Posted on 08/22/2013 6:22:40 AM PDT by cunning_fish
Of all the arguments on the question of NATO expansion, it is particularly interesting to see anti-NATO campaigners attempts to articulate why growing the Atlantic Alliance is at odds with the purpose of an organization whose utility they are apparently unable to fathom. Unsurprisingly, the rhetorical gymnastics tend to quickly give way to misrepresentation as the contradictions become too difficult to manage. Such was the case with CATO Institute scholar Doug Bandow’s cri de coeur in the National Interest against the prospect of Georgian NATO membership.
Citing my April briefing in World Politics Review, Bandow somehow counts Georgia’s planned force modernizations as evidence that Tbilisi finds it “cheaper to campaign for a NATO security guarantee.” In reality, the Georgian defense ministry’s reforms should make the country better able to defend its borders, not less. The conscript-staffed, heavier force structure being phased out is an actual post-Soviet relic, as Bandow so often labels NATO. Scrapping this shambolic structure in favor of a professional, mobile, and Western-trained force, battle-hardened in Iraq and in Afghanistan’s unforgiving Helmand Province, provides far greater capability for Georgia’s territorial security and as a potential NATO asset
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalinterest.org ...
Let Georgia have our spot. What useful purpose does NATO serve us other than to drag us into crap like Lybia, Kosovo, and Syria?
NATO should have been considered a temporary expedient to contain the Soviet threat, not as a permanent entanglement for the US.
So the US would have been ok with Cuba being a member of the Warsaw Pact?
Because this basically is what allowing Georgia into NATO would be the equivalent of.
NATO belongs on the ash heap of history, ever since the end of the Cold War.
All NATO provides Europe now is an excuse to disarm and slash their own defense budgets because they know they can always go bawling to us.
No, while NATO might have some utility left admitting Georgia does nothing to enhance our security and will do nothing but needlessly piss off Moscow.
I’m all for letting Georgia in but first they have to clean up their own house. Atlanta is a hell hole!
:)
It seems like today it's a major US policy goal to aggravate Russia in every possible way, and for no good reason.
Russia is NOT the enemy any more. The major threats to the US, and to the West as a whole, are radical islam and then China. We should be courting Russia as an ally.
Heck, I'd admit Russia into NATO before I admitted Georgia.
I agree that Russia is not the enemy any more. Indeed, she has moved back in the direction of her heritage, undoing much of the damage that the Bolsheviks wrought. But the major threats to the United States & to the West as a whole are internal; they flow directly from idiotic premises that dominate the domestic Academic/Media complexes. Any external threats are only exploiting the intellectual confusion that now permeates Western societies.
Consider the collectivist/egalitarian mindset that dominates political & social discussion in much of the West: Compassion Or Compulsion?
Unless & until we defeat the ideological enemy within, we will remain ineffectual against any threat, social or economic, within, as well as the long-term efforts of potential enemies, without!
William Flax
Not sure which did the dragging in Kosovo, for example. My take at the time American Policy At The Crossroads was that Clinton & his soul-mate Tony Blair were using the Kosovo uprising against Serbia, as an excuse to change a NATO, rapidly becoming unnecessary, into a Fabian Internationalist equivalent of the original Atlantic Union concept (the 1930s era Fabian proposal).
There was considerable evidence for the interpretation.
That we ended up bombing Serbia in the pursuit was a cross between the merely insane & something infinitely worse.
William Flax
Anything that pisses off the Russians is the way to go in my book. Let Poland join as well, and then insert a defensive shield into both Poland and Georgia.
I am with Georgia on this one
NATO should be used to defend NATO countries not Syria or Lybia
Obama will have more leeway after the election...
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