because it set a minimum threshold for spending, but it is at best a crude proxy for each NATO member spending “enough” on its defense. The point of creating this lower threshold was to ensure that each member maintained some useful military capabilities. Greece, for example, spends more than 3.5 percent of its GDP on defense, but due to its preparation for a potential conflict with fellow NATO member Turkey, excessive and inefficient bureaucratic expenses, and purchases of prestige weapons systems that add few real capabilities, the Greek military actually punches well below its weight and cannot contribute much to defending NATO allies outside its own borders. Likewise, European NATO members with large populations — the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, and Poland, among others — could surely do more to develop significant, deployable military capabilities that would meaningfully enhance European defense against a Russian threat, should deterrence fail. The United States could signal, through real action, that it will no longer provide the backbone of Europe’s defense and that the Europeans must do more. This would require tremendous political will against the many trans-Atlantic headwinds that would protest such a decision, but the groundwork was laid when, late in the first Trump administration, the United States announced that it would withdraw 10,000 troops from Germany, a decision that was reversed as one of the first acts of the Biden administration.
The third path, the most radical of the three outlined here, would be for the United States to pursue a path similar to that of France in 1966, when, under Charles de Gaulle, it withdrew its military forces from NATO’s integrated military command structure. France did not leave the alliance altogether, but it did end most of its military cooperation. (France rejoined NATO’s integrated military command structure in 2009.) De Gaulle and his successors did so because participating militarily in NATO no longer made sense for France’s interests. If the United States announced such a move, perhaps giving the European allies some time to backfill departing US capabilities, it would create temporary turmoil but would force the Europeans to make a decision: do they fear Russia enough to build up meaningful, strategically autonomous military forces, or do they believe that conventional military capabilities are not actually needed to deter a Russian invasion?
On the 75th anniversary of NATO’s founding, we must seriously question if remaining militarily embedded in NATO and supporting it at the same level still makes sense for the United States. No other collective security alliance has persisted for so long. Why should NATO? It was designed for a singular purpose: to deter the Soviet Union from conquering Western Europe during the Cold War. The Cold War is over, as is the Soviet Union. Russia lives on, under Putin, but the nations of Europe are no longer the war-torn wrecks they were in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. Collectively, and without the United States, they vastly outnumber a beleaguered Russia in terms of economic power (by 10:1), population (by 4:1), military spending (by 3:1), and number of troops (by 2:1). The European NATO members can defend themselves and deter Russian attacks.
The United States does not have to abandon NATO entirely to reap the benefits. It can continue providing NATO with a nuclear umbrella (through extended deterrence), alongside Britain and France, as well as continue sharing critical relevant intelligence and key military capabilities that the European allies lack. But it is clear that Europe no longer requires the United States to pay for their defense. They can do it on their own. European strategic autonomy is needed. This will strengthen Europe and strengthen the United States. It is a win-win.
This article originally was published by the American Institute for Economic Research.