A pair of Republican lawmakers voiced their support for the US exiting the North Atlantic alliance. Following a heated White House exchange between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last week, many members of the Washington-led bloc voiced their support for Ukraine and Zelensky. 

On Saturday Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) posed on X, “Get us out of NATO.” He was commenting on a pie chart that showed the breakdown of defense spending by members in the Cold War-era alliance. According to the chart, US military spending is 70% of total defense spending in NATO. The 2024 military budget for the US was $895 billion.The second highest spender is the UK at $70 billion.  

The US has long subsidized the defense of the NATO alliance. Prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, only seven of the bloc’s 30 members met the alliance’s requirement of spending 2% of GDP on the military. In 2024, NATO projected that 23 of 32 members would meet the minimum spending level. 

Posting in support of Sen. Lee, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) wrote, “NATO is a Cold War relic that needs to be relegated to a talking kiosk at the Smithsonian.”

NATO was founded in 1949 with 12 members. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the bloc slowly expanded eastward across the continent to include former Warsaw Pact members and Soviet republics. 

Moscow has complained that NATO expansion presented a threat to Russia. While Brussels claims that the bloc is a defensive alliance to protect its members from aggressive attacks, NATO has waged war in Eastern Europe, Afghanistan, and Libya over the past three decades. 

On Sunday, Trump adviser Elon Musk wrote on X, the social media platform he owns, “I always wondered why NATO continued to exist even though its nemesis and reason to exist, The Warsaw Pact, had dissolved.”

The day before, he responded “I agree” to a post that said, “It’s time to leave NATO and the UN.”