The Bulwark: Putin Wants to Break NATO. Republicans Want to Help Him.

Yes, we do.

We have our own reasons to get rid of NATO.

I’ve yet to hear a compelling case for NATO in the 21st century.

The Bulwark:

“Vladimir Putin’s central objective in Europe isn’t to capture Kyiv, the Donbas, or any other part of Ukraine. It’s to weaken the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which protects most of the continent against him. And in that longstanding campaign, Putin scored two significant victories this week.

One was in France, where Marine Le Pen, a Putin sympathizer, finished a close second to Emmanuel Macron in Sunday’s French presidential election. Le Pen is running almost even with Macron in polls for the April 24 runoff. She has said that if she wins, she’ll withdraw France from NATO’s command structure.

The other victory was in the United States, where 63 House Republicans, nearly a third of the GOP conference, voted against a resolution of support for NATO.

The House vote, taken on April 5, is a warning sign. Putin may be losing ground in Ukraine, but he’s gaining ground in the U.S. Congress. Five years ago, 22 House Republicans voted against pro-NATO legislation. That number has nearly tripled. …”

Here is the argument against NATO:

• NATO is a globalist institution that commits the United States to the defense of countries like Albania and Turkey which supposedly “share our values.”
• NATO is a relic of the Cold War. It was ostensibly created to contain communism and keep the Soviets out of Western Europe. The mission was accomplished in the 1990s.
• Since the end of the Cold War, NATO has been transformed from a defensive organization into an offensive tool of liberal imperialism in countries like Serbia and Libya.
• NATO has committed the United States to the defense of tiny countries like Montenegro and North Macedonia and the Baltic states. These relationships add nothing of value to American security.
• NATO keeps American troops in Europe permanently and blindly moving 1,000 miles to the east toward Russia’s borders which fuels tensions. The troops should have been withdrawn after World War II. The troops should have been withdrawn a second time after the Cold War. Instead of being withdrawn, powerful interests have advanced them all the way to the Baltic states.
• The European Union has a population larger than our own and an economy comparable to our own and is more than a match for Russia. NATO should be dissolved and the EU should take responsibility for European security. The war in Ukraine is an excellent occasion for this long overdue transition.
• The Kremlin’s official state ideology has done a 180 degree turn since the demise of the Soviet Union. Eurasianism is an inwardly focused ideology that poses no threat to American security. The “Russian World” is separated from the United States by three oceans, Canada and the European Union. Liberals are in a purely ideological and unnecessary conflict with Russia.
• Putin’s Russia is a weaker Russia than has existed at any point in American history. America had good relations with the Russian Empire in the 19th century when the tsars ruled Finland, the Baltic States, Ukraine, Central Asia and Alaska. Why can’t we get along with Putin?
• Russia has always been an “autocracy.” And yet, we have managed to coexist with Russia for centuries. Liberals have spent the last twenty years leading us into disastrous regime change wars and foolish crusades to spread “democracy” in Eurasia.
• NATO is nothing but a tool which liberals use to impose their values on foreign countries. The existence of NATO and its reckless expansion was the cause of the war in Ukraine.
• Withdrawing from NATO will encourage Russia and the European Union and Russia’s neighbors like Ukraine to resolve their own regional security issues.
• NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine is aggravating inflation and is the cause of the present energy shock which is harming the American middle class and working class while imperiling our security.
• Ukraine is fighting to join the European Union, not the United States. Therefore, the European Union should take responsibility for defending Ukraine.
• The “Free World” includes countries like Greece which bans political parties and Germany which is a full blown totalitarian police state and Canada which abuses the civil liberties of its own citizens. Britain arrests its own citizens for homophobic tweets. Joe Biden sees a third of the American population as his “domestic enemies.”
• Trump was prevented from withdrawing from NATO by people like “Mad Dog” Mattis and other Deep State loyalists
• Trump was literally impeached by the Deep State because he hesitated to arm Zelensky and wanted to investigate the corrupt ties between Joe Biden, Hunter Biden and Ukraine
• Nothing good has come out of NATO expansion into Ukraine and critics of this policy have been vindicated by the present crisis
• NATO embroils us in purely local ethnic disputes in Eastern Europe

We have our own long standing reasons to get rid of NATO.

Liberal imperialism has saddled us with countless problems which will take us generations to sort out. The Americans who lost their lives in pointless wars over the course of a century all over Eurasia from the Solomon Islands to the Philippines to Iraq to the trenches of France are just the most visible manifestation of the problem. The neglect of the borders of “the Homeland” by our globalist liberal elites is another. As long as the American Empire exists, the minds of our globalist liberal elites will always be focused on someone else’s problems. They are currently focused on their border in Ukraine.