WASHINGTON – Today, Rep. Mark Green (R-TN), former Army special operations flight surgeon and West Point graduate, introduced the Allied Burden Sharing Report Act of 2019 in the U.S. House designed to strengthen the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and America’s other treaty alliances.
Rep. Green introduced this bill the same day NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg addressed a joint session of Congress ahead of NATO’s 70th anniversary on Thursday, April 4th.
“NATO is indispensable to America’s past, present, and future,” said Rep. Mark Green. “This bill would encourage our allies to fully fund our alliance, so that together we can preserve, strengthen and potentially expand NATO.”
The Allied Burden Sharing Report Act of 2019 is designed to strengthen U.S. alliances by requiring the Department of Defense to resume providing a report on valuable information about the state of the common defense. The report, initially mandated by the 1985 NDAA, would highlight contributions from all nations with whom the U.S. has Collective Defense Arrangements and, as later added into the report, the nations of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). The report was sent to Congress until 2004.
Green continued, “President Trump’s National Defense Strategy has correctly identified near-peers Russia and China as growing threats to our national interest. NATO and our other treaty alliances are critical to deterring their aggression as well as the ongoing threats by non-state actors. The goal of this legislation is to ensure these alliances remain strong and effective.”
The report including the common defense contributions of NATO countries, GCC countries and other treaty allies -- Australia, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, Thailand, the Philippines and signatories of the Rio Treaty -- would be submitted annually to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the Senate Armed Services Committee, the House Armed Services Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Sen. Mike Lee introduced identical legislation in the U.S. Senate Monday.
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