A "dormant" NATO is a door mat welcoming aggression from Moscow and Brussels.
The concept of promoting a "Dormant NATO" that will push Europe to spend more on defense without our presence is new to me. But it has been swirling around out there for a while:
A Dormant NATO stops all future NATO expansion. It keeps NATO on ice, as the name suggests, only to be activated in times of crisis. It defunds the woke NATO bureaucracy—bloated, independent, self-sustaining, and often hostile to conservative values and American interests. Most importantly, it coerces Europe by fixing a timeframe after which the armor, logistics, artillery, intel, and infantry pass on to European hands in both combination and command, with America staying only as a fireman to be called in times of need. Everything other than American nuclear and naval power will be the security burden of Europe.
I addressed it earlier, concluding that it making NATO dormant is based on fantasies about reality, based on claiming NATO is a sign that America is an empire, that without NATO the European Union will fall apart, and that reducing American forces in Europe even more than the drastic cuts since we won the Cold War would be decisive in fixing our budget deficits.
Jesus, make The Stupid go away. This is so mind-numbingly bad advice that I can hardly believe anyone pays attention to it.
But it seems to be gathering strength in parts of the Republican Party. So let's have a go at it again, shall we?
At its core, the concept suffers from a fatal flaw. It assumes that protecting Europe is a gift from America rather than a vital American national security issue.
If the issue is increase European defense spending, mission accomplished! Europe is reacting to the Russian threat by spending more on defense and spending to prop up Ukrainian resistance to Russia's invasion.
But let's go back to the author's definition and break down the points:
Stop NATO expansion.
By this I assume he means Ukraine. Or would NATO reject Switzerland if it applied for membership? Practically speaking, Ukraine isn't coming into NATO while war rages and unless Russia is completely defeated and is compelled by weakness to stand down on that issue, I don't see NATO membership as an option. But cooperation with NATO--as Ukraine and NATO do now--must continue to keep Russia from re-starting the war.
Put NATO "on ice" to reactivate it during a crisis.
It takes time to thaw something frozen. And over time, frozen items go bad. Habits of working together and making sure equipment, the language of warfare concepts, and command and control are compatible will erode. And what counts as a crisis? And raise your hand if you think the Europeans will consider their job to hold America's place to race back in to "reactivate" American command of NATO?
Bueller?
A Europe with its own broad capacity to wage war can--brace yourself--wage war without America. In a major sense this Dormant NATO idea is a rehash of Obama's "leading from behind." Countries that can act on their own won't do our bidding.
Having fun yet?
Further, you absolutely know that any call by America's government to reinforce NATO during that crisis will be called "throwing fuel on the fire" by isolationists who will want nothing to do with NATO. Europe can handle it, they'll say. Or they'll say Europe caused the crisis for some made-up reason. And of course, we have a more urgent problem that demands all of our attention!
Spring into action, indeed.
And then this argument gets just bizarre. While arguing to get America to put NATO on ice, the author claims that if the EU goes rogue in our absence--Wait. What? Isn't our absence supposed to undermine the EU?--that "all the U.S. has to do is pull the security rug from under Europe’s feet and let it disintegrate." What drugs do you have to be on to believe that this is a heads America wins and tails the EU loses issue? And if a more powerful EU disintegrates without America there, who picks up the pieces? Luxembourg? Or Russia?
Defunds the "woke" NATO bureaucracy.
FFS. In what way does that help with the problem of wokeness? We have to fix it here and then it will move through the system of an active NATO that America dominates. Will Europeans really make NATO better under their command and control as America goes home to wait for a crisis to reactivate participation?
Coerces Europe into creating the armor, logistics, artillery, intel, and infantry to take up the burden. And puts it under European command.
"Take up" the ground warfare burden? America only has two brigades permanently based in Europe--a Stryker light mechanized brigade and a parachute brigade. Add a single armored brigade rotating through Europe to cope with the Russian threat to European security. FFS, people, Europe already fields the vast majority of those ground assets in Europe. Face it, we already "came home." And we already rely on European transportation infrastructure. If the author is talking about sustaining military power with arms and ammunition, Europe is in fact slowly waking up to that issue. As we are. Don't pretend we didn't fail on this issue, too.
And is the author suggesting that the intel "burden" on America be lifted by denying Europeans that information or by getting rid of those assets to save money? Isn't intelligence on the enemy--and on our allies--all the more important to have when we need to thaw out that NATO-on-ice to help it spring into action in a crisis?
America will keep the naval burden.
So we have to expand our Navy even more to not only cope with China's rising aero-naval power but to take on the burden of the Atlantic and Mediterranean Sea where few American ships sail now? Is the author feeling the phantom limbs of giant American Second and Third Fleets that once roamed European seas from Greenland to the Suez Canal? Those days are long gone. Those fleets are long gone. We rely on European navies for numbers in European waters.
And America's nuclear umbrella will still cover Europe. (This includes American air power, which otherwise went unmentioned.)
This is where The Stupid really multiplies like bunnies.
America guarantees that if conventional military defense falters then America will nuke Russia to keep Europe from being conquered. And that guarantee is given without American ground forces or even command and control in place in NATO to deter the Russians from starting a war. Or defeating them if Russia invades anyway.
So we won't risk American soldiers in conventional combat over there. But we will totally put our cities on the line to go toe-to-toe with the Russkies in a nuclear war?
Just shoot me now.
Also, does the claim on air power roles mean that the Europeans should cancel their many orders for American F-35 fighters and disband what they have because that's America's job?
God almighty. What have I done to deserve this punishment?
Unless America slashes its force structure rather than move the shadows of our Cold War military presence in Europe back home (in case you skipped over the first time I linked this), the savings in military spending won't pan out for America. We'll simply need to put American forces over here rather than over there. Indeed, if the author's claim is to want NATO to spring into action in a crisis with American participation, the cost of rapidly reinforcing NATO with American forces will increase because of the need for more sealift and airlift capabilities.
It pained me to read this dreck. It is retreat disguised as strategy. Just Afghanistan 2021 all over again but in a far more vital part of the world.
When isolationist Americans see a gathering threat, they often say America should stay out of the way and let a coalition of other friendly states naturally react to that threat and band together to defeat it without America. Win-win, the isolationists say.
But when an enemy claims America is a threat, those isolationists never say the enemy of America should just chill out and let a coalition of America's other enemies rise to the challenge. Oh no, those isolationists say that the enemy's worry is actually justified. And America should negotiate to give that enemy enough to eliminate their worry about the so-called American threat.
And for additional nuance those analysts may say that if we don't offer concessions on something, the enemy might do something even worse.
A Dormant NATO isn't about letting NATO rest so it is prepared to spring into action bigger and better with more European heft. It's hospice care at best and assisted suicide at worst to ease NATO into oblivion.
Seriously, people. How is this proposal a real thing? The whole idea is a word salad of faulty Venn diagrams that claim to overlap with protecting American security interests. It ranks right up there with Unicorn-powered Green energy as a fantasy world of idiocy.
Just let The Stupid go dormant.
NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here.
NOTE: I'm adding updates on the Last Hamas War in this post.