I think it would be good if Europe would finally wake up, ie the US formally withdrawing from Nato...
Regarding the direct funding of Nato the US and Germany both pays 15,8 percent each, other countries pays less, apparently this is determined by the Gross national income of each member nation but somehow capped so that Germany pays an equal share as the US even though the US GNI is much higher then Germanys?
https://www.nato.int/en/what-we-do/introduction-to-nato/funding-nato
Aside from that each member pays for its own military forces, which make up the vast majority of NATO’s total resources. And here the US share is obviously the biggest, thats simply because your military budget is so much higher then anybody elses.
Regarding the 80 000 service members that the US has in Europe, If I understand it correctly the
U.S. presence in Europe is not made up solely of combat soldiers. The United States counts
all military‑related personnel in its totals.
According to U.S. Army Europe and Africa (2024), the footprint includes:
- 38,500 military personnel (including about 14,000 rotational troops)
- 33,500 civilian employees (Department of the Army Civilians)
- 68,700 family members
- 8,700 local national employees
This means the American presence in Europe is a mixed ecosystem of uniformed troops, civilian specialists, technicians, administrative staff, support personnel, and their families — not just combat forces.
So for Europe to make up for this we would then need to add 38,500 more military personal if those numbers are correct? I dont think that would be impossible to do...considering that the standing forces of the european Nato members are about 1,9 million soldiers:
- Turkey: 481,000
- Poland: 216,000
- France: 205,000
- Germany: 186,000
- Italy: 171,000
- United Kingdom: 138,000
- Spain: 117,000
- Greece: 111,000
- Romania: 67,000
- Netherlands: 42,000
- Finland: 31,000
- Czech Republic: 30,000
- Portugal: 28,000
- Sweden: 15,000
Obviously we would also need to make up for the US contribution in Strategic airlift, Intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. Probably also logistics and perhaps also naval power? The question is if Nato without the US would need a true global blue water navy? Assuming the mission is to protect against Russia and not against for example China I mean...the European navies (UK, France, Italy, Spain, Turkey, Norway, Sweden, etc.) should be more than capable of dominating the Baltic, North Sea, Mediterranean, and Black Sea against the russians.
I think this can be done but of course it will take time and the sooner that Trump formally declares that the US will leave Nato we can start build it up for real...unfortunately I think that some european politicians would like to fool themselves into believing that they can wait for Trumps tenure to end and hope that someone more Nato friendly to be elected next.
