U.S. Taxpayers Still Subsidizing Bloated Welfare States | Cato @ Liberty

U.S. Taxpayers Still Subsidizing Bloated Welfare States | Cato @ Liberty
Last month, the British government announced plans to spend two percent of GDP on defense through 2020, meeting the NATO mandated level. 
This comes after months of nudging from the Obama administration that feared “if Britain doesn’t spend 2 percent on defense, then no one in Europe will.”
The reasoning is bizarre given that few nations were meeting this spending threshold to begin with. As I wrote in June:

In 2014, only Greece, Estonia, the U.S. and the U.K. spent as much as 2 percent of GDP on defense. Excepting NATO member Iceland, which is exempted from the spending mandates, the 23 other NATO members failed to spend even two cents of every dollar to defend themselves from foreign threats. And Greece only met the 2 percent threshold because their economy is falling faster than their military spending.

Perhaps things are shifting a bit among the NATO nations. Fear of Russia has prompted some members to announce increases to their defense spending.
Germany, which currently spends only 1.2 percent of its GDP on defense, pledged to increase its defense budget by 6.4 percent over the next five years.
Latvia and Lithuania will also increase their defense spending, reaching two percent of GDP by 2018 and 2020, respectively.

It’s comforting to hear some Europeans talking about taking their security more seriously, but whether they will follow through remains to be seen.
Either way, they will remain heavily subsidized by the United States for some time.
Cato’s latest infographic demonstrates just how far ahead the United States is in all measures of defense spending, and also documents how American security guarantees allow European governments to devote a far larger share of their spending to dubious domestic priorities. 
Put simply, U.S. taxpayers are subsidizing Europe’s bloated welfare states.

...The free ride could come to an end if Washington signaled that it wanted it to.
Alas, U.S. officials have been sending the opposite message. 
...Washington should stop deploying the U.S. military in ways that discourage these other countries from doing more. 
It is unreasonable to expect U.S. taxpayers to shoulder these burdens indefinitely.