NATO Is Getting More Unbalanced

V ladimir Putin has made permanently barring Ukraine from joining NATO and ensuring its neutral status one of his chief announced war aims. And the armed portion of conflict between Russia and Ukraine began in earnest in the years after NATO announced an intention that one day Ukraine would be a member state — a portentous move given that the nation hosted Russia’s most important naval base, at Sevastopol.

It has been said that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is a disaster because it breathed new life into NATO, and inspired Finland and Sweden to apply for membership, which has been swiftly granted. But so far, it seems the war in Ukraine is highlighting the very problems that were undermining NATO — namely, the unwillingness of Europeans to pony up money for their own defense and a certain queasy anxiety across European capitals about the enthusiasms and foreign-policy idealism of the United States.

Last week the Biden administration announced another $3 billion in military aid to Ukraine, focusing on medium-term defense weapons. This is in addition to earlier aid packages. By May of this year the U.S. had sent over $54 billion of aid to Ukraine. The big package, approved by Congress, had $19 billion for direct military support, $16 billion for economic support and humanitarian relief, and $2 billion for support of NATO allies. There have been periodic top-offs. A $1 billion package in June. Another $775 million in mid August. And now this latest $3 billion.

The German government has spent just $2.5 billion on aid to Ukraine, a substantial portion of which goes to reimbursing other EU member states for costs incurred to them for supporting Ukraine. Much of the rest is in the form of giving Ukraine matériel that Germany then replenishes by spending on its own defense industries. The United Kingdom, the world’s fifth-largest economy, has contributed $2.3 billion since the war began in February. By the start of August, Canada had pledged a little over $900 million in aid. It was outdone by Poland, the only other significant contributor, at $1.8 billion.

This is a war on Europe’s doorstep, one that sent millions of refugees across the continent. The EU, taken together with the U.K., has a comparable GDP to the United States, and yet the United States is spending vastly more on this war. By the end of the summer, U.S. spending on the war in Ukraine will have outpaced that of Europe’s in every dimension.

Though it could be said that European countries are paying for the war in other ways. By tearing up long-term cheap energy contracts with Russia, in the hopes of replacing them someday with energy from other sources, Europeans are now paying Russia through the nose to keep the lights on, sending Russian energy revenues soaring.

Meanwhile, as soaring energy prices in Europe attract more U.S. energy exports, the Biden administration is contemplating a strategy of hoarding the oil for ourselves, via export controls.

PHOTOS: Russian-Ukraine War

How long can this alliance hold up in just this way? Perhaps quite a bit longer. The U.S. proved with its global sanctions and use of SWIFT banking as a weapon that it is willing to aggressively use the advantages of the global-dollar system as a weapon of war.

But it is the other side of the bargain that looks treacherous. Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orban, pointed out in a recent speech that, far from destabilizing Putin, we’ve seen since the war started that “the British, the Italian, the Bulgarian, and the Estonian governments have fallen.” And this is before what is looking to be a long, costly, and, in some places, cold winter.

Is Joe Biden willing to share the burden with Europe on energy costs? To keep our Ukraine policy going, Brussels may tell him that he has to do so. And then the financial math on the alliance really goes sideways. Just in time for Donald Trump to begin reminding people: I told you so.

Editor’s note: This article originally stated that the U.S. and EU have comparable GDPs; it has been corrected to reflect that the EU and the U.K. together have a GDP comparable to the U.S.