Brief Introduction
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NATO isn’t just an expensive luxury of the sort we can no
longer afford – it is a tripwire that could be set off by a minor border
conflict involving Moldova, the status of Kaliningrad, or – more likely –
another round of hostilities in Ukraine. Would we start World War III in
defense of the oligarchs of Kiev? I wouldn’t put it past them. With his
plan – or, rather, inclination – to abandon the old NATO and replace it with
some sort of multilateral counterterrorist operation, and his insistence that
our “allies” pay up, Trump is forcing an issue onto the stage that
hasn’t been seen since the days of Bob Taft.
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Extracts
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When the citizens of
Berlin did what Ronald Reagan urged Gorbachev to do – “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down
that wall!” – the Soviet leader tried to negotiate with the West. And, to his
mind, he succeeded: an
understanding was reached with Washington that the Russians would allow
German reunification on the condition that the NATO alliance would not expand
eastward.
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That promise was not kept.
The Committee to Expand NATO, later re-dubbed the US
Committee on NATO, had at its core on the founding members of Bill Kristol’s
Project for a New American Century (PNAC) which played such an instrumental
role in agitating for the invasion of Iraq
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Founder and
president of the NATO Committee was Bruce Jackson,
at the time finance director of Bob Dole’s presidential campaign, and
vice-president in charge of planning strategy for Lockheed – today
Lockheed-Martin – the biggest military contractor in the country..
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Then comes the
military-industrial complex – with Lockheed first in line. The Lockheed
connection was reinforced by Randy
Scheunemann, a member of the Committee’s board, and president of Orion
Strategies, a public relations firm whose clients include Lockheed.
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The Clinton administration fully
supported NATO expansion, and
the Committee’s activities brought together the White House, members of
Congress from both parties, and the Washington lobbyists and their foreign
clients for a spate of conferences, dinners, and private meetings.
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In short, NATO expansion was – and is – a crony
capitalist’s dream, albeit not the sort that gets the same amount of attention
from “libertarian” critics of such boondoggles as the Ex-Im Bank, who regularly
remind us that Boeing is the Bank’s biggest customer. Forgotten
(or evaded) is the fact that Boeing (or Lockheed-Martin, General Dynamics,
etc.) gets billions
whenever a new applicant is added to NATO’s ranks and has to modernizes its
forces.
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The NATO expansionists won
their battle: Poland, Hungary, and
the Czech Republic joined in 1999: Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania,
Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia were added in 2004. Albania and Croatia came on
board in 2006. The latest applicants are tiny Montenegro,
a splinter shaved off of the former Yugoslavia, which will probably be admitted
this summer, and Georgia, which is not even in Europe, and is still fighting to
join the club: its inclusion is controversial
in part because it would be seen as throwing down the gauntlet to Russia, with
whom it fought a brief war in 2008 over the breakaway Republic of Ossetia.
Therein lies the
real danger posed by NATO expansion – and, indeed, the existence of the
alliance thirty years after the Soviet implosion. As Sen. Robert A. Taft put
it in a 1949 nationally broadcast speech opposing US entry into NATO, he
said:
“It obligates us to go to war if at any time during the next 20 years
anyone makes an armed attack on any of the 12 nations. Under the Monroe Doctrine
we could change our policy at any time. We could judge whether perhaps one of
the countries had given cause for the attack. Only Congress could declare a war
in pursuance of the doctrine. Under the new pact the President can take us into
war without Congress. But, above all the treaty is a part of a much larger
program by which we arm all these nations against Russia… A joint military
program has already been made… It thus becomes an offensive and defensive
military alliance against Russia.
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Which brings us to Trump’s critique: that NATO is a “bad deal” because we bear a
disproportionate share of the costs. He is quite correct on this score. As of today, the US and Estonia are the only two NATO members keeping to the “requirement”
that their military spending equals two percent of GDP. Former
Defense Secretary Robert Gates pointed this out in a 2011 speech
in which he predicted that NATO’s future was sure to
be “dim if not dismal.” Our shiftless allies are all too “willing
and eager for American taxpayers to assume the growing security burden left
by reductions in European defense budgets,” he said.
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Added to the direct
costs of NATO is the expense of stationing over
60,000 troops in Europe, maintenance of our many bases, and the opportunity
costs of money that could have been diverted to productive domestic uses.
Taft, it seems, was right that the costs of NATO would turn out to be
“incalculable.”
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And then there is yet another cost – the price of
risking World War III.
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NATO expansion has
led to Russian rearmament and the nullification
of arms treaties negotiated as the cold war neared its endpoint. The Western powers have launched provocative military “exercises” that cannot be
seen by the Russians as anything other than a dress rehearsal for war – and the
Kremlin has reacted accordingly.
..
With his plan – or,
rather, inclination – to abandon the old NATO and replace it with some sort of
multilateral counterterrorist operation, and his insistence that our “allies”
pay up, Trump is forcing an issue onto the stage that hasn’t been seen
since the days of Bob Taft. And with the bogeyman of Communism absent,
he is free to say he could get
along with Vladimir Putin and only catch flak from committed neocons.
..
NATO isn’t just an expensive
luxury of the sort we can no longer afford – it is a tripwire that could
be set off by a minor border conflict involving Moldova,
the status of Kaliningrad,
or – more likely – another round of hostilities in Ukraine.
..
Would we start World War III in defense of the
oligarchs of Kiev?
I wouldn’t put it
past them.
..
That’s why, no matter what the fate of Trump’s
presidential bid, we all owe him for raising this vital issue – and within the GOP, no less, a party which has been, up
until now, a bastion of support for the NATO-crafts and the new cold war
against Russia.
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