On Sept. 12, 2001, 24 hours after the 9/11 attacks, representatives of the then-19-member North Atlantic Treaty Organization, convened to invoke Article 5 of the NATO charter, which holds that an “armed attack” on one member “shall be considered an attack against them all.” This was the first and only time Article 5 has ever been put into effect. For the next two decades NATO forces fought with us in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
On Saturday, former President Trump ranted against NATO at a rally in Las Vegas. “We’re paying for NATO and we don’t get so much out of it,” he lied. “… if we ever needed their help, let’s say we were attacked, I don’t believe they’d be there.”
Trump has long talked about NATO as if it’s some sort of obsolete club where everyone is supposed to pay dues into a common kitty but America has been left picking up everyone’s tab. That’s not how it works. NATO’s standalone budget is about $3.5 billion, of which we pay 16% or roughly $560 million. When he was president, Trump was right to pressure other countries to spend more, but now that they are spending more, he doesn’t care.
Trump’s calumnies against NATO are offered to bolster his distortions about supporting Ukraine. In his telling, both are examples of how the United States gets ripped off by its alliances and foreign engagements. He claimed we’ve spent “$200 billion plus” on Ukraine while the Europeans “are in for $20 billion.”
This, too, is false. According to the Ukraine Support Tracker, in total assistance, the European Union has contributed more to Ukraine than the United States. We’ve committed not $200 billion-plus but about $75 billion in aid, about half of that in military assistance. The E.U. total is roughly 77 billion euros, or roughly $83 billion. As a share of GDP, America ranks 30th in Ukraine support, just behind Ireland and Malta.