In this 8th Debunk of the Day, we’ll discuss complaints about US financing of NATO, in particular how the US allegedly pays for European defense, leading to calls for a US withdrawal from the Alliance — which would only make it easier for Putin to invade more countries.

NATO by itself costs peanuts. In fact, the core of NATO is a principle, an agreement, that ideally costs nothing. The main cost is defense spending, which the US is eagerly doing anyway: Trump has just announced a 50% increase in military spending for his “Department of War”.

To sow division and thereby weaken the Alliance, vatniks deliberately mix up different figures, such as contributions to the NATO common budget, with defense spending. And US military spending has been huge by the sheer fact that the US is the world’s largest economy.

Likewise, high European spending on welfare comes from… higher taxes, not US transfers. And European defense spending is in fact rising, due to the ongoing Russian aggression, both their genocidal invasion of Ukraine and their hybrid operations against the rest of Europe.

The cost of being part of NATO is nothing… unless war were declared. But the more strong members NATO has, the more unlikely it is that someone will attack us, thus preserving peace. Article 5 was invoked only once, after the 9/11 attacks — to help the US, actually.

NATO only brings extra costs if NATO countries are invaded — and then it’s still less costly than the alternative. The only one to benefit from any country withdrawing from NATO is therefore… whoever is planning to invade us.

And vatniks help them by spreading such lies.

Here’s some real spending numbers: Russia spends billions every year on propaganda like this to make it cheaper and easier for them to start their wars, at a huge cost for everyone else, one way or the other. Help us fight it: please support our work.

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