What do you guys feel about NATO?

28 comments

1. I’d be happy if we started being less than 70% of NATO, and made some ungrateful European (not the UK) nations pay for their own defense. Instead spending billions actively putting troops and money all over Europe, we should just be the big brother they can call if someone bullies them. We got their back if someone invades them, but they have to defend themselves as well.

2. I’d be way more in support of it if more of the members actually fulfilled the obligations they signed up for.

   Too many countries want the protection of a mutual defense treaty, without any of the commitment.

   Estonia, Poland, Croatia, etc. I’m digging you guys.

3. The costs are frustrating, and I wish there was a better balance of responsibilities

   That said, I think it’s still largely beneficial for all parties involved and something that should be actively maintained

4. We do most of the work while Europeans complain about having to make even the smallest contribution.

   Oh, and suddenly Europeans are VERY interested in if America will actually fight to protect NATO members who are attacked. For some sudden reason. 🤔

5. I’m fine with some NATO countries and sick of countries that use NATO as an excuse to not have an actual military (looking at you Spain), it’s a mutual defense pact, not a one sided defense pact. Also most of NATO needs to meet their 2% target, I realize it’s a non binding target, but it’s still the target and it’s annoying as fuck that more than half of NATO ignores it. I understand why NATO is of importance, but when other countries don’t put effort into maintaining their half of the agreement which builds resentment about us actually fulfilling ours. It feels very entitled to see European countries expecting that the US will continue to finish our targets while they ignore theirs.

   Eastern European countries are usually the ones who seem to understand why it’s important to uphold their targets and as such I have a higher level of respect for them (not governmentally, just in the context of NATO) while western European countries seems to expect nothing but a one sided defense pact, puting in effectively zero effort, but always wanting to know if the US would defend them, it’s annoying as fuck.

6. We need to stop fucking with it so much and let whatever happens over there happen over there. We have our own people to think about.

7. Everybody is a gangster till it’s time to go and do the gangster work. Maybe these arrogant European countries (excluding the UK) will change their tone and remember who defends their right to act all shitty towards others on Reddit

8. It’s relevant again, in the face of Russian aggression

9. Ah, the weekly NATO question. FULL SUPPORT, NO QUESTION.

10. Full support, if we didn’t have it Putin would invade far more than just Ukraine. That being said, we need all the alliance members to met their GDP spending requirements. Americans understand the insane amount of fire power we bring to the table, but we still need our allies to be armed, and ready to ground and pound at the least.

11. I would be 100% supportive if Europeans treated us like friends and allies rather than waging a constant one-sided cultural war of attrition against us. Im not very enthusiastic about the alliance and just have a pragmatic outlook on how it enables our own military reach and solidifies our power and defense/security. I’d rather we fight wars for other countries overseas before we ever have to deal with what Ukraine is dealing with on our own soil.

12. Ordinarily I don’t feel strongly about it, but seeing the Russian anti-NATO propaganda that’s out there (a lot of it on this site) has made me support NATO much more.

13. Fully support NATO. Would it be great for Allie’s to pay/ support more in the organization, sure. However the benefits outweigh the issues by a lot imo.

14. I like it.

15. Pure tyranny, America has oppressed the world for too long.

    Europeans with their superior education and technology can defend themselves, I mean based on what they say shouldn’t they have all kind of lazer blasters and stuff like that?

16. Just another entangled alliance that is good for business, but bad for the lives of everyone else.

17. It’s annoying that we’re pretty much the only real player. Europeans love to trash America without realizing we’re singlehandedly securing world peace.

18. Hi! I love the UK so much, it is such a wonderful country! My best friend is from the UK and he is quite nice! I don’t know exactly how to feel about NATO. I think it’s important to help out but you oughta focus on your own people, too. You said you work in the alliance; what do you do there if you don’t mind me asking?

19. It’s a good idea but deeply frustrating to see our “allies” refuse to pull their weight, especially when they go so out of their way to make their contempt for us known.

20. It’s done its job for 70 years.

    The US is in, Germans were down, and the Russians were out.

    That said the past 3 months seem to have confirmed it is still has value as a traditional defensive Alliance in Europe. Being used as a coordinating force for interventions outside the core role certainly helped along it’s fraying of purpose in the past 20 years.

21. I’m gonna be a little too honest here.
     

    I’m not really a fan of Nato anymore. Let’s be real, Nato is basically ETO (European Treaty Organization)… and I don’t think the USA needs to be a part of it anymore.
     

    The EU is a pretty good comparison against the USA. It has a similar GDP, Population, and land mass yet when it comes to defense it fails. For a while there they were debating if they should donate weapons, then they questioned if they should donate $1 billion. In the end the USA helped them right away and donated $30 billion… actually more than now. This should have never been an issue for the USA to help with. EU should have put their big boy pants on and helped defend Ukraine. Russia is standing in their front yard rubbing their nipples on the fence and they just ignore it hoping it will go away.
     

    When it comes to Nato… Many [EU countries](https://www.forces.net/sites/default/files/styles/inline_image/public/NATO%20defence%20expenditure%20estimates%20for%202021%20310322%20CREDIT%20NATO_0.jpg?itok=ChGLO-ag) are far below the 2% guideline… So we have many countries in Nato that are not hitting guidelines and only going half in on defending democracy.
     

22. I’m all for it. It helps the US maintain a rules-based world order with its Western allies & has limited Russia’s attempts to reconstitute its traditional empire. If NATO had been disbanded in the 90s, Russia would’ve still expanded (Putin’s complaints with NATO are more for it standing in the way of Russian control of its neighbors than actually threatening to invade), the West would’ve just been much more flat footed in its response (the Baltic states would look more like Belarus before we re-formed NATO out of necessity). By making the prospect of war with most of Europe impossible, it prevents a lot of conflicts that could escalate (as we’re seeing now with Ukraine).

    I lean left and have always been aware of the far left opposition to NATO (there’s a certain type of US leftist who finds a way to see the US as the antagonist in every situation around the world). It’s been odd to see the far right swing against it because of Trump’s weird preoccupation with Putin & conviction that the US is always being cheated.

23. Alliances are necessary for global defense. For example, Russia’s current invasion of Ukraine would look very different if Ukraine were a member. Russia’s campaign for “lebensraum” is ill-conceived and they alone have turned international feelings against them.

24. I’m not a fan and I think the alliance has caused more problems than solved it since the early 1990s. This opinion is verboten in America right now, but I believe that NATO expansion played a decisive causal role in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I do not believe it would have happened if NATO had never expanded “one inch east” of Germany after it reunified.

    I am not a fan of alliances in general. For other countries, maybe they’re sensible because they are in regions with a much more unstable balance of powers. But the United States is a hemispheric hegemon. In my view, getting into entangling alliances means that the United States is going to end up having problems with countries with whom it could otherwise have good relations, simply by virtue of the fact that they’re on bad terms with an ally. I.e. Saudi Arabia doesn’t like Qatar; now all of a sudden the United States has to have a bad relationship with Qatar, not because of any direct conflict we have but because of an entangling alliance.

    I would prefer to keep foreign governments at arm’s length. That includes Western European countries that seem like they’d be pretty nice places to live. Frankly I don’t see why Americans should be asked to potentially risk their lives to defend the Finnish border with Russia given that every European knows that the US isn’t ever going to ask them to make any serious sacrifices for America’s security. The Wilsonian rhetoric about defending democracy and taking out bad guys is not a sufficient justification for any of this in my view.

25. I wish we would leave and significantly decrease our military presence in NATO countries in Europe.

26. It is great. We should be a part of it but Europe needs to contribute.

27. Would be super cool if europe would start pulling their fair weight at some point.

    We’re only 70% of it because Europe freaks out and calls us every time things start to blow up in Europe.

28. I love NATO because if Mexico or Canada tries to attack us Europe has our back. Right Europe? Europe? Hello?