Dwain Northey (Gen X)

North Atlantic Treaty Organization has been in the news a quite a lot this past week, mostly because our President is fully on board with strengthening the alliance not dismantling like the former guy.

For those of you that have heard about NATO but aren’t sure what they actually do here is a short history lesson…

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was created in 1949 by the United States, Canada, and several Western European nations to provide collective security against the Soviet Union.

Yes, even though the Soviet Union of part of the allied powers in WWII that helped save the world from Hitler and Nazi Germany, they very quickly became the Big Bad Wolf that was threatening Europe.

NATOs mission is to secure a lasting peace in Europe, based on its member countries’ common values of individual liberty, democracy, human rights and the rule of law.

Those all seem like good objectives for a multi country alliance… so why is it that Donny Dumb Ass and his alliance of the willing (the ‘freedom’ caucus’) are so adamantly opposed to it?

Here are the current members of NATO.

The 31 NATO members are Albania, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Montenegro, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, the Republic of Macedonia, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

The ratification process for Sweden is ongoing. Ukraine applied for NATO membership in September 2022 after Russia proclaimed the annexation of its territory. Two other states have formally informed NATO of their membership aspirations: Bosnia and Herzegovina and Georgia.

The big kerfuffle this year was why they didn’t admit Ukraine into NATO… The easy answer is because of Article 5: The principle of collective defense is enshrined in Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty. NATO invoked Article 5 for the first and only time in its history after the 9/11 terrorist attacks against the United States.

Ukraine joining NATO immediately was a non-starter because several NATO members—most notably Germany and the United States—are worried about what it would mean to bring a country into the alliance engaged in an active war. So this was always about finding the right space in between.

Trump and his ILK have issues with NATO because they say that we are the primary funders of the Alliance. Here is how NATO is funded NATO is resourced through the direct and indirect contributions of its members. NATO’s common funds are composed of direct contributions to collective budgets and programs, which equate to only 0.3% of total Allied defense spending.

More easily put each member nation give 0.3% of their defense budget to NATO…

Of member nations the U.S. has the highest defense budget; The current U.S. defense budget is for fiscal year 2023, the bill provides $136.7 billion, an increase of $9.8 billion above the budget request and an increase of $20.5 billion above the fiscal year 2022 enacted level. The second highest country was the UK in 2021/22, the UK spent £45.9 billion on defense, that is roughly $60 billion.

So just based on math it is quite obvious why we contribute more than let’s say Lithuanian which probably only has a maybe $10 million defense budget. If we didn’t have such a bloated defense budget, we wouldn’t contribute as much.  

Maybe since Russia has proven itself to not be a big a threat as they made themselves out to be there can be a joint resolution to lower the contributing percentage, but we will still be the largest funder.

The only countries that want to see the end of NATO are the school yard bullies, Russia being the number one offender. I am not a conspiracy person but those current members of our government and the former guy that want to withdraw from NATO (?) если обувь подходит (if the shoe fits).

Thanks again for joining me on the rant…