The biggest thing wrong with your response here is the implication that NATO in any way wrongly “allowed”, forced or made other countries to join it. You know damn well that countries join NATO because they want to. There is no such thing as NATO expansion by NATO gobbling up territory.
Why they want to join is up to them. Some might think it gives them an economic leg up, but this treaty is about protection and alliance against aggression, not economies.
Countries join NATO, and even then, they must get ALL the other existing NATO countries to agree to let them join, and must also meet a bunch of economic, political and military conditions before doing so.
As far as our “decades long interventionist foreign policy” goes, there is nothing wrong with opposing tyranny. Was opposing the Soviet Union’s takeover of Eastern Europe wrong? What exactly would American foreign policy look like in your world? Isolationism?
I suppose I’ll always disagree with you on this. The world is a violent place with us or without us. The big oceans on both sides of our nation are not enough to keep us safe.
I do support less war and constant military action. The initial beatdown of Afghanistan was right, but not the nation building. The attack on Iraq over WMD proved to be wrong. Was it a lie, or a screwup? I don’t know. In the long run, S. Hussein kept the lid on worse things: ISIS, terror, murder—by using murder. It really is a dilemma for us but probably not our job to go in and destroy it.
Same applies to Russia and Putin via Ukraine.
I believe in popular sovereignty and suffrage. The “Spheres of Influence” are 19th Century colonialism just as the carving up of Africa. Russia has no right to dictate policy to their neighbors anymore than we do. Just as importantly, we need to be seen as against tyranny, even inside a nation. Our own nation is teetering on this brink right now.
NATO had a choice on expansion. I in no way implied that they forced anyone to join it. There was a major battle on NATO expansion in 1997 after the fall of the Soviet Union. George Kennan, our WWII Deputy Chief of Mission to the Soviet Union and author of the "Long Telegram" that was the foundation of our containment policy following WWII, spoke of the dangers of NATO expansion
Kennan in 1997 declared that expanding NATO to the east “ would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era.”
“Such a decision,” he went on, “may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations.”
From other articles in 1997
"I read your article [Owen Harries, ``The Dangers of Expansive Realism'', Winter 1997/98] with strong approval. It was in some respects a surprise because certain of your major arguments were ones I myself had made, or had wanted to make, but had not expected to see them so well expressed by the pen of anyone else. I can perhaps make this clear by commenting specifically on certain of your points.
"First, your reference to the implicit understanding that the West would not take advantage of the Russian strategic and political withdrawal from Eastern Europe is not only warranted, but could have been strengthened. It is my understanding that Gorbachev on more than one occasion was given to understand, in informal talks with senior American and other Western personalities, that if the USSR would accept a united Germany remaining in NATO, the jurisdiction of that alliance would not be moved further eastward. We did not, I am sure, intend to trick the Russians; but the actual determinants of our later behavior--lack of coordination of political with military policy, and the amateurism of later White House diplomacy--would scarcely have been more creditable on our part than a real intention to deceive.
Secondly, I could not associate myself more strongly with what you write about the realist case that sees Russia as an inherently and incorrigibly expansionist country, and suggest that this tendency marks the present Russian regime no less than it did the Russian regimes of the past. We have seen this view reflected time and again, occasionally in even more violent forms, in efforts to justify the recent expansion of NATO's boundaries and further possible expansions of that name. So numerous and extensive have the distortions and misunderstandings on which this view is based been that it would be hard even to list them in a letter of this sort. It grossly oversimplifies and misconstrues must of the history of Russian diplomacy of the czarist period. It ignores the whole great complexity of Russia's part in World War II. It allows and encourages one to forget that the Soviet military advances into Western Europe during the last war took place with our enthusiastic approval, and the political ones of the ensuing period at least wit hour initial consent and support. It usually avoids mention of the Communist period, and attributes to ``the Russians'' generally all the excesses of the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe in the Cold War period.
Worst of all, it tends to equate, at least by implication, the Russian-Communist dictatorship of recent memory with the present Russian republic--a republic, the product of an amazingly bloodless revolution, which has, for all its many faults, succeeded in carrying on for several years with an elected government, a largely free press and media, without concentration camps or executions, and with a minimum of police brutality. This curious present Russia, we are asked to believe, is obsessed by the same dreams of conquest and oppression of others as were the worst examples, real or imaginative, of its predecessors.
Why they want to join is up to them. Some might think it gives them an economic leg up, but this treaty is about protection and alliance against aggression, not economies. Countries join NATO, and even then, they must get ALL the other existing NATO countries to agree to let them join, and must also meet a bunch of economic, political and military conditions before doing so.
Countries join NATO, and even then, they must get ALL the other existing NATO countries to agree to let them join, and must also meet a bunch of economic, political and military conditions before doing so.
They want to join because the US becomes the guarantor of their sovereignty up to and including nuclear war. It is an insurance policy where the US pays most of the premiums. Like immigration to the US, joining NATO is a privilege, not a right. The real issue is how it benefits the US. The US has provided the security umbrella over Europe since the end of WWII. Burden sharing has been a neuralgic issue for as long as I can remember back to the days when I was assigned to a NATO command in Naples (1968-70). The Europeans have used this "peace dividend" to construct generous welfare states. Despite establishing an obligatory floor of 2% of GDP on defense, most have not met this commitment. Their militaries have atrophied and fallen generations behind the US technologically. Interoperability is a problem along with standardization and procurement.
As far as our “decades long interventionist foreign policy” goes, there is nothing wrong with opposing tyranny. Was opposing the Soviet Union’s takeover of Eastern Europe wrong? What exactly would American foreign policy look like in your world? Isolationism?
Tyranny is rampant throughout the world. Democracy and freedom are outliers. We can oppose tyranny, but our blood and treasure must be used judiciously. We didn't send troops or arms to Hungary in 1956 or Prague in 1968 or Warsaw in 1982. What did 18 years in Afghanistan or 8 years in Vietnam achieve? This is not isolationism. It is prudence and common sense.
According to the project’s data, the U.S. has been involved in 393 military interventions in other nations since 1776. More than 200 of those have been since 1945, and 114 in the post-Cold War era (after 1989).
Just since the year 2000, the project documents 72 interventions. And in one region of the world, the Middle East and North Africa, the U.S. has been involved in 77 military interventions, mostly since the 1940s.
Over-reliance on force rather than diplomacy, intelligence gathering, economic statecraft, and the powers of persuasion can also harm the U.S. reputation abroad, causing it to be seen as a threat and to lose its influence, Toft says. “The book is basically a battle cry for strengthening the Department of State.”
“Americans think that the United States should be engaged. I’m not calling for an isolationist position,” she says. “I’m calling for more restraint, particularly when it comes to the use of force.”
I suppose I’ll always disagree with you on this. The world is a violent place with us or without us. The big oceans on both sides of our nation are not enough to keep us safe.
What's the disagreement? I have experienced firsthand Vietnam during the Tet Offensive, the Iranian Revolution, the Solidarnosc' movement and martial law in Poland, Desert Shield/Storm, Berlin before the Wall came down, etc. I know the world is a violent place with or without the US. But we can't afford to be the world's policeman. We are the world's biggest debtor nation.
I do support less war and constant military action. The initial beatdown of Afghanistan was right, but not the nation building. The attack on Iraq over WMD proved to be wrong. Was it a lie, or a screwup? I don’t know. In the long run, S. Hussein kept the lid on worse things: ISIS, terror, murder—by using murder. It really is a dilemma for us but probably not our job to go in and destroy it.
Our government lied to us about Vietnam, Iraq, Covid, the Russia hoax, JFK's assassination, election fraud, the invasion at our Southern border, Libya, and Ukraine just to name a few. We are being manipulated.
I believe in popular sovereignty and suffrage. The “Spheres of Influence” are 19th Century colonialism just as the carving up of Africa. Russia has no right to dictate policy to their neighbors anymore than we do. Just as importantly, we need to be seen as against tyranny, even inside a nation. Our own nation is teetering on this brink right now.
Au contraire. Spheres of Influence remain a reality and nations act on that reality. Russia in Ukraine and Georgia. NATO in Bosnia. The so-called Stan countries that were part of the USSR remain in Russia's orbit. China and Taiwan.
The war in Ukraine remains a product of NATO expansion and the crossing of a red line. Hundreds of thousands are dead because we dismissed Russian signals to stop. We chose war instead of diplomacy. US strategic national interests are not at stake in Ukraine. But the consequences have resulted in a global geopolitical realignment that will remain with us for generations.