Seventy-seven years after the unconditional surrender of Germany, American troops are still stationed in Europe. NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, was established by the Treaty of Rome to unite the United States, Canada and Western European democracies to oppose a real threat, namely the USSR’s social imperialism and its threat against western Europe. The USSR, which had established control of eastern Europe and installed Communist puppet governments there responded by organizing its satellites into the military grouping known as the Warsaw Pact. Its principal achievement was an invasion of Czechoslovakia by all of its members with the exception of Romania, which under the most brutal dictator of Eastern Europe was pursuing an independent foreign policy and refused to participate in the invasion which ended Alexander Dubcek’s Prague Spring. With the collapse of the USSR and the Communist governments of eastern Europe the Warsaw Pact was dissolved. At this point, did NATO still serve any purpose? The USSR was in its own dustbin of history, the Brezhnev Doctrine was buried with the Communist party, and it seemed that we were entering a world of peace if not the “end of history”. Who needed NATO? What was its purpose? Who was it defending North Atlantic Europe against?
Under the leadership of an incompetent American government led by Bill Clinton and pushed by his Secretary of State Madeline Albright, and her mentor, former Carter National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, NATO was no longer to be north nor Atlantic. NATO expanded eastward to include the former Warsaw Pact nations and it now reached the Russian border. Meanwhile, the European Union (EU) expanded to include most European nations. It was strong and prosperous particularly since it depended on the United States for its defense requirements. Never did any NATO member, besides the U.S. ever spend the required amount on defense that the NATO treaty mandated. America was there to protect them. Successive American Presidents, thinking that they were Presidents of the World rather than merely of the United States accommodated the EU.
We should remember that President Charles De Gaulle removed France from NATO’s military alliance but remained in the Treaty’s political structure as he led France to develop its independent nuclear strike force on the basis that he doubted that the United States would be willing to use nuclear weapons to defend Europe. He ousted American troops stationed in France but still relied on American forces to defend France if needed. The duplicitous behavior of General De Gaulle has been very well practiced by other European leaders who are quite comfortable with an American military shield.
Today, the EU is rich, prosperous and powerful. It’s time for the U.S. to withdraw its protective shield over Europe. The EU population is larger than America’s and they can easily raise an all-European defense force. During the 1950s, the attempt to create a European Defense Community failed because of French unwillingness to accept it under any leadership except their own. Seventy years later, with America facing massive budget deficits and its own domestic problems, it’s time for Europe to step up and behave as the power bloc that it is. America can no longer afford to support Europe, defensively, economically or in any other way. With the Russian imperialistic invasion of Ukraine going on for eight months now, the current American leadership has already spent many billions of dollars in supplying Ukraine with arms and materiel, while the EU can at best expresses doubts about the support of an attacked country. The damage to Ukraine must already be close to a trillion dollars if not more. Who is going to rebuild Ukraine? The EU is relying on its rich uncle across the sea. They seem to have little interest in stopping the Russian invasion. Increasingly they support negotiations and are fearful of any damage to “sacred" Russian territory. How is America to respond to all of this? What did the EU have to say about this?
The imperialistic Russian attack on Ukraine, the insane threat to utilize nuclear weapons, the use of its oil weapon have scared the EU. They fear losing their comfortable life. Perhaps they can’t be blamed, but this war is a European problem and Europe is well equipped to deal with it. Europe has learned many times that sitting by and allowing a powerful country to attack a weak country is suicidal. Do not think for a moment that Europe’s democracies defeated Nazi Germany. Their complaisance through the 1939s created the conditions necessary for World War II which only by a miracle- and American intervention- was won. The U.S. cannot put its fate and that of American soldiers at the beck and call of EU nations which won’t lift a finger to defend their common European homeland.
Truly, it's time to say goodbye to NATO. Europe can and must stand on its own two feet. If American troops are withdrawn from Europe, the EU will survive just fine. And maybe the U.S. can start to solve its own problems.
Garry S. Sklar
Camas-Washougal, WA
October 26, 2022
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