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The view that the United States carries a disproportionate share of NATO's collective defense burden, and that European member states should assume significantly greater responsibility for their own security, is held across a wide spectrum of American political thought - from realist foreign policy scholars and libertarian critics of empire to nationalist politicians and fiscal conservatives. Advocates of this position contend that decades of American subsidy have enabled European free-riding, weakened alliance credibility, and distorted both U.S. defense priorities and European political will. The position is not inherently isolationist; most proponents support continued cooperation with European democracies but argue the current arrangement is neither sustainable nor strategically sound.

The spending disparity is structural, not incidental. Advocates point to NATO's own 2% of GDP defense spending guideline, adopted formally at the 2014 Wales Summit in response to Russia's annexation of Crimea, as a baseline that most European members have consistently failed to meet. The United States spends well above that threshold - typically 3.5% or more of GDP - while for years the majority of European allies fell short.(1) Proponents argue this is not a matter of capability but of political choice: European governments have preferred to allocate resources to social programs, knowing that American security guarantees reduce the cost of that decision.

The arrangement creates perverse incentives. This view holds that guaranteed American protection actively discourages European states from developing robust independent defense capabilities. When the cost of underinvestment is borne largely by Washington, the rational choice for any individual European government is to free-ride. Advocates argue this dynamic cannot be corrected by diplomatic appeals; only credible conditionality - the genuine prospect that the U.S. commitment is not unconditional - will produce lasting change.

American strategic interests and European strategic interests diverge. Proponents contend that the United States faces a fundamentally different threat environment than it did during the Cold War. The rise of China as a peer competitor in the Indo-Pacific, they argue, requires a reallocation of American attention, resources, and forward presence. Maintaining the current level of commitment to European defense, they hold, comes at a direct opportunity cost in the Pacific theater. From this perspective, pressing Europe to self-fund is not abandonment but strategic rationalization.

The alliance's Article 5 guarantee has become largely unconditional, removing leverage. Advocates argue that because the United States has treated its NATO commitment as essentially absolute - decoupled from burden-sharing performance - it has surrendered the principal tool of enforcement. They contend that reintroducing conditionality, or at minimum making explicit that unconditional guarantees are not permanent, is the only mechanism capable of producing behavioral change among allies who have no other incentive to act.

Fiscal sustainability is a legitimate national interest. Some proponents ground the argument in straightforward fiscal terms: the United States carries a substantial national debt, and the open-ended defense subsidy of wealthy European economies is a luxury it cannot indefinitely afford. Germany, France, and other major NATO economies are not poor nations requiring security assistance; they are advanced industrial democracies capable of funding their own defense if their governments choose to do so.

The burden-sharing critique is not a recent invention. Dwight Eisenhower, as NATO's first Supreme Allied Commander, expressed concern about long-term European dependence on American forces rather than reconstituting their own, a worry he returned to in his 1963 memoir Mandate for Change.(4)

Through the Cold War, the critique remained muted by strategic necessity. The Soviet threat was immediate and large enough that internal alliance tensions over cost-sharing were generally subordinated to the common purpose of deterrence. Nevertheless, periodic American frustration with European contributions surfaced in congressional debates, most notably in Senator Mike Mansfield's repeated resolutions in the 1960s and 1970s calling for substantial reductions in U.S. troop levels in Europe.

After the Cold War, the original rationale for the alliance's structure was substantially altered. The Soviet Union dissolved, Germany reunified under NATO, and the Warsaw Pact ceased to exist. Critics argue that this moment presented the opportunity for a fundamental rebalancing that was never taken. Instead, NATO expanded eastward while European defense spending declined through the 1990s and 2000s - the “peace dividend” was collected almost entirely by European governments while American forward presence persisted.

Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea prompted the Wales Summit pledge to move toward 2% of GDP in defense spending by 2024. By the early 2020s, progress was uneven - some eastern flank members, notably Poland and the Baltic states, met or exceeded the threshold, while major western European economies including Germany lagged. Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 prompted further pledges and some genuine increases, but advocates of rebalancing argue this only vindicates their position: European governments increased spending when they perceived a credible threat, suggesting political will had never been the limiting factor - only urgency.

Donald Trump's explicit and repeated public pressure on NATO allies to increase defense spending, beginning in his first term, brought the burden-sharing argument into mainstream political discourse in a way it had not occupied before. Regardless of assessments of his diplomacy, proponents note that European defense budgets increased measurably in the years following his pressure campaigns - a result they cite as empirical support for the conditionality argument.

Donald Trump - As the 45th and 47th U.S. President, Trump made NATO burden-sharing a central foreign policy theme, repeatedly questioning whether the United States should defend allies who did not meet spending commitments and demanding that allies pay more. His public statements generated significant controversy but also resulted in measurable increases in European defense spending pledges.

John Mearsheimer - University of Chicago political scientist and leading voice of offensive realism, Mearsheimer has argued extensively that the United States overextends itself in Europe at strategic cost, and that American resources would be better directed toward managing great-power competition with China. His work The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001) provides the theoretical foundation for realist critiques of American overcommitment; his essays and lectures have applied that framework directly to NATO burden-sharing.(2)

Barry Posen - MIT professor and director of the Security Studies Program, Posen's book Restraint: A New Foundation for U.S. Grand Strategy (2014) argues that the United States has adopted an unsustainable grand strategy of “liberal hegemony” that includes maintaining an outsized share of NATO's burden. He advocates for a more restrained posture in which European states assume primary responsibility for their own conventional defense.(3)(6)

Doug Bandow - Senior fellow at the Cato Institute, Bandow has argued from a libertarian perspective that NATO has become a mechanism for subsidizing wealthy European welfare states at American taxpayer expense, and that the alliance in its current form serves European interests more than American ones.(5)

Rand Paul - U.S. Senator (R-KY), Paul has consistently argued for reductions in overseas military commitments including in Europe, framing the burden-sharing critique in terms of constitutional war powers, fiscal responsibility, and skepticism of open-ended alliance commitments.(10)

Christopher Preble - Former vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, Preble has written extensively on the costs of American hegemony and the strategic case for devolving defense responsibilities to capable allies.(8)

Proponents of the US-carries-too-much position are not uniform in their prescriptions. Several significant internal disagreements exist.

Conditionality versus withdrawal. Some advocates - primarily realists in the Posen or Mearsheimer tradition - argue for maintaining the alliance while credibly conditioning the U.S. commitment on burden-sharing performance. Others, more associated with libertarian or non-interventionist perspectives, argue for a more fundamental reconsideration of whether NATO continues to serve American interests at all and whether U.S. forces should remain in Europe long-term.

Pace and sequencing. Even among those who agree on the end state, there is disagreement about how quickly rebalancing should occur and whether it should be tied to formal benchmarks or pursued through sustained diplomatic pressure. Precipitous withdrawal, some argue, creates instability; others contend that gradual timelines allow European governments to continue deferring action indefinitely.

The Ukraine variable. Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 complicated the burden-sharing debate. Some proponents of rebalancing argue the invasion vindicates their position - European states with direct exposure to Russian aggression did increase spending, proving the free-riding was always political rather than structural. Others were moved to moderate their timeline arguments, contending that active conflict on the European continent is not the moment to withdraw American engagement, but that the post-conflict period must produce a fundamentally different arrangement.

China as the primary driver. There is internal variation in how much weight proponents place on the Indo-Pacific reorientation argument. Hard realists and defense strategists tend to emphasize it heavily; fiscal conservatives and libertarians often find the free-riding argument self-sufficient without needing to invoke Asia at all.

• NATO - Main topic page
• NATO - US Indispensable Partner Viewpoint - The opposing view that American leadership of NATO remains essential and irreplaceable
• NATO - NATO Is Obsolete Viewpoint - The more radical position that NATO no longer serves a coherent strategic purpose
• NATO - NATO Expansion Viewpoint - Views on whether NATO should continue enlarging
• NATO History - Historical development of the alliance
• NATO Debate - Cross-viewpoint debate on NATO's purpose and future
• US Grand Strategy Debate
• US Foreign Policy - Restraint Viewpoint

1. North Atlantic Treaty Organization, “Defence Expenditure of NATO Countries (2014-2024),” NATO Public Diplomacy Division, 2024. https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_226465.htm
2. Mearsheimer, John J. The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. W.W. Norton, 2001. Updated edition 2014.
3. Posen, Barry R. Restraint: A New Foundation for U.S. Grand Strategy. Cornell University Press, 2014.
4. Eisenhower, Dwight D. Mandate for Change: The White House Years 1953-1956. Doubleday, 1963.
5. Bandow, Doug. “NATO at 75: Time for Europe to Defend Itself.” Cato Institute, April 2024. https://www.cato.org/commentary/nato-75-time-europe-defend-itself
6. Posen, Barry R. “Pull Back: The Case for a Less Activist Foreign Policy.” Foreign Affairs, January/February 2013.
7. Wales Summit Declaration, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, September 5, 2014. https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_112964.htm
8. Preble, Christopher A. The Power Problem: How American Military Dominance Makes Us Less Safe, Less Prosperous, and Less Free. Cornell University Press, 2009.
9. Mansfield, Mike. Senate Resolution 292, 92nd Congress, 1971. Congressional Record.
10. Paul, Rand. Floor Statement on NATO Authorization, U.S. Senate, various sessions. Congressional Record.