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Victor Davis Hanson: Farewell, NATO - America's Cold War alliance with Europe has ceased to be a...
National Review Online ^ | August 28, 2008 | Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on 08/28/2008 9:25:44 AM PDT by neverdem









Farewell, NATO
America's Cold War alliance with Europe has ceased to be a fruitful one.

By Victor Davis Hanson

When I was growing up in the 1960s, we had a majestic Santa Rosa plum orchard on my family’s farm. The trees were 40 years old and had grown to over 20 feet high. My grandfather would proudly recall how its once-bumper crops of big, sweet plums had helped him survive the Depression and a postwar fall in agricultural prices.

But by the 1960s, the towering, verdant trees were more a park than a profitable orchard. The aged limbs had grown almost too high to pick, the fruit there too few and too small to pack profitably. Yet my grandfather simply could not bring himself to bulldoze the money-losing, unproductive old orchard.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is like that noble Santa Rosa orchard. We all remember how NATO once saved Western Europe from the onslaught of global communism. Its success led to the present European Union. The Soviets were kept at bay. The Americans were engaged, while the postwar German colossus remained peaceful. A resurgent Europe followed, secure enough to prosper while complacent enough to slash defense expenditures and expand entitlements.

After the victory of the Cold War, NATO’s raison d’etre became more problematic — even as its theoretical reach now extended all the way to the old borders of the Soviet Union. Yet, without the Soviet menace that had prompted the alliance, what justified the continued need for transatlantic collective defense?

We saw NATO’s paralysis in the European inaction over Serbia’s ethnic cleansing in the 1990s. When NATO finally acted to remove Slobodan Milosevic in 1999, the much-criticized intervention proved little more than a de facto American air campaign.

Article Five of NATO’s charter requires its members to come to the aid of any fellow nation that is attacked. But when it was invoked after 9/11 for the first time, NATO didn’t risk much — other than a few European gestures such as sending surveillance planes to fly above America — to fight Islamic terrorists abroad.

Australia, a non-NATO member, is doing far more to fight the Taliban than either Germany or Spain. Many Western European countries have national directives that prevent aggressive offensives against the Taliban and other Afghan insurgents, overriding NATO military doctrine.

Take away Canada, the United Kingdom, and the U.S. from Afghanistan and the collective NATO force would collapse in hours.

The enemy in Afghanistan knows this. The savvy and sinister Taliban just targeted the French contingent. It figured the loss of ten French soldiers might have a greater demoralizing effect on French public opinion than Verdun did in 1916, when France suffered nearly a half-million casualties in heroically stopping the German advance. But 90 years ago, France kept on fighting to win a war. Now, the French parliament may meet to discuss withdrawal altogether.


There is much talk that, had Georgia been a NATO member, Russia might not have attacked it. The truth is far worse. Even if Georgia had belonged to NATO, no European armed forces would have been willing to die for Tbilisi. Remember the furor in 2003 when some NATO countries — angry at the United States — tried to preempt support to member Turkey had Saddam’s Iraq retaliated against Ankara for the American invasion to remove him?

The well-intended but ossified alliance keeps offering promises to new members that are weaker, poorer, and in more dangerous and distant places — while its old, smug founding states are ever more unlikely to honor them.

In the last two decades, the safety of a rich Western Europe also spawned a new continental creed of secularism, socialism, and anti-Americanism that embraced the untruth that the United Nations kept the peace while the United States endangered it. But if a disarmed continent counted on continued expensive American protection, then it was suicidal to mock its protector.

If NATO dissolves, Europe will at least receive a much-needed reality check. It might even re-learn to invest in its own defense. European relations with America would be more grounded in reality, and the United States could still forge individual ties with countries that wished to be true partners, not loud caricatures of allies.

That stately Santa Rosa orchard? When it finally was toppled, uprooted, and cut up, we all nearly wept — but my grandfather had new varieties of plum trees planted in its place by the next spring.

— Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a recipient of the 2007 National Humanities Medal and the 2008 Bradley Prize.

© 2008 TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.



TOPICS: Editorial; Foreign Affairs; Politics/Elections; Russia; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: afghanistan; alqaeda; geopolitics; nato; taliban; vdh; victordavishanson
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1 posted on 08/28/2008 9:25:45 AM PDT by neverdem
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To: neverdem

Time to plant new trees and throw the old ones on the fire.

Colonel, USAFR


2 posted on 08/28/2008 9:29:47 AM PDT by jagusafr ("Bugs, Mr. Rico! Zillions of 'em!" - Robert Heinlein)
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To: Tolik

VDH


3 posted on 08/28/2008 9:32:17 AM PDT by neverdem (I'm praying for a Divine Intervention.)
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To: neverdem
Just imagine if we had stepped in to halt the 'ethnic Albinian' from their ethnic cleansing instead of deposing Slobodan Milosevic.

I wonder if 9/11 would even have taken place had we halted the spread of Islam then, in that place, at least when we had the chance.

4 posted on 08/28/2008 9:36:42 AM PDT by the anti-liberal
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To: neverdem

Well written, sir. Well written.


5 posted on 08/28/2008 9:36:57 AM PDT by Captain Rhino (The best way to calm the delusions of grandeur in the energy cartel is to stop needing their energy)
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To: the anti-liberal
I wonder if 9/11 would even have taken place had we halted the spread of Islam then, in that place, at least when we had the chance.

You can not be serious. LOL

6 posted on 08/28/2008 9:45:09 AM PDT by 1rudeboy
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To: neverdem

VDH nails another one!


7 posted on 08/28/2008 9:51:21 AM PDT by F-117A (Ne nuntium necare)
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To: the anti-liberal
I wonder if 9/11 would even have taken place had we halted the spread of Islam then, in that place, at least when we had the chance.

Today's most clueless FR statement.

8 posted on 08/28/2008 10:02:02 AM PDT by wideawake (Why is it that those who call themselves Constitutionalists know the least about the Constitution?)
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To: 1rudeboy
Yes, I am serious.

And I really do wonder - apparently you don't, suit yourself.

9 posted on 08/28/2008 10:03:37 AM PDT by the anti-liberal
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To: wideawake

Help me out then - tell me how it’s clueless.


10 posted on 08/28/2008 10:04:31 AM PDT by the anti-liberal
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To: the anti-liberal
Help me out then - tell me how it’s clueless.

(1) Kosovo did not represent a "spread of Islam" - those Muslims had been living there for decades - as the old YR stats attest.

(2) Al-Qaeda has never mentioned America's religiously neutral stance in the Balkans as a contributing factor to their anti-American violence.

(3) The 9/11 conspirators had already been planning their attack for more than a year when we pushed out Milosevic.

(4) Muslim terrorists had already targeted the WTC six years before.

Your "theory" is just ridiculous on its face.

11 posted on 08/28/2008 10:15:44 AM PDT by wideawake (Why is it that those who call themselves Constitutionalists know the least about the Constitution?)
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To: the anti-liberal
The policies of Bush I and Clinton certainly aided the rise of AQ in Bosnia!

In his book Unholy Terror, John R. Schlinder lays it out! Schindler was NSA’s top Balkans expert.

"This book reveals the role that radical Islam played in the Bosnian conflict of the 1990s--and the ill-considered part that American policy in that war played in al-Qa’ida’s growth. Schindler explores a truth long hidden from view: that, like Afghanistan in the 1980s, Bosnia in the 1990s became a training ground for the mujahidin. Unholy Terror at last exposes the shocking story of how bin Laden successfully exploited the Bosnian conflict for his own ends--and of how the U. S. Government gave substantial support to his unholy warriors, leading to blowback of epic proportions."

12 posted on 08/28/2008 10:38:56 AM PDT by F-117A (Ne nuntium necare)
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To: wideawake; the anti-liberal
(1) Kosovo did not represent a "spread of Islam" - those Muslims had been living there for decades - as the old YR stats attest.

Not just decades...but centuries. Since the end of the 14th century, in fact.

13 posted on 08/28/2008 10:40:39 AM PDT by okie01 (THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA: Ignorance on Parade)
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To: neverdem

Bush and other neo cons have been correct.

Our only hope has always been coalitions of the willing.

Saddling ourselves with the traditional allies has been a dismal failure.

Coalitions of the willing are a growing and winning proposition. As noted by VDH Poland and Australia are better allies than anything we have in NATO. In fact, what binds NATO and other traditional allies together more than anything is their snobbish contempt for America.

A strong axis of democracies could exist with South Korea, Australia, India, Poland, Georgia, Ukraine, and other like minded nations.


14 posted on 08/28/2008 11:02:18 AM PDT by lonestar67 (Its time to withdraw from the War on Bush-- your side is hopelessly lost in a quagmire.)
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To: F-117A
Out of the 19 9/11 hijackers, two claimed to friends or family that they had combat experience in Bosnia. Neither of them joined Al-Qaeda until after they had left Bosnia and gone to Afghanistan.

Eleven claimed to friends or family that they had combat experience in Chechnya.

None had any involvement in Kosovo.

Claiming that the NATO bombing during the Kosovo crisis in 1999 inspired Al-Qaeda to attack the US in 2001 is ridiculous.

A number of the hijackers were already in the US plotting their attack in 1997.

If any military hotspot in the 1990s was a training ground for Al-Qaeda operatives in the US it was Chechnya - several of the hijackers had been in Chechnya months before the attacks.

Not one hijacker could credibly be claimed to have recieved either money or training from the US in Bosnia.

15 posted on 08/28/2008 11:08:07 AM PDT by wideawake (Why is it that those who call themselves Constitutionalists know the least about the Constitution?)
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To: jagusafr

I have to agree.


16 posted on 08/28/2008 1:07:25 PM PDT by Paul Ross (Ronald Reagan-1987:"We are always willing to be trade partners but never trade patsies.")
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To: neverdem; Lando Lincoln; quidnunc; .cnI redruM; SJackson; dennisw; monkeyshine; Alouette; ...


    Victor Davis Hanson Ping ! 

       Let me know if you want in or out.

Links:    FR Index of his articles:  http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=victordavishanson
                His website: http://victorhanson.com/
                NRO archive: http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson-archive.asp
                Pajamasmedia:
   http://victordavishanson.pajamasmedia.com/

17 posted on 08/28/2008 1:10:48 PM PDT by Tolik
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To: neverdem

Yes NATO has become as useless (dangerous?) as the UN!!


18 posted on 08/28/2008 1:23:45 PM PDT by aquila48
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To: neverdem; Tolik

I have been for the dissolution of NATO for years.

It simply coddles the Europeans into furthering their nanny state.

I’m not too sure of the UK contribution either.


19 posted on 08/28/2008 1:43:44 PM PDT by dervish ("we are all Georgians")
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To: lonestar67

“what binds NATO and other traditional allies together more than anything is their snobbish contempt for America”

No, it is their willingness to take our handouts in the form of military might protecting them. Then they spend their money on social welfare programs.


20 posted on 08/28/2008 1:47:39 PM PDT by dervish ("we are all Georgians")
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