Let NATO’s Free-Riders Fight WWIII

If the socialists of Canada and Europe wish to fight Russia, they should do so without us.

J.B. Shurk | September 6, 2026

Treasury secretary Scott Bessent gave an interview during the G20 gathering in Asheville, North Carolina, in which he calmly diagnosed Canada’s self-inflicted problems: “We’ve had a ‘free rider’ problem with Canada,” he observed.  

“Canada had a great military.  They were right there at the forefront on the beaches of D-Day, and what the Canadian government has done to the Canadian Armed Forces, if you look at the ranks of NATO spending, they are near the very bottom, like they’re cellar dwellers around with Spain in terms of their military spending to GDP.”  Instead of investing in its military and national security, Canada spent that money on “global warming” fantasies and welfare goodies while taking advantage of America’s “free” security services.

In economics, free-rider problems arise when people benefit from shared resources without fairly paying for them.  In the context of military security, almost every member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has been free-riding on the United States for decades.  Even though treaty obligations require each nation to pay its fair share for the common defense of the military alliance, Canada and European countries have depended upon American taxpayers to shoulder the burden of providing security for most of the West.  

Recently, some members have touted imaginary “increases” in defense spending by relabeling non-military projects as “military” expenditures.  Canada’s Mark Carney, for instance, has created an investment bank that uses taxpayer dollars to fund Ukrainian reconstruction projects and “climate change” initiatives.  Although the central-banker-turned-prime-minister utilizes this investment fund to pay for pet projects that have nothing to do with national security, Canada counts every monetary transaction as part of its NATO defense spending obligations.  

The United States has allowed this free-rider problem to persist for many reasons.  NATO was birthed in the wake of WWII and the start of the Cold War with the Soviet Union.  As such, maintaining peace in Europe and providing effective........

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