NATO may be “the most successful alliance in history” – as its secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg, claims – but it may also be on the brink of failure. After a turbulent few years, during which US President Donald Trump has increasingly turned America’s back on NATO, tensions between France and Turkey have escalated sharply, laying bare just how fragile the Alliance has become.
What follows is Euro BS.
The US is not in fact turning its back on NATO as the author claims. Too often in the past, it has been Europeans who threatened NATO. The US has been reinforcing the frontier of NATO and is sending a signal that Germany is a wealthy freeloader even as the U.S. retains its core infrastructure in Germany. If anything, Trump is saving NATO.
The United States is not at fault for the naval incident between Turkey and France because America is "distracted" from NATO. Why is America reinforcing its combat capabilities in Europe if it is distracted?
Saying that the French-Turkish naval incident--which did not result in fighting, to be clear--is a repeat of 1974 when Turkey invaded Cyprus and could have triggered in a Turkish-Greek war, allegedly because America was too distracted from NATO by Vietnam, is ridiculous. American combat troops were out of South Vietnam by then and just a year earlier the equally "distracted" America came to Israel's defense--even raising its nuclear readiness to warn the USSR away--during the October War.
And saying France's independent actions in Libya show NATO is divided and dying is simply ignorant. France is today at least a participant in the military command of NATO. In 1974, to pick a year at random, France was out of the military command. And what of the 1956 Suez Crisis when Britain and France hit Egypt outside of NATO command? What of the British-Iceland Cod War? Were those the signs of a fragile dying NATO, too?
Hell, in 1974 Spain wasn't even a member of NATO, not joining until 1982! The idea that NATO is fragile today ignores all the stresses that the alliance faced in its successful history.
And I loved this BS, which is exceptionally pungent: Trump is shielding Erdogan by refusing to impose consequences on Turkey, "beyond cutting Turkey’s participation in the F-35 fighter jet program(!)" Beyond? As if the F-35 decision isn't a huge military and political blow to Erdogan! Cutting Turkey off from the F-35 is extremely damaging to Erdogan's ambitions to restore Turkey to its Ottoman glory days. And as Turkish-Russian tensions resume, perhaps Erdogan realizes he made a mistake alienating America.
Trump has been urging all NATO states to meet their Obama-era pledge to spend 2% of GDP on defense. So the author's final plea after a BS case for America's "dubious commitment" to NATO under Trump is rather odd:
The time for Europe to shore up its defenses and capabilities is now.
Trump wants Europe to shore up its defenses and capabilities. Now. So when a former Spanish foreign minister says "Europe" should do that, she is really referring to the European Union.
And speaking of the European Union's defense capabilities is simply exposing that the EU is a bigger threat to NATO than Russia is because an EU independent defense capability outside of American-dominated NATO is all about killing NATO and ejecting America from the proto-imperial EU and hastening the day when the EU apparatchiki can remove the prefix.
Like I said, a total BS article. To be fair, the BS isn't from ignorance as much as it is from malice. Don't let the internal enemies of NATO like that author distract us from the value of NATO in keeping Europe free from Russia--and free from its darker past--as I explained more recently:
We think Europe is free because that is how we've seen it in our lifetime. First expanding within Western Europe and then flowing into the former Warsaw Pact and into the former Soviet Union itself. But the Europe we see is the Europe we built after World War II during the Cold War. Western culture gave birth to political and personal freedom but is not synonymous with it. That's a British innovation given a huge boost by America. And without the big Soviet threat to get Europeans to accept our influence as the price of their defense, that American (and British) influence is waning.
The European Union is anti-democratic and anti-liberty, and so naturally tries to wreck NATO in order to push America and our influence out of Europe, to let them return to their autocratic roots.
For our own good we should defend and strengthen NATO. A Britain safely out of the EU where it won't be infected or overwhelmed by the continental statists but able to promote NATO as a force for freedom is a good thing.
We need a strong NATO as much to protect America from some Europeans who would threaten American interests in Europe as much as Russia does.
Don't fall for the BS.
UPDATE: Oh, the USAF is going to buy the 8 already built F-35s that were supposed to go to Turkey. So they're gone for Erdogan.
UPDATE: The EU sounds fragile and sick--although perhaps not dying--from this article.
