June 23, 2014 12:29PM # NATO — What Is It Good For? By [Justin Logan](https://www.cato.org/people/justin-logan) --- SHARE With [continuing instability in Ukraine](http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/ukrainian-army-fights-rebels-and-neglect/2014/06/21/8d6899ff-6f87-4281-b506-015bb3e9c8cb_story.html), and Poland’s foreign minister Radek Sikorski allegedly using [vulgar and racist language to disparage the US-Poland alliance](http://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/polish-foreign-minister-we-gave-the-us-a-blowjob-got-nothing), now’s as good a time as any to evaluate what NATO does for Americans. Not much, I argue in [*Foreign Policy* (online)](http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/06/20/think_again_nato). As I conclude: > NATO has produced some benefits, but the costs to the United States — tens of billions per year, validating Russian nationalist narratives about the West, and infantilizing its European partners — are often ignored. Washington should cut the Europeans loose, and encourage them to cooperate with each other on European security matters. With a combined GDP larger than the United States and a benign threat environment, Europeans are capable of defending themselves, but won’t until Washington makes them. Please [give it a read](http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/06/20/think_again_nato). ##### Related Tags [Defense and Foreign Policy](https://www.cato.org/defense-foreign-policy) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).