Cheers!
AAahhhh ! Bless you !!!!
I’VE BEEN SAYING THAT FOR 20 YEARS AND PEOPLE THINK I’M NUTS !
The socialism ONLY worked because they bore no risk for their own national security.
America was backstopping them - if anything happened, America was there to jump in and protect them.
That - and this is huge and subtle, such that even the U.S. Presidents like Ike did not understand the long term - is why NATO was a ridiculous mistake from day 1.
Immediately after WWII, the rebuilding is one thing, that was fine because the Europeans ARE the same as Americans, i.e., those that came from Europe and who ran everything in America before wWII. Euros were not going to try to attack us and they ONLY needed some capital, not to be “taught modernity” to keep them from killing us by the thousands in terror plots. In a word, they were “sane”.
But... beyond rebuilding, I would have been absolutely dead serious clear with their leaders, and publicly - YOU FREEKING IDIOTS ARE ON YOUR OWN TO DEFEND YOURELF AGAINST THE RED MENACE.
Of course if the cr@p hits the fan we’re there, but our published policy should have been to let them know that THEY need to build a massive military and their aim should be parity without counting on our forces. The fact that there would have been NO defense treaty, in essence, NO guarantee, would have made them be defense-conscious. This would have informed their government budgets and national mentality for decades.
Instead, with NATO, we were carrying the log in the middle, and they just had one hand under one end. Their military guys have the fighting spirit, but most of their governments and the rest of society are “entitled” to U.S. military security. Now that Russia has rebranded, some mockingly talk about not having a need for superpower assistance. Regardless of what I see on the horizon, standing around with my pants down is not smart.
The critical cause of WWII (the reason it was not averted) was the fact that they did not take war preparation seriously and were not proactive in policy. If you’re truly scared, you prepare and are proactive, and if a nation really gets that it’s ultimately on it’s own, it’s got enough healthy fear to motivate itself.