Friends, my latest article is hot off the digital presses, and it's an argument for why NATO is making European and global security worse, not better -- and why the the U.S. should therefore withdraw from the alliance. I say it's about time those mealy-mouthed Eurocrats stand up straight and provide for their own defense! Who's with me?
NATO Has Lost Its Way
Way back in the
year 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was formed for the
excellent purpose of defending the West (meaning mainly Western
Europe) from attack from the USSR. Formally and legally, NATO was a
defensive military alliance. All members agreed that, if one of them
were attacked, all would rush to its defense. In practice, this bound
all Western Europeans together, forbade them from going to war with
one another (a rather important proviso, given recent
unpleasantness), and, most importantly, committed the the United
States to remain engaged in European security and to place all member
states of NATO under its nuclear umbrella.
There was, in a
sense, an implicit transaction here: the Europeans would acknowledge
and respect American military and strategic supremacy, even placing
their own forces (usually) under the command of an American “Supreme
Allied Commander”, and in return the U.S. would provide the bulk of
the armed forces and the financing that would keep Europe free.
This was, at the
time, a very elegant solution to an extremely pressing problem: the
aggressive posture of the Soviet Union, a conventional and nuclear
superpower and a communist pariah. By these methods, the security of
the West was maintained – if not exactly “guaranteed”, because
no one knows what would have happened if the Soviets had called
NATO's bluff – for the next 40+ years.
In
1989-91, the raison d'être
of NATO suddenly disappeared. The USSR released its grip on its
Eastern European satellites, which sloughed off communist
overlordship in record time, terminated the Warsaw Pact, and it even
officially dissolved itself, freeing its constituent “republics”
to become newly independent states. All of these states, moreover,
abandoned communism, demilitarized themselves (to varying degrees),
and established friendly relations with the West.
Now, at this
point, you would think that a defensive military alliance that had
been formed in opposition to the expansionist tendencies of an empire
that had entirely ceased to exist would...itself disband. If it chose
to wind up its operations slowly, out of an abundance of caution, you
would think that it nonetheless would – in line with its
commitments to the leaders of the new “Russian Federation” –
avoid any moves that would threaten to reignite old tensions, such as
expanding to the east.
You
would be wrong, however, because, almost as soon as the USSR's death
rites were performed, the Western political and military
establishment began to plot the enlargement of NATO – almost as if
growth, in itself, could counteract the newfound pointlessness of the
organization. Not for the first time, Western elites refused to take
“Yes!” for an answer from their erstwhile enemies. NATO expansion
was duly pursued, with the clear corollary that Russia would be
permanently unwelcome. The unmistakable message to the Russians was:
NATO is still in business, and its business – its only business –
is containing you.
It is in this context that the current war between Russia and
Ukraine should be viewed. American, Canadian, and European leaders,
having secured more than a dozen new members for the NATO Bloc in
Eastern Europe, decided to push even farther to the east. A coup was
engineered that overthrew the Russian-friendly administration in
Ukraine, and the political, military, intelligence, economic, and
cultural elite of the West committed itself to the seduction of
Ukraine and its incorporation into a now sprawling web of Western
dominance. Russia's timid response to previous waves of NATO/Western
expansion lulled these inveterate Russophobes into the naive
assumption that Ukraine, too, could be annexed without difficulty. We
all know what consequences this arrogant and shortsighted policy has
had for the people of Ukraine.
Two
things must be made absolutely clear: one is that NATO, for all the
bluster about it being as strong today as ever before, has literally
never
been put to any practical use. Throughout the Cold War, and in the
years since, it has never gone to war on behalf of any of its
members, which is its only formal and legal purpose. Its only
military operations to date have been symbolic contributions to
Western misadventures in places like the Balkans, Afghanistan, and
Libya, unconnected to its core responsibilities. It is still, to this
day, a defensive military alliance, even if it behaves sometimes more
like an expansionist empire.
Second, because of its defensive institutional focus, NATO has no
bonafide commitments in Ukraine, and no legal standing to intervene
in the conflict. Thus, NATO's support of mostly American, British,
and German military and economic aid to that country is purely
rhetorical, not practical. Just like during the Cold War, the
Europeans expect America to solve their perceived strategic and
military problems for them – but, unlike during the Cold War, this
time the U.S. is under no treaty obligations to oblige, since the
relevant “victim” of Russian aggression is a non-member state.
The lesson here is simple: NATO has long since outlived its
usefulness. In fact, NATO and the Western military alliance have, by
their aggressive, intemperate, and inept machinations in Ukraine,
placed both that country and all nations of the world in much greater
peril than they would have been in had Western leaders had the
foresight to disband NATO in the early 90s.
The only things that continued U.S. membership in NATO will achieve
are: the prolongation of unnecessary conflict in Eastern Europe, the
encouragement of Western Europe's most destructive fantasies about
its ability to dominate the entire continent, the financial
overcommitment of the United States to the provision of security to
various European countries wholly capable of achieving it (and paying
for it) themselves, and the stoking of a toxic animosity between
Russia and the West, which is quickly metastasizing into distrust and
resentment that most of the non-Western world feels towards the
United States and its European allies.
For all these reasons, the next president of the United States
should do what George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton did not have the
wisdom or the courage to do in the early 90s: he should withdraw the
U.S. from NATO. He should also suspend aid to Ukraine and
definitively end the program of Western strategic expansion that
began almost as soon as the Soviet Union fell apart.
For the first time in almost a hundred years, let us abandon the
architecture and the mindset of incessant conflict, and let us
instead give peace – or at least minding our own business – a
chance.
Dr.
Nicholas L. Waddy is an Associate Professor of History at SUNY Alfred
and blogs at: www.waddyisright.com.
He appears on the Newsmaker Show on WLEA 1480/106.9.
And here it is at World Net Daily:
https://www.wnd.com/2024/03/nato-lost-way-get/
***
In other news, the mainstream media is clutching its pearls over Donald Trump's colorful allusion to a "bloodbath" in the auto industry if he isn't reelected, because of Chinese competition. Well, as usual, the establishment journos are spinning these remarks to make DJT look like a bloodthirsty fascist maniac. To be fair, his exact wording is open to various interpretations, but the only one that leftists cotton to is the one that's the most scary, needless to say. The depths to which Trump's detractors will sink in the next few months to portray him as unhinged and dangerous will, we assume, set new records for mendacity and hyperbole, which is saying something, given the long record of willful distortions to which Trump has been subjected. Will any of it move those stubborn independents? Maybe. Of course, they've heard it all before, but we can't deny that even the most shameful lies acquire a certain currency in public discourse, if they're repeated often enough...
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/03/17/biden-campaign-establishment-media-attack-trump-with-fake-interpretation-of-bloodbath-comments-in-ohio-rally/
Finally, a Washington Post columnist is getting worked over by "progressives" after she had the temerity to suggest that it might be in the best interests of Democrats, and the country, if Kamala Harris were to make way for a more competent and politically popular running mate for Joe Biden. No kidding! It shocks me to the core that the Dems are seemingly hellbent on retaining BOTH of the clunkers at the top of their ticket. That's so unnecessary and reckless. They claim that nothing matters except keeping the demon Trump out of the White House. Well, if that's what they think, how about putting up a candidate (or two) that people actually want to vote for? But what do I know...
https://hotair.com/john-s-2/2024/03/16/post-columnist-calls-on-kamala-harris-to-step-aside-quickly-learns-why-you-cant-do-that-n3784830
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