Whether it’s the Russia-Ukraine war, or the Israeli-Hamas war, NATO remains a big part of U.S. decision-making. Indeed, the U.S.-led postwar alliance has lasted 75 years, and it’s fair to say that nearly everything the U.S. does overseas involves NATO, directly or indirectly. But increasingly, average Americans are uneasy about the alliance, the latest I&I/TIPP Poll shows.
A significant number of Americans, though not yet a majority, feel the burdens of the U.S.’ NATO leadership as unfairly distributed, according to the online I&I/TIPP Poll of 1,378 adults taken from Sept. 27-29
The first question was elemental: “Does the U.S. participation in NATO increase or decrease the likelihood of U.S. getting involved in a military conflict?”
Within NATO, the U.S. is always near the top in terms of military spending as a share of GDP. But this obscures the fact that U.S. funds are far and away the largest financial backing within the defense organization, accounting for 70% ($821.8 billion in 2022) of all military spending among the rest of NATO’s 31 members ($353.4 billion in 2022).
Right now, NATO is undergoing serious growing pains.
From 12 members initially, it now has 31. They include a large number of former Soviet-bloc nations, which joined following the collapse of communism in the early 1990s. They include the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania, Croatia, Montenegro and North Macedonia.
Most recently, Finland became a member, to be followed soon by Sweden, after Turkey gave its approval. Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, and Ukraine all have expressed a desire to join — mostly to counter-balance Russia’s growing aggressiveness in the region under Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The irony that NATO was founded mainly to oppose the Soviet bloc and now includes at least 15 of its former members isn’t lost on anyone, especially Putin himself. Foreign policy experts often talk about Russia’s “paranoia” about being encircled by the West and now, thanks largely to Putin, it seems to be happening.
Meanwhile, Turkey, a NATO linchpin, has recently been strongly criticized for the policies followed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He dragged his feet for months before finally letting Sweden join the NATO club.
But a greater concern about Erdogan is his apparent desire to be a powerbroker in the Mideast, especially among the hardline Islamist nations, and with the Russians, often putting him directly at odds with NATO policies.
