Public sentiment is largely negative towards the proposed increase of NATO defense spending to 5% of GDP, with many citing economic concerns, skepticism about its effectiveness, and the prioritization of military expenditures over domestic needs like healthcare and education. Comments reflect frustration over unrealistic targets, potential misallocation of funds, and calls for accountability among member nations.

NATO

Member States

If anyone looks at this and thinks Europe isn't doing shit, I want you to understand that the US is single-handedly 40% of the military spending of the entire globe.

TechnicalyNotRobot

[deleted]

Is this from before or after most European countries dramatically increased defence spending due to the Ukraine war?

Jolly-Put-9634

It would be interesting to have GDP right next to it.

IAMHAOLE503

footinmymouth

And I have to read people saying that NASA (with 2 billion per year) have to invest their money on the famine problem

Imagine if they know that money of US Military is 400x bigger than NASA

Cefer_Hiron

Global security is partly subsidized by American taxpayers

jojomanmore

can we factor in as a percentage of GDP? Its not Like Lithuania can spend 1 trilion.

homonomo5

[Here is different way of looking at it.](https://www.reddit.com/r/PolishGalacticEmpire/s/xaw58DkzwB)

Hoz85

Milk_Daemon

lNFORMATlVE

Shit data.  That’s total defense spending, not NATO specific.

AppleDaddy01

This appears disingenuous. $860 billion is the entirety of US defense spending - not what the U.S. spends in support of NATO.

GrumpyCraftsman

Would be interesting to see a spread of where that money is spent. 

I bet a huge amount of what isn’t spent domestically is being spent on American made hardware. 

Trump made much of the imbalance of spending, but what the US was spending was all going to the US economy, and much of what others was spending was also going straight into the US too

redterror5

It is not actually NATO defence spending, it is military spending by NATO members. The US spends a lot of money on defence spending that has nothing to do with NATO

bcbroon

Are you certain that's "*NATO* defence spending"? For Canada, the US, and the UK it looks like *total* defence spending - and the UK and the US in particular operate in the Pacific, not just the North Atlantic. ANZUS, the remnants of SEATO, Freedom of Navigation in the South China Sea, etc.

Specialist_Cat_4691

This isn't exactly "NATO" spendings but overall military spendings of each member. And since some of the members project power way outside of NATO's jurisdiction (US mostly but France and UK to an extent as well), it does not tell us much. Unholy amount of US spendings goes to Pacific theater and has nothing to do with NATO.

machine4891

How terrifying. If I was the rest of the world I’d be concerned.

It‘s NATO plus whatever the US spends to project its power to every corner of the world.

Roadrunner571

Also noting that the US accounts for more than half of NATO’s GDP. 

Even more interesting is that almost half of the world’s GDP is NATO. 

https://medium.com/@LeonHartwell/what-is-the-combined-gdp-of-all-nato-members-57f62c9b9f26

Stirsustech

That is the entire defense budget of our country. The graphic is misleading.

They should let Australia in like Eurovision did.

hernesson

Considering the US has 2x the GDP of the EU it's not that weird.

irvings18

You should adjust for GDP as that's how NATO determines contribution

InterestingCourse907

I mean yea, the US also has a much larger GDP and population that the other NATO members.

2407s4life

And the graph for healthcare and pensions is inversely proportional. Weapons or medicine… an easy choice for all but the wretched

No_Witness_1417

This is by design. The US set this security agreement up so that they could dominate Western Europe’s foreign policy. This allowed the US to pursue aggressive security operations in other parts of the world.

realperson_90

God the US economy and spending is baffling. 

Like to the point a billion dollars is nothing.

CanadianODST2

Going to get hard to keep this up as infrastructure erodes.

But how much is that is dedicated to the European mission.

HausuGeist

Due-Supermarket1305

How much would universal healthcare cost in the US?

notsure9191

What is the spending per capita or spending based on GDP? Just curious how different it would look for non US countries

Alarmed-Pollution-89

An absolute necessity, but man do we get fucked.

TRMBound

The US contributes the vast majority of the defence budget to virtually every single “bilateral” treaty it takes part in and gets nothing in return. Europeans should pay their fair share instead of leeching off of others. 

plutoniator

Another interesting graphic related to this would be arrows showing which country’s industrial military complex takes in what percentage of these amounts. A lot of arrows going back to US companies.

Present_Ad2973

I hate these kinds of graphs - they suck at trying to convey proportionality. Just use a regular pie chart FFS!

Apalis24a

Chips_Deluxe

BP-arker

USA,  the war machine is very profitable.

TTChickenofthesea

The US should stop taking care of the entire Europe and focus on its own problems.

DKBlaze97

rafaelsanti4

Just for some context, the USA is the only NATO member that projects military force globally.

All other NATO members are either strictly European or in two or three other regions at best.

Fit-Meal4943

4pegs

I’d like some relief on my student debt. “wHo’S gOnNa PaY fOr ThAt?!”

N0ClassAct

Im down to have my taxes go less to NATO funding

The_Coolest_Sock

And when you realize USA is one of the only countries on that graph without healthcare it gets really infuriating

...Is Mexico not in NATO? I always just assumed it was.

Lemonwizard

Don't think that's counting the 100s of billions in aid we've kicked in over the last 3 years either

Telemarketman

Unfunded liability is 210 trillion and nat debt is 35 trill ..can we really afford to spend line this ?

andItsGone-Poof

And this is why The United States gets to tell the rest of the world what to do and when to do it.

Stock-Pickle9326

UnluckyCharacter9906

All-I-Do-Is-Fap

A bit better picture:

https://preview.redd.it/nato-defense-spending-as-percentage-of-gdp-v0-tbi3tgzjazkc1.jpeg?auto=webp&amp;s=ed099b5670334d6db63e7123804004aadd8dfee4

goldenhairmoose

And yet half the world will still whine when Trump points this out.

The EU would be flying Soviet colors without the US.

Pystawf

Thank god we’re buying $1,453.00 toilet seats for NATO. Because it’s saving the world folks.

TheyAreAll304s

enditallalready2

"NATO exists only for defense, they said. NATO exists only to stop the Soviet threat, they said. NATO exists to strengthen stability."

Meanwhile, the world: 🔥

VariousComment6946

why is the showing up on multiple subreddits out of nowhere?  all this shit does is drive a wedge between allies.  who benefits from that?  connect the dots.  

after reading the comments, ive come to the conclusion this is part of a russian psyop

phonsely

Even though it looks like NATO countries other than US don’t spend much, the total of their spending is still almost 3 times as much as Russia

Special_Question5516

Of course this is defense budgets of NATO countries which is totally different from NATO participations

_Argol_

Can non-nato countries like russia, india, china and brazil please be added to this. I want to see how ridiculously high the US spending on world domination is compared to these players

DandSi

Nodebunny

Since the US is the world’s largest arms supplier it seems fair.

chillumbaby

Is it the money that a country spends on its own military or the money that it allocates to the NATO?

faceoyster

ante_d

Russia trying to give more disinformation

Waynimo

You shouldn't image this as the US vs. individual nations. 

The US is basically its own continent. Let's compare North American spending and European spending.

augustus331

For everyone saying ”thats my tax money”, this is disgustingly missleading to favor US.

Practical-Piglet

Well, it just seems fair that if NATO serves US foreign policy and economic and geopolitical interests, the US must be its primary funder, right? 

Also, it is mostly US military industrial complex who benefits the most of NATO budget…

Rohnne

But we can't skim a ^liiiiitle bit off the top for public healthcare or better school funding. No, we can't tax the rich either. I'm sorry. There's just nothing we can do.

jerryleebee



This is not NATO contributions as so many of you think it is. It's defence spending in general.

The graphic is deliberately misleading and is being used by Russian supported conservative politicians in the US to paint NATO as something the US does pretty much on its own and shouldn't.

Rodger_as_Jack_Smith

Yes but also, it's not like 100% of the US money goes towards European security.

America has to police international waters, bully countries with aircraft carriers, invade oil-rich countries, maintain bases all across the world. It has a lot more to do than protect Europe.

Where as Europe just sticks to Europe, mostly (🇫🇷)

Majestic_Bierd

according to usafacts.org, there are 653,000 homeless in the usa. If the military budget was equally distributed between them all, each person would have over 1.3 million dollars. This kind of spending while ignoring the actual problems is inexcusable. Sure the americans will say that it is important because the have to assure "peace" in the world or something but that isn't quite working aswell. Also, the second highest military spender is China who wastes only a third of the us (according to statista.de)

Breznknedl

And now picture the military industrial complex companies where the money is spend. &gt;90% are in which country?

tictacdoc

Should have aimed at wipeing out poverty instead.

Diligent_Frosting432

More evidence that Finland isn’t real. So little money spent.

Weldobud

 It's a percentage of GDP, the US has the highest GDP ...

 Also, the US at the end of WW2 negotiated taking primacy as a military power in order to reduce the need for European powers having large standing militaries - in an attempt to avoid another world war. ( Europe wasn't so united and there were tensions that almost boiled over.)

baithammer

This is why I'm not worried about a war with Russia or China.  
Neither Russia nor China are dumb enough to try to attack NATO.  And that's exactly the point of all this spending. So that stupid people can be free to complain about over spending and not have to worry at all about war destroying their lives. 

...Unless Trump is elected and pulls the US out of NATO.

Additional-Sky-7436

Do the same with percentages instead of having an agenda. I don't mean with a bar chart that has a biased origin either.

ziplock9000

EU must spend more!  why should we Americans foot the majority of the bill, i’d rather have my tax dollars spent on things like infrastructure and health care for all Americans. 

Russia has lots of natural resources, so i say let them have Ukraine it bring peace to the region; remember folks its easier to deal with a despot then a democracy.

tkhan2112

Be careful with defence spending numbers different countries count different things like pensions and have different economies of scale.

PM_ME_SAD_RANTS

SoakingEggs

If you spent 1 billion USD to sig holes in the forest, and then another billion to perfectly fill them up again, you have accomplished nothing.

Due to the insane US spending, I would think a large part of it is military lobbying, I.e. transfer money over to private military contractors who lines their pockets.

Of course you still get a lot of defence out of it, but it's definitely not directly proportional to amount spent.

ydieb

Please for the love of God just use a pie chart, what is the purpose of using a circle and then filling it with weird voronoi-style shapes?

WaitForItTheMongols

Isn’t most of the US amount spent in the US, making it essentially a jobs program and diversion of funds to the owners of the US military industrial complex?

JimShore

People will look at this and not understand the money spent on military goes to military manufacturing companies in... America! 

Wow you just learned object permanence, money doesn't burst into flame and dissolve when spent, it flows to the rich through military spending paid for by poor taxpayers!

Be interesting to see the companies that profit from all this spending and where they are headquartered….

H2O3ngin33r

Then you wonder why the world feels so insecure and why americans are getting poorer by the day

PapaiVoid

Emergency-Scene-1373

ArchangelZero27

Can you overlay with graph of defense companies by country who receive this spend.?

oneind

They can all spend less because we spend more and extend our power to protect their countries. Not saying we do it well, or fairly, but we do.

BlackFire68

NATO leaders reached a consensus to increase defence spending to 5% of GDP by 2035, amid concerns regarding Russian aggression.

NATO Defence Spending

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