Tuesday, April 09, 2019

Why NATO's Official Purpose Makes No Sense, but It Is Likely To Outlive Us All

This year marks the 70th anniversary of the founding of NATO, but the question is, is this a happy birthday for a lively meaningful organization or time for us to pull the plug on a Cold War dreg that has lived well past its purpose?

After WWII it was inevitable that there would be a conflict between the Liberal Capitalist world and the growing Red Communist one. Perhaps if the Soviet Union would have resigned itself to being the only Communist nation rejecting any form of proselytization and rebranding itself as some kind of Democracy B as a mild alternative to the West’s Democracy A then the Cold War could have been avoided.

But this did not happen and was very unlikely to do so. The motto of the Soviet Union on its seal was “Workers of the World Unite!”. That was workers of the “world” not “only Russia”. So it is not surprising that the West took a preemptive move and formed NATO to gang up on the USSR.

However now the Soviet Union is dead and gone. NATO fulfilled its mission a little after turning 40. Sadly rather than phasing out and riding off into the sunset it had a midlife crisis, bought a Camaro and continued to not only exist but expand and bomb. But should it exist? Why is this organization still around at 70 years old posing as if we are still living in some sort of Cold War dynamic where if we don’t bomb Libya back to the stone age somehow Belgium and Greece will fall to evil ideologically different invaders.

NATO relies heavily on the idea that the weakest members benefit from being treated as “equals” in the security organization. Many tiny nations would be militarily helpless otherwise. At first this logic makes sense. Little nations need a boost to help them maintain a stable defense.

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