NATO's 21st-Century Value

Townhall.com ^ | April 3, 2019 | Austin Bay

[Kaslin]

On April 4, the NATO alliance turns 70. Representatives from the alliance's current 29 member nations will meet in Washington to commemorate the occasion.

There's much to commemorate, as well as current issues to anticipate and address.

Arguably, NATO is the world's longest-lived military collective defense alliance.

The term "collective defense" matters in this preeminent estimate. In a collective defense alliance, allies pledge to defend each against external military threats.

When NATO turned 61 in 2010, the Brookings Institution concluded that 61 birthdays made it one of the six longest-lived military alliances since 1500 A.D. I'll try to minimize the footnote work and collapse historical debates. The Franco-Turkish alliance (established 1536) ostensibly persisted until 1914 (World War I), though as the 19th century elapsed, this alliance had expired. At times France and Ottoman Turkey fought as allies (Crimean War). However, the core deal was respect for the other's interests, not mutual defense. France and Britain's Entente Cordiale (1904) remains in effect, but when inked, it was basically an agreement to end their quarrels. 1919's ABC Pact (Argentina, Brazil and Chile) is nominally in effect, but it's a collective security deal, a notch down from defense. The UN (1945) is a collective security arrangement, not a collective defense alliance. The Organization of American States (1948) aspires to collective defense. But that aspiration rates a sad sigh.

NATO was anything but a laugh. It won the Cold War with the USSR, and since it won while avoiding thermonuclear devastation, it won brilliantly.

Yet as the Cold War waned, NATO death notices waxed. The obit crowd judged NATO a dinosaur of the bipolar world that they swore disappeared when the USSR shrank to Russia.

The obits reprised a Mark Twain one-liner. When Twain learned that a New York newspaper had published his obit, he wisecracked, "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated."

Why did the obit writers get it wrong? Some were schooled on reductive headlines focused on the Washington-Moscow face-off, so they missed the complexities. Others were ideologues bogged by reductive reasoning; it's all communism versus capitalism! However, the geopolitical world has never been bipolar. Our world is fragmented, with multipolar eddies vexing Great Powers that rise and -- unless they adapt to new conditions -- fall, no matter their creeds or politics.

NATO adapts. During the 1990s, it became a collective security alliance and a collective defense alliance. Fighting international terrorism (9/11) and "out of region" contingency operations to deter a threat are collective security operations.

Russia attacked Georgia (not a NATO member) in 2008. The Russian bear was reviving.

n 2010 (date of Brookings report), the Kremlin declared that NATO's enlargement was Russia's principal threat.

Be your own worst enemy, Vlad. NATO's Article 5 collective defense guarantee exemplifies the hard Cold War diplomacy that has 21st-century value.

Article 5's nickname has a French literary connection: "the three musketeers clause." One for all and all for one, the dashing musketeers affirmed. Article 5 says that "an armed attack against one or more of them ... shall be considered an attack against them all."

Article 5 has been invoked just once: the day after al-Qaida's 9/11 attacks on the U.S.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has made degrading NATO a foreign policy goal. Why? Because NATO deters his ambitions. Article 5 is the core of it, but not the whole story.

Finland and Sweden (so-called neutrals) know NATO is vital. Truth is they've known for 70 years. A substantial number of citizens in Finland and Sweden support NATO membership.

Seventy years of NATO still matters, to Europe and the U.S., because an alliance coordinating the defense of democratic nations still serves several critical purposes. Fighting and winning complex belligerencies requires coordination.

[allendale]

The globalists achieved their goal. The Russian collusion hoax and the Muller probe kept Trump off balance and prevented him from following his good instincts. Otherwise by now the US, in its own best interests, would have largely disengaged from NATO and its huge expense and commitments.

[DesertRhino]

A total farce. NATO is not a defense pact. It’s a massive bureaucracy that provides massive employment to large numbers of Eurocrats. Now it is an expansionist force invading it’s neighbors to expand the political and economic goals of the EU.

And the Article 5 invocation after 9/11? A very strong case can be made that Russia gave us more assistance than ANY Nato “ally”.

For extra fun, I would like a reason why Americans should spend blood and treasure to defend Europe from anything these days. They are diametrically opposed to everything America stands for. They hate free speech, republican government, guns, individual freedom, voting, free enterprise...you name it.

[Spirochete]

They are diametrically opposed to everything America stands for

Ditto. Particularly the UK, which has devolved into an Orwellian dystopia that persecutes dissidents and has now confined a whistleblower to a mental hospital, with no access to lawyers.

A millitary alliance with these (and it includes Turkey) makes as much sense as a military alliance with East Germany.

[Steve Schulin]

You say Trump has been kept off balance? Was he in balance before the 2016 election? I recall a Q&A transcript in a book he wrote where he answered a question from someone asking who they should vote for? He answered: Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani are good people. The transcript wasn’t dated, but the mention of those two makes me think this exchange probably took place before the 2008 election. It seems quite a stretch to say that anybody who endorsed Hillary for President, anytime after seeing her in action as First Lady, has a good sense of political balance. I don’t doubt that Trump wants to be the best President he can be. But he seems willing to compromise on many things that I wish he held more dearly. This recent bump stock ban is a fair example. I’d support an article of impeachment that pointed to this as an abrogation of his oath to support and defend the Constitution, because it DOES infringe on the right to keep and bear arms.