Posted on 11/26/2019 6:57:37 AM PST by Kaslin
A week from now, the 29 member states of "the most successful alliance in history" will meet to celebrate its 70th anniversary. Yet all is not well within NATO.
Instead of a "summit," the gathering, on the outskirts of London, has been cut to two days. Why the shortened agenda?
Among the reasons, apprehension that President Donald Trump might use the occasion to disrupt alliance comity by again berating the Europeans for freeloading on the U.S. defense budget.
French President Emmanuel Macron, on the 100th anniversary of the World War I Armistice, described NATO as having suffered "brain death." Macron now openly questions the U.S. commitment to fight for Europe and is talking about a "true European Army" with France's nuclear deterrent able to "defend Europe alone."
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose nation spends 1.4% of GDP on defense and has relied on the U.S. and NATO to keep Russia at bay since the Cold War began, is said to be enraged at the "disruptive politics" of the French president.
Also, early in December, Britain holds national elections. While the Labour Party remains committed to NATO, its leader, Jeremy Corbyn, is no Clement Attlee, who took Britain into NATO at its birth in 1949.
Corbyn has questioned NATO's continued relevance in the post-Cold War era. A potential backer of a new Labour government, Nicola Sturgeon of the Scottish National Party, is demanding the closing of Britain's Trident submarine base in Scotland as a precondition of her party's support for Labour in Parliament.
Also present in London will be NATO ally Turkey's President Recep Erdogan.
Following the 2016 coup attempt, Erdogan has purged scores of thousands from his army and regime, jailed more journalists than any other authoritarian, purchased Vladimir Putin's S-400 missile system as Turkey's air defense, and ordered the U.S. forces out of his way as he invaded northern Syria, killing Kurdish fighters who did the bleeding and dying in the U.S.-led campaign to crush the ISIS caliphate.
During the Cold War, NATO enjoyed the widespread support of Americans and Europeans, and understandably so. The USSR had 20 divisions in Germany, surrounded West Berlin, and occupied the east bank of the Elbe, within striking distance of the Rhine.
But that Cold War is long over. Berlin is the united free capital of Germany. The Warsaw Pact has been dissolved. Its member states have all joined NATO. The Soviet Union split apart into 15 nations. Communist Yugoslavia splintered into seven nations.
As a fighting faith, communism is dead in Europe. Why then are we Americans still over there?
Since the Cold War, we have doubled the size of NATO. We have brought in the Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania but not Finland or Sweden. We have committed ourselves to fight for Slovenia, Croatia, Albania and Montenegro but not Serbia, Bosnia or North Macedonia.
Romania and Bulgaria are NATO allies but not Moldova or Belarus.
George W. Bush kept us out of the 2008 Russia-Georgia clash over South Ossetia and Abkhazia. And Barack Obama refused to send lethal aid to help Ukraine retrieve Crimea, Luhansk or Donetsk, though Sen. John McCain wanted the United States to jump into both fights.
In the House Intel Committee's impeachment hearings, foreign service officers spoke of "Russian aggression" against our Ukrainian "ally" and our "national security" being in peril in this fight.
But when did Ukraine become an ally of the United States whose territorial wars we must sustain with military aid if not military intervention?
When did Kyiv's control of Crimea and the Donbass become critical to the national security of the United States, when Russia has controlled Ukraine almost without interruption from Catherine the Great in the 18th century to Mikhail Gorbachev in the late 20th century?
Among the reasons Trump is president is that he raised provocative questions about NATO and Russia left unaddressed for three decades, as U.S. policy has been on cruise control since the Cold War.
And these unanswered questions are deadly serious ones.
Do we truly believe that if Russia marched into Estonia, the U.S. would start attacking the ships, planes and troops of a nation armed with thousands of tactical and strategic nuclear weapons?
Would NATO allies Spain, Portugal and Italy declare war on Russia?
In 1914 and 1939, in solidarity with the mother country, Britain, Canada declared war on Germany. Would Justin Trudeau's Canada invoke NATO and declare war on Putin's Russia -- for Estonia or Latvia?
Under NATO, we are now committed to go to war for 28 nations. And the interventionists who took us into Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen want U.S. war guarantees extended to other nations even closer to Russia.
One day, one of these war guarantees is going to be called upon, and we may find that the American people were unaware of that commitment, and are unwilling to honor it, especially if the consequence is a major war with a nuclear power
“More important would France and Germany support the US if we were attacked by Russia or China? I doubt it.”
Not a chance
Macron now openly questions the U.S. commitment to fight for Europe”
Please do!
If you people were putting serious time and money into your own forces, you wouldn’t need us.
110 years ago you didn’t.
That's the narrative.
After the USSR imploded, NATO went looking for a reason to exist. The Russian army today is roughly 10% of the size of the one when the wall fell.
NATO is an immense jobs program for the bureaucrats the EU loves to churn out. There are 4000 people working at NATO HQ. WE pay their salaries. Their main function is to funnel US dollars into countless other projects. Ukraine is probably a good example.
NATO does nothing but waste US money.
(in millions)
United States 730,149
United Kingdom 60,376
Germany 54,113
France 50,659
Italy 24,482
Canada 21,885
Turkey 13,919
Spain 13,156
Netherlands 12,419
Poland 11,971
Norway 7,179
Romania 5,043
Belgium 4,921
We pay almost twice as much as all the other members combined. They are no longer the impoverished nations smoking after WWII. The main enemy is gone. And the other purpose is keeping a problem from arising in Germany.But we and all of Europe support islam pouring in by the millions. So what the hell is nato for?
Nato ceased to be functional in 1973.
Or 1974, when Turkey invaded Cyprus.
Dead wrong.
We told them that last year.
This year we should keep our word.
There you have it.
After the monarchies were killed, Europe has been free from war for 75 years or so. The Europeans are deprived of genetically capable warriors.
Nato is no longer a force. America is the force
Remember when all of our NATO allies were falling all over themselves to come to our aid on September 12, 2001?
I don’t either.
But on pointe.
I was stationed at Geilenkirchen NATO Air Base for four years. NATO AWACS. Fantastic assignment with all (not France) NATO members present. I ran the “Field Registration Station” (car registration and licensing), and the member nations except Netherlands and Germany, were authorized to use our station for their cars. They used it as a way of buying tax free cars, registering tax-free vehicles through US offices, and then taking those new cars and selling them back home at hugely increased prices. I tried to put a stop to it, but was told to follow the Memorandum of Understanding with the other nations, and then shut up and color. That assignment was a definite money-maker for Italian, Turkish, and Greek forces! It was not unusual for them to register at least 20 new cars a year.
Why is Turkey in NATO?
Turkey is in NATO, buying military equipment from Russia instead of the US. With friends like that ...
Thanks for this info: “Turkey is in NATO, buying military equipment from Russia instead of the US. With friends like that ...”
With allies like this we don’t need enemies.
The Armenian genocide did happen but we deny it officially. The truth will set you free.
A third of the troop deaths in Afghanistan were from US allies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_casualties_in_Afghanistan
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