NATO Time To Leave?

NATO Time To Leave?

NATO is an alliance,

so all parts of the alliance have to be capable (Newt Gingrich)

After WW II the USSR made client states out of every country it “liberated” from the Nazis.  Yugoslavia and Albania were the first, followed by Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, East Germany, Poland, and finally Czechoslovakia in 1948.  Additionally, in 1944 the Soviet Army ‘liberated’ the Baltic States – Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania – and then annexed them as part of the USSR.

In response to the Soviet expansion, the west formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) on April 4, 1949.  Initially NATO consisted of 12 countries, including the U.S.[i]  By 2023 another 19 countries joined NATO bring the total to 31 with Sweden reportedly set to join shortly.[ii]

There cannot be any argument that NATO served its purpose of deterring Soviet expansion from the time it was formed to the breakup of the Soviet Union in December 1991.  However, the question that must be answered is not was NATO effective, but is NATO now obsolete?

Article V is the part of the NATO treaty people believe requires all members to come to the defense of any member that is attacked. The only time Article V was invoked in NATO’s history was after the 9/11 terrorist attack, as a result some NATO members contributed troops to varying degrees to the Afghan war.  However, not all of them did. The reason?  Article V has an escape clause.  Each member “will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary…” (emphasis mine).

NATO members do not have to come to anyone’s defense but have the discretion to take whatever action they deem necessary…including none.

More troubling than the Article V loophole, is that most NATO members do not meet their military spending obligation of 2% of their GDP per year.  From 2014 through 2022 only three member countries – Greece, the United Kingdom, and the United States – met that obligation every year.  Estonia has met it every year since 2015; Poland and Latvia since 2018; and Lithuania since 2019.  France met this requirement once in 2020.  No other NATO member has met the spending requirement in any year since 2014.   More disturbing is military spending measured in dollars shows that in 2022 the U.S. spent 2.3 times the amount of all other NATO members combined.  Yes, not all of the American military is stationed in NATO countries, but in 2022 the U.S. had over 100,000 military personnel deployed to NATO, which is more troops than 22 NATO members have in their entire military.

Europe relies on NATO for its defense, and NATO relies on the U.S. to be a viable defense force.  In short, Europe declines to spend the required funds for its defense and instead shifts that burden to the U.S.

Setting aside the monetary aspect, we must ask – is NATO even desirable.  Since the fall of the Berlin Wall our membership in NATO was a major catalyst of getting the U.S. involved in Kosovo (Operation Allied Force) and Bosnia -Herzegovina (Operations Deliberate Forge).  I couldn’t find a complete list of units involved in these operations.  However, I did find a good estimate of air assets committed to these operations from Global Security, which they believe is an undercount.  According to Global, there were 1,055 aircraft committed by NATO countries to support these two operations, 730 (69.2%) of which were U.S.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe the Serbian actions in Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina were reprehensible.  But it was a European problem, so why did the Europeans not address it, or at least take the lead in resolving it?  Instead, they got the U.S. involved through the UN and NATO, yet no NATO country was attacked, and then had the U.S. carry the lion’s share of the costs and risks.

Now there is the Russian-Ukrainian war.  One of the arguments for providing aid to Ukraine is that if the Russians are not stopped in Ukraine, Russia will invade a NATO member country and the U.S. will have to put boots on the ground.  But is that true, or just smoke and mirrors?

Setting aside the Article V loophole, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shown its military to be a paper tiger.  What was supposed to take a few days, or a few weeks at most, has turned into a stalemate that has lasted for over a year and a half.  The Russian army’s command and control, leadership, logistics, and equipment have all proven to be substandard at best.  Its vaunted air force has yet to gain air superiority against a much smaller opponent with older aircraft; its cruise missiles – including the hyper-sonic ones – have proven to be relatively easy targets for western anti-aircraft missiles such as the Patriot; and its navy has suffered heavy losses while proving to be ineffective.  A for the Russian army, it has suffered horrendous losses in both men and equipment, losses that will take decades to replace.  Given all of this, does anyone really think Russia will invade another European country using conventional forces?

Even if the U.S. was not a member of NATO, Russia is in no position to invade another country after their fiasco in Ukraine, especially not when both the United Kingdom and France are nuclear powers. So, I find the argument that we need to give billions to Ukraine to fight the Russians to prevent the Russians from invading a NATO country and forcing us into combat a hollow one.

I believe it is time we recognize that Russia is not the threat to U.S. interests many thought it was and shift our attention to the actual threat to our interests – China. Even if the other NATO member states were inclined to provide military assistance if a war between the U.S. and China broke out, they could not – they do not have the military capability to do so.  Besides, a conflict between the U.S. and China – both nuclear armed – that would trigger Article V of the NATO treaty would require an attack on the U.S.  Any such attack would likely escalate to a nuclear war and the end of civilization as we know it.  That is a major reason why nuclear powers engage in proxy wars and avoid direct conflict between themselves – to avoid the possibility of nuclear war.  Simply put, NATO is not relevant if a war between the US and China ever occurs.

It’s been 78 years since the end of WW II and 32 years since the end of the Soviet Union.  It is time Europe provided for its own defense, and the U.S. looks after ours.  Leave NATO and make individual or small regional defense alliances with select European countries if we think it’s in our best interests.  But NATO is no longer in the best interests of the U.S.

[i] The original 12 NATO nations were Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

[ii] Countries that joined NATO after it was established are: Greece and Turkey (1952); West Germany (1955; from 1990 as Germany); Spain (1982); the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland (1999); Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia (2004); Albania and Croatia (2009); Montenegro (2017); North Macedonia (2020); and Finland (2023).