This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, April 18th, 2016.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Why are we spending billions of dollars to reassure our European allies?

Isn't the billions in U.S. funding for NATO enough?

And why does this particular reassurance funding mean putting additional troops closer to the

Balkan border with Russia?

Brad Stapleton, a visiting research fellow in defense and

foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, explains.

Basically the European Reassurance Initiative is an initiative that President Obama announced in June 2014

following Russia's intervention in Ukraine in which the United States pledged a billion dollars to reassure European allies

that the United States would uphold its commitments under Article 5 of the North Atlantic

Treaty to defend them in the face of Russian aggression.

All right, now Article 5 of the NATO Charter, that's been invoked once that's right following September 11th

what is our general relationship with these other NATO countries the United States

pays a disproportionate share of NATO's funding.

That's right. I think U.S. defense spending ranges somewhere around 3.5% GDP.

NATO members are supposed to spend at least 2% of GDP.

I think this past year only five NATO members,

including the United States, met that threshold.

So most of the other members of the Alliance

are spending less than 2% of GDP on defense.

So specifically this reassurance initiative then, what is the goal?

...