The US should walk away from NATO entirely. Whatever happens to Europe happens. Life will go on. I feel no compulsion to protect Europe from Muslims or Russians.
Trump was talking about Brazil joining NATO a week or two ago so I don’t think he would be believed if he threatened anyone over countries joining NATO.
No. We should not leave and dismiss ourselves from NATO.
It is better for the U.S., for maintaining our own alliances with whomever in Europe that does work (like Poland lately), that any military component of that is housed in NATO with us a part of that, instead of NATO replaced with a French-German dominated “European Army”, and us, for what friends in Europe we do have, on the outside looking in.
Inside NATO we have a right to complain when friends inside NATO let us down, let NATO down. Many of our friends in NATO want us in NATO because they now we have no imperial ambitions in Europe, which they know may not always be the case with some of their larger friends in Europe. We are the balance in Europe that keeps NATO working as a neutral force. With NATO done, finished, kaput whatever replaces it will be something that won’t be neutral. It will be weighted in favor to France and Germany, and everyone knows it. Many in Europe do not want that, and they have history on their side.
We are more effective, on the margins, as a partner within a military alliance with Europe, than history shows is possible if we are on the outside looking in.
There are some money comparisons, between the U.S. and our European partners in Europe, that make for apples versus oranges comparisons, and in SOME cases make for invalid comparisons.
Basically that error comes from not selecting out U.S. military expenditures directly related to NATO from the total U.S. military expenditures, that contain a lot of spending having nothing to do with NATO.
It is fair to complain when some NATO members do not live up to the level of military spending that, by consensus, NATO members in Europe have agreed to spend, as a percent of GDP. That target level is 2% of GDP. Most are not meeting it.
But two things need to be understood about that fact.
U.S. expenditures specifically for NATO do not and have not been increased to “cover” under spending by any NATO member. It is just meant NATO is not keeping up with agreed on levels of military preparedness. That “shortfall” will be noticed NOT on greater U.S. spending now, but on quick increases on military spending by NATO’s European members should some inter-Europe major hostility break out.
U.S. military spending is NATURALLY greater as a percent of GDP than our European alliance partners.
Why? We are not just alliance partners with NATO. We have a major military presence in Asia, with crucial military commitments in Korea, and the largest U.S. forces outside continental U.S. based on Okinawa in Japan. Then we have troops in Afghanistan and other parts of the Middle East. Yes, we have asked for some NATO countries to help out in the Middle East, but that help has been on a nation by nation basis and not as a NATO-wide commitment.
Unless we were to ask all the NATO members to formally become our mutual allies with South Korea and Japan, and our Asian partners to formally join NATO and commit to the military alliance in Europe, it would not be a correct comparison to expect any of them to make military expenditures as large as ours as a percent of the their GDP.
The U.S. military expenditures are not what they are because our European partners spend too little (which they do, but that is a separate issue). Our military budget is what it is because we have military commitments beyond and outside of our NATO alliance.
Attacking the NATO alliance is not a solution. IF it is posed as a solution, then it only becomes valid as part of an overall retreat from all our military alliances. If we are to leave Europe to itself, then how do you not argue that we should leave Japan, the Philippines and South Korea to themselves (keep in mind where that leaves Australia).
The real solutions have no known likely time frame, for they depend on when it is the world, our partners, in Europe and Asia, will not feel threatened by bad actors in their own neighborhood - Russia, North Korea, China in particular, and Jihadists in the Middle East and Africa.
We can go back to the 1920s, become isolationists, and let our grandchildren spend to pick up the pieces later on. That’s the course we took between World War I and II, and it cost everyone a lot of pain to catch up when we had to.
NO. Inside NATO we can always be the good friend goading our friends to do better. Outside NATO and leaving Asia does not contain or remove threats that would eventually become ours to deal with, in time.
Turkey should be kicked out.
This is where Pat goes back to being Pat. Somehow he turns Russia’s victims, the Ukraine, Georgia, the Baltics, into the bad guys.