'Formerly it was just the U.S. footing the lion share of the NATO bill.' This is quite unfair portrayal of the situation. It is always portrayed as if US is pa

'Formerly it was just the U.S. footing the lion share of the NATO bill.' This is quite unfair portrayal of the situation. It is always portrayed as if US is paying biggest share of the tab - like if we were all paying for shared commitments. However in reality it's more everyone going out for a fancy dinner and one guy buying loads of dishes that turn out to taste terrible, or are left uneaten - and then bragging abiut paying the most. You can imagine that the budget would be quote a bit smaller without the war in Iraq, which was tremendously expensive, so was F-22 programm and littoral combat ship programms that came to nothing, etc. Clearly we have spent a lot of money bombing some poor people that should have never been harmed, and creating regime change that turned out to be a mistake. Like does anyone remember that time US installed a Fashist regime in Greece? Dont forget thaylt Nato's budget, without US, is still larger than Russia's or China's - i am not sure how much is enough, but there is still a lot of rich countries spending money.