US Politics Mega-thread - Page 5830

On November 01 2016 00:44 kwizach wrote:
Alright, this reply to LegalLord's very flawed post on NATO is going to be a long one (I hadn't found the time to comment properly before today). Read on if you're interested in NATO & U.S. foreign policy.


+ Show Spoiler [Pretty long post by LegalLord on NATO] +

I have to respond here, because this post contains a lot of inaccuracies, vague and/or misleading shortcuts & oversimplifications, distortions, as well as outright falsehoods. Some assertions point towards a lack of understanding of NATO's history and functioning. I'm all for debating the merits of the continued existence of NATO and of past, present and future operations undertaken under the NATO framework, but an intelligent discussion on these issues requires an informed understanding of the reality of the organization and an avoidance of superficial caricatures.

I will address the contents of your post paragraph by paragraph, while tackling your larger points in the process as well.


This introduction muddies the timeline and the causal relationships between events. The North Atlantic Treaty was signed in April 1949 and the Federal Republic of Germany was created in May of the same year. Neither were a reaction to Mao's forces prevailing in China or to the beginning of the Korean War -- in fact, the Korean war started more than a year after both events, in June 1950. NATO was created with the threat of Soviet expansionism in mind specifically, not because of the potential threat of a Soviet-Chinese alliance. The tensions between the USSR and the People's Republic of China were noticed by the Americans during the Cold War, and Kissinger in particular sought to exploit them by initiating a diplomatic rapprochement between the US and the PRC. These tensions were and are irrelevant to the matter of whether or not NATO is obsolete.

The impact that the Korean war did have, however, was to help convince some in the West who were until then reluctant about rearming West Germany, that its rearmament was a necessity as a precaution against possible Soviet territorial ambitions. Many decision-makers in the West indeed saw Stalin's influence between North Korea's invasion of its southern neighbor (and later China's participation in the war) -- they felt that the USSR was testing the West's resolve against Soviet expansionism. Adenauer already supported rearmament, and the Korean war helped move public opinion towards his position. Pressure from the U.S. also led France to agree to the change, although with some caveats: the French initially pushed for the creation of a supranational European Defence Community, aiming to allay their concerns about an independent German military. The project fell through when it was rejected by the French Parliament in 1954, and West Germany was instead admitted into NATO and the Western European Union, using those frameworks instead to ease concerns about its rearmament.

Finally, "Europe start[ing] to come together into an economic community of its own" was not a "side effect" of NATO. The birth of the European Coal and Steel Community in the early 1950s was the result of the policies of both Western European leaders (in particular from France) and the U.S. government, but the NATO framework did not play a role and European integration was not a "side effect" of the organization and the cooperation it entailed. The Schuman government was already preparing the groundwork for the ECSC before the North Atlantic Treaty was signed, and the United States' support for European integration did not need to be communicated through NATO channels. The projects for deepened integration that were pushed by European leaders in the second half of the 1950s and then in the following decades were not "side effects" of the existence of NATO either. It can obviously be argued that NATO played its part in ensuring peace among Western states and stability on the European continent, but that's another argument.


These two excerpts illustrate the amalgamations that are found throughout your post between neoconservatism and U.S. foreign policy on the one hand, and between U.S. foreign policy and NATO on the other hand (resulting in your final statement that NATO "is to a large extent a vehicle for the execution of neoconservative foreign policy"). I will address the latter later on, and will comment on the former first. You are significantly overstating the influence of neoconservatism and neoconservatists on U.S. foreign policy since the end of the Cold War.

To begin, neoconservatives did not have this kind of substantial influence on U.S. foreign policy until 2001, when several of them were recruited into the GWB administration. Before that, some second-generation neocons (among those labeled "Scoop Jackson Democrats" by Justin Vaïsse, including Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz) had played a role (some analysts argue it was significant, others less so) in parts of Reagan's foreign policy agenda, but the ideas they and third-generation neocons (Bill Kristol, Gary Schmitt, Robert Kagan, Max Boot, etc.) put forward were not the major foreign policy "persuasion" within the Republican party in the 1990s, let alone in the Clinton administration. Likewise, their writings and advocacy (within think tanks and publications such as the American Enterprise Institute, the Project for the New American Century, the Weekly Standard and others) were not a driving force behind the foreign policy decisions made by the Clinton administration (they still were somewhat influential in some policy circles and they starting laying the groundwork for their breakthrough in the GWB administration, but the voting record of Congressional Republicans with regards to Kosovo in 1999 shows that the policy prescriptions of neoconservatives did not even convince a majority of Republican lawmakers at the time). When the Clinton administration opted for intervention during the 1990s, including when NATO was involved (in the Bosnian war and in Kosovo war), it was not because of the influence of neoconservatives or neoconservative thinking (worth noting as well is that neoconservatives were not always united on those issues -- Fukuyama and Krauthammer did not support U.S. involvement in Bosnia, for example, although most neoconservatives policymakers were in favor of intervening - see Hamza Karčić's "US Neoconservative Support and Policy Activism for Bosnia, 1992–1995: Correcting the Record", Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, Vol. 35, No. 3, 2015, pp. 344-358). I suggest reading Maria Ryan's Neoconservatism and the New American Century (2010) if you're interested in learning more about the limited influence of neocons during that period.

Even after 2001, however, one should not overemphasize the influence of neoconservatives either -- while the role they played in the decision to invade Iraq is probably what they're the most famous for (other factors which led to the invasion also have to be taken into account, though), it has to be remembered that they had allies in more senior officials who were not necessarily neoconservatives per se but who shared some of the neocons' policy prescriptions (such as Rumsfeld and Cheney for invading Iraq). This is also when key elements of the "Wolfowitz doctrine" that you referenced were included in the 2002 National Security Strategy -- in 1992, several of those elements had faced public (and private -- many senior officials of the GHWB administration rejected key parts of that Defense Planning Guidance draft) rebuke. After 2006 and during GWB's second mandate, however, neocons were sidelined to an extent in the administration, and their more immediate influence on policy decreased substantially. They have not been in important positions of power and have not seen their ideas grain traction either within the Obama administration, which they have criticized at length except on some occasions (they supported the 2009 surge in Afghanistan, for example). Of course, neoconservatives still remain an important current in U.S. foreign policy debates, next to realists and liberals in particular. Some of the policy decisions they participated in during GWB's first mandate have effects to this day (for example through path dependency dynamics). Many are still very much active as scholars, whether in academia or in think tanks, and they do retain a significant influence within the Republican party (in particular with regards to their interventionist stances -- see Justin Vaïsse's "Why Neoconservatism Still Matters", Brookings Policy Paper, No. 20, 2010). Yet as I've explained, they remain only one current among others, and they certainly do not hold the reins to current US foreign policy making -- overall, the picture you're painting of neoconservatism as the essential embodiment of U.S. foreign policy since the end of the Cold War is extremely inaccurate. If you would like to understand neoconservatism better, I recommend reading Daniel Cooper's Neoconservatism and American Foreign Policy: A Critical Analysis (2011) and Justin Vaïsse's Neoconservatism: The Biography of a Movement (2010).

You do mention a "liberal equivalent" as well, using a pretty convoluted description and a label (neoliberalism) that is not particularly used compared to others such as "liberal interventionism". You gloss over significant distinctions between liberal interventionism and neoconservatism, however, and you also fail to appreciate that the liberal tent is heterogeneous -- liberal influence on U.S. foreign policy since the end of the Cold War has not only included the ideas favored by "hawks". Obama's two mandates are a good example -- despite the Libyan intervention and the promotion of Samantha Power and Susan Rice (both seen by many as "liberal interventionists") within the ranks of the administration in 2013, Obama's foreign policy has combined elements of realism and different strands of liberalism. Among the differences between liberal interventionism and neoconservatism, I'll start by pointing out that one of the four or five pillars of neoconservatism is the importance granted to the military within the foreign policy spectrum of instruments -- neocons support keeping the defense budget high or increasing it, as well as using military force to achieve foreign policy goals. Liberal interventionists tend to be more prudent when it comes to the use of force, although they obviously can support it in given situations. Neoconservatives are more likely to support regime change, believing democracy has to be pushed abroad. Liberal interventionists, while they do welcome new democratic states, tend to focus more on interventions to prevent humanitarian crises. I won't expand on the neocon focus on maintaining unipolarity by actively preventing the rise of other powers, which isn't directly found among liberals. More importantly in the context of this discussion (see two paragraphs below), liberals emphasize the importance of international organizations and institutions, and the necessity to defend and uphold them as much as possible, while to a considerable extent neoconservatives see international organizations with much more circumspection. Indeed, international organizations and institutions are to be supported only as long as they directly serve US foreign policy objectives, but to be put aside if they constrain the US' freedom of action in pursuit of its national interest.

Let's be clear here: US foreign policy from the end of the Cold War to present times, and US policy with regards to NATO, can hardly be reduced to neoconservatism and liberal interventionism (in addition, the two currents are obviously big tents themselves). I covered the influence of neoconservatism; concerns dear to liberal interventionists did play a role in several decisions to intervene militarily abroad during that period, but they were usually not the sole (or the primary) reasons behind those decisions (for example, with Kosovo, in addition to a desire to do something about the humanitarian crisis unfolding, one has to take into account, among other reasons for intervening, the Clinton administration's perception that NATO would lose credibility if it failed to act). Failing to recognize the vast spectra of ideas, positions, actors and influences behind U.S. foreign policy, not only in addition to neoconservatism and liberalism but even within the liberal tent itself, leads you to present only a shallow and misleading caricature of U.S. foreign policy -- exactly like when you argue that the Wolfowitz doctrine has "defined" US foreign policy since the end of the Cold War. The same is true when you write "There are plenty of neoconservative Democrats as well. Hillary Clinton for example". Unless "neoconservatism" loses all meaning and is now defined as "being more willing to use military force than Obama", Hillary Clinton is not a neoconservative. The fact that prominent neoconservatives have supported her over Trump does not make her a neoconservative (FP experts from all backgrounds support her), and the fact that she has in the past supported some interventions that neoconservatives happened to also support does not make her a neoconservative either. To be sure, some neocons hope that she will be more receptive to their policy prescriptions than Obama has been, but the label "neocon" still simply does not match the reality of her past positions on matters of foreign policy and of her tenure as Secretary of State. As to how she will act as president, some analysts think it is not likely that she'll be the kind of liberal hawk that others have described her as, but this is obviously speculation.

This brings me to another issue with the paragraphs I quoted above, found also in particular in the following two paragraphs (which I put in spoiler tags previously):

+ Show Spoiler [Two paragraphs which were spoilered] +

Indeed, you are also indirectly misrepresenting to an extent the position of neoconservatives on NATO. In the 1990s and the early 2000s, neoconservatives lobbied for the expansion of NATO through groups like the New Atlantic Initiative (some) and the U.S. Committee on NATO (many). Yet neoconservatives do not support NATO because it is a way to "drag other countries into not-their-war". They support NATO's existence because it helps cement American primacy in Europe (expanding NATO was in this perspective seen as a way to prevent the newcomers in the alliance from falling back within Russia's sphere of influence and perhaps abandon democracy -- note that neoconservatives were not the only ones to adopt this line of thinking, though). and because it serves a purpose with regards to the political legitimization of certain actions taken in the pursuit of U.S. foreign policy objectives, the expansion being therefore useful regarding the political support US actions may receive from Central and Eastern European countries. In this perspective, NATO is much more useful on the political level than on the military level -- when it comes to the kind of military interventions you're referring to, neoconservatives are much more at ease with going to war with ad hoc "coalitions of the willing" that are not as constraining as NATO (see for example how neoconservatives (and others) criticized the NATO "war by committee" in the case of Kosovo -- see Stewart Patrick's "The Mission Determines the Coalition”: The United States and Multilateral Cooperation after 9/11" in Bruce Jones et al. (2010), Cooperating for Peace and Security : Evolving Institutions and Arrangements in a Context of Changing U. S. Security Policy). NATO is simply not the kind of vehicle for "neoconservative foreign policy" that you're describing.

Let's proceed by examining further the first of the two paragraphs I just quoted, however.


This paragraph contains several assertions that range from oversimplifications to complete distortions of reality. I won't delve into your use of "imperialistic" -- I find it analytically unhelpful and misleading, in particular when it comes to US involvement in the Bosnian war, but let's focus on the facts. First, can you tell me which "imperialistic" NATO actions in the Middle East in the 1990s you're referring to? The only two NATO missions in the region that I can think of are Operation Anchor Guard and Operation Ace Guard, through which some relatively minor NATO assets were sent to Turkey preventively in 1990-1991 in light of the possible threat posed by Iraq at Turkey's southern border after Saddam Hussein's invasion of Koweit. Next, your claim that it is the U.S. that started escalating conflicts that had "mostly been suppressed" in Ukraine, Georgia, the South China sea, and with regards to "Chinese-Japanese land disputes" is grossly inaccurate, especially since you're saying that the US-aligned parties are acting "under coercion".

In Ukraine, although the U.S. supported the opposition which ousted Yanukovych, and although previously the Bush administration wanted Ukraine to join NATO (and in general the U.S. wanted Ukraine to open itself further to the West), it is nevertheless first and foremost the domestic opposition to Yanukovych that initiated the events of 2014, and it is Russia that decided to use military force to invade the country. Erasing these actors' agency and the role they played in the escalation of the situation paints a very misleading picture of what happened. In Georgia, the Bush administration did train parts of the Georgian military and pushed for the country to join NATO, but it is still the Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, who wanted and decided to use military force to bring Abkhazia and South Ossetia back under Georgian control, despite (perhaps too timid) warnings from U.S. officials -- and it is Russia that chose to respond with military force as well. Of course, in both cases, understanding how things got to where they are does require taking into account how the U.S. pushed to get both Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, and in general tried to draw them towards the West. Yet ignoring everything else to state that it is the U.S. that escalated suppressed conflicts is simply not accurate. As a side note, I'd like to add that one has to keep in mind that Ukraine and Georgia are sovereign states, and that the fact that Russia wants them to stay in its sphere of influence should not simply be taken as the legitimate baseline. Russia responding with military force to states slipping out of its sphere of influence through sovereign decisions makes Russia the party most responsible for escalation due to its own ambitions.

In the South China sea, tensions have grown and escalated due to China's increasingly assertive claims to territories and waters. That the U.S. took a firmer position on the matter under Obama doesn't change the fact that the tensions were not dormant or "suppressed" but already increasing, and that it is China who is trying to change the status quo and who is escalating the dispute -- the U.S. is reacting to the developments, not instigating them, and it is privately trying to an extent to ease up tensions. Finally, blaming the U.S. for escalation in the Senkaku Islands dispute is nonsense. It is both Japan and China that recently took steps that led to increased tensions, and the U.S. has reacted by reaffirming its treaty commitment to the defense of Japan, and by continuing to fly its military planes normally in the East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone despite the introduction in 2013 by China of restrictions on air traffic in the area. Again, pretending here that it is the U.S. that is escalating suppressed conflicts is simply not true.

The final part of your paragraph in which you develop your claim that the U.S. is militarily/economically coercing European and Asian states into fighting the wars and fights of the US is even more divorced from reality. With regards to the situation in Asia, several Asian states have been hostile to Chinese ambitions in the South China sea for years, and they rallied behind the U.S. when it took a firmer stance -- not because the U.S. forced them to, but precisely because they saw the development as an opportunity to stand up to China (which had been pushing for bilateral discussions with each state) more easily. I'm also not sure of how you picture the role of the NATO framework with regards to the situation there. When it comes to European states participating in NATO interventions in and around Europe, your assertion is misguided as well.

Let's begin with NATO's Operation Deliberate Force in 1995 in the Bosnian war. Your comment about European states fighting on the US' behalf, while the latter doesn't fight, is false -- the U.S. provided by far the most important share of the aircraft and resources used in the operation (see for example chapters 8 & 9 in particular in Col Robert C. Owen's (ed.) Deliberate Force - A Case Study in Effective Air Campaigning (2000) -- after the Dayton Accords, though, European states did send most of the NATO troops in the peacekeeping missions IFOR and SFOR in the area, but that was after the operation and not to engage in fighting). There was no use of military/economic coercion by the U.S. on its European allies either -- in fact, until the summer of 1995, the U.S. and Western European states had substantial disagreements and different positions on how to proceed in Bosnia with regards to the role of UN peacekeepers, to NATO involvement, and to the use of force by NATO. Only after the Srebrenica massacre, the London Conference of July 1995 and the following diplomatic efforts by U.S. representatives, did European leaders rally behind both the new plan put forward by the U.S. to get the parties in the conflict to reach a peace settlement (a plan that was welcomed by European leaders, who reacted positively to the new American leadership on the issue), and the military options and triggering mechanisms that the U.S. favored. Of course, some divergences remained, including during ODF itself, but the Europeans did not get behind the U.S. and participate in the NATO operation due to "military/economic coercion" at all. See for example, for the American perspective, Derek Chollet, The Road to the Dayton Accords -- A study of American Statecraft (2005), in particular chapter 2. Here are a few relevant scans:

+ Show Spoiler [p. 43] +
+ Show Spoiler [p. 44] +
+ Show Spoiler [p. 45] +

I'll quickly quote here another post of yours:


I've already addressed other elements of this paragraph above, but that claim that "NATO [...] pushed to escalate [...] into civil war" the situation in the Balkans in the early 1990s is, to put it mildly, utterly false and unfounded. The document you linked to in your follow-up post does not support the assertion at all. That claim is pure deceptive anti-NATO propaganda.

Let's now move to the NATO involvement of 1999 in the Kosovo war. Here as well, the U.S. was by far the most important contributor of military assets and resources to the operation (for example by deploying 700 of the 1055 total aircraft) -- see notably chapter two of the RAND study by John E. Peters et al. (eds), European Contributions to Operation Allied Force (2001). The authors point out that "although alliance and U.S. press releases during the operation recognized the contributions of all participating air forces, the truth was that the United States was shouldering a disproportionately large share of the effort" (p. 52). I'll mention here that the decision to proceed through NATO instead of using military force unilaterally was among other reasons based on the fact that the U.S.' European allies had troops on the ground in Bosnia which would potentially be facing retaliation. With regards to the NATO air campaign itself, the U.S. managed to get the Europeans on board through diplomacy, accommodating some of their demands and assuaging some of their concerns with regards to the possible use of force against Milosevic. Your claim that this was the result of "military/economic pressure" applied by the U.S. is therefore again wrong. See for example Ivo H. Daalder and Michael E. O'Hanlon's Winning ugly : NATO’s war to save Kosovo (2001). Here are a few relevant scans:

+ Show Spoiler [p. 72] +
+ Show Spoiler [p. 73] +
+ Show Spoiler [p. 74] +
+ Show Spoiler [p. 75] +

I'll add that one of the reasons European leaders decided to move forward with building the EU's Common Security and Defence Policy (formerly known as the ESDP) towards the end of the 1990s is precisely their frustration over their own inability to solve the crises in their own backyard without the U.S. intervening and leading the effort.

This brings me to the third example of a major NATO intervention in the European area/neighborhood: the organization's involvement in the Libyan civil war. With regards to the burden-sharing among NATO members during the intervention, other NATO members (France in particular) shouldered a larger share of the military effort than in the previous two examples, yet the participation of the U.S. was still vital to the operation and the Americans were responsible for the largest percentage of troops & personnel involved (50,5%), of aircraft deployed (38,2%) and of sorties (29,5%), in addition to other contributions. Yet even this larger role of other NATO members doesn't support your assertion, considering that the U.S. did not coerce those states into intervening, or try to to get them to fight its war, at all -- in fact, it is largely France (Sarkozy) that spearheaded the push to intervene, and the U.S. that joined France and the UK in supporting a military intervention (within the Obama administration, Rice and Power supported intervening, and they were eventually joined by Clinton). See for example Jeffrey H. Michaels' "Able but not willing -- A critical assessment of NATO’s Libya intervention", in Kjell Engelbrekt et al. (eds.), The NATO Intervention in Libya -- Lessons learned from the campaign (2014), pp. 20-22. In addition, NATO members that opposed/did not want to contribute to the operation (such as Germany and Poland) were not forced to do so at all. This is obviously not to say that the U.S. never tries to apply political pressure on its allies, but your claim simply does not resist scrutiny (and the same is true regarding NATO members' contributions to ISAF, by the way).

I'd like to add that your sentence "Basically it's really hard to refuse the demands of a country that has a military force in yours and that you owe a lot of money to" reveals a deeply flawed understanding of how negotiations work (and pressure is sometimes exerted) within/around NATO. I'm curious to see with which examples you'd substantiate that comment.


I won't repeat what I wrote in the beginning of my post with regards to the birth of the EU, but this is honestly a collection of clichés and superficial comments on the state and evolution of relations between European states and the US in matters of foreign policy and NATO cooperation. For example, it ignores France's gradual turn towards NATO in recent years (including since it rejoined NATO's integrated military command structures in 2009), notably with respect to how the organization is viewed among both civilian and military officials (the evolution has been fueled recently to a substantial extent by French disillusion with regards to the CSDP, in particular since its intervention in Mali -- as a side note, the effects of the Brexit on the CSDP will be interesting to follow when it comes to the position of France on the CSDP's potential), and it oversimplifies matters with respect to "national interests" and how they align or not (in particular regarding the UK-US relationship).


The idea that NATO in its current form is "obsolete" is pure nonsense and extremely ignorant (and recognizing this does not even require supporting the existence of the organization). You seem to be unaware of the evolution NATO has gone through since the end of the Cold War, and of the multiple purposes served, and programs implemented by, the organization.

First, although the Soviet Union no longer exists, NATO remains a fundamental deterrent against any armed aggression against one of its member states, and any menace to their territorial integrity. This also makes it that much more difficult for non-member states to effectively use the (veiled or not) threat of armed aggression against any NATO member state to influence its policies. With regards to Russia, while current tensions have not reached some of the levels that characterized much of the Cold War, Eastern European states that are part of NATO are still more than supportive of the existence of the alliance and of its charter's article V. Deterrence against armed aggression remains relevant today. In addition, the nuclear umbrella provided by NATO member states with nuclear capabilities (the U.S. in particular) means that non-nuclear member states benefit from nuclear deterrence without having to acquire nuclear weapons themselves. I'll mention here that NATO has also been active in the development of a ballistic missile defense program to protect Europe.

With regards to the two topics you mention, nuclear non-proliferation and terrorism, NATO is already active on both fronts. The organization cooperates with both individual states and international organizations (such as the EU, through its IcSP and INSC instruments in particular) to avoid the spread of WMDs, and monitor and secure existing weapons and materials. With respect to terrorism, the organization facilitates intelligence-sharing and shared assessments, and contributes to the strategic analysis of threats. It was obviously directly involved in counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency efforts on the ground through ISAF, and provides counter-terrorism expertise to member states and partner countries. It also facilitates the allocation and deployment of capabilities to actively combat terrorist groups. In short, it is already doing what you said it should be doing (except if I'm not mistaken you'd like Russia and others to be directly involved).

To pick up on what I just mentioned, the NATO framework is obviously very useful in facilitating the rapid multilateral deployment of military forces both within the borders of its member states and beyond them (in this respect, the organization has evolved since the end of the Cold War and has devoted a large part of its operational focus on deployment beyond its initial geographical scope), thanks to the numerous benefits it brings at all levels and stages of troop mobilization and deployment. The alliance is in addition of particular value with regards to the issue of interoperability between the armed forces of its member states. The application and adoption of NATO standards, and the development of equipment interoperability, has been and continues to be of enormous importance to facilitate how the military assets of member states can function together. This is true as well of the NATO education, training, exercises, and evaluation programs designed to ensure that the armed forces of member states are capable of cooperating effectively and engaging militarily together.

NATO is also very active in developing capabilities and coordinating efforts in the area of cyber defense, and it is working with partner states and international organizations at different levels in relation to the issue. Other missions and areas of activity include anti-piracy efforts (in particular around Somalia), the monitoring of important energy supply flows, recent initiatives pertaining to the role of women in peace and security efforts, scientific research activities in various domains, and plenty of other activities that I'm not going to be able to list here. As I mentioned above, NATO also engages in partnerships, dialogues, and in cooperation in general with various non-member states and international organizations, sometimes through institutionalized structures. It allows the U.S. and member states to make use of this security & defense network of cooperation when relevant in their exchanges with those non-NATO actors. NATO can also provide expertise and guidance to prospective members or interested states when it comes to institutional frameworks and practices pertaining to civil-military relations (in order to help those states cement a civilian control of their military) or other similar issues, as well as regarding practices in civil emergency planning and the consolidation of "civil preparedness".

It's impossible to be exhaustive here, so I'll limit myself to these few examples, but the bottom line is that NATO has been and continues to be extremely valuable to its member states in various domains related to security, defense and foreign policy. NATO continues to serve their security interests in many respects, and it is therefore not obsolete at all (and this is again not to say that there cannot be legitimate criticism of, or debate over, the functioning, programs, or actions/interventions of the organization). And while cooperation and partnerships with non-NATO members are encouraged as I mentioned, NATO cannot be expected to completely ignore the tensions that exist with some states such as Russia, given Russia's behavior in recent years in Ukraine, given the state of the relations between several NATO member states and Russia, and given the fears shared by some in NATO, in particular among Eastern European states, over possible future destabilization efforts by Russia on the latter's periphery.


NATO has been evolving and going through reforms since the end of the Cold War. The recent Wales and Warsaw summits, for example, marked shifts in focus from those that came before them. NATO isn't supposed to be a worldwide forum to foster cooperation between every state, it is a military/security alliance. You seem to be misunderstanding what that implies and the kind of cooperation that it allows for, precisely because it is not some kind of OSCE (or UN) variant. NATO member states are not being "led away" from it -- it is rather the opposite that has been true in the last few years, and some partnerships are actually getting stronger (with Sweden and Finland, for example). Also, the existence of NATO is saving the U.S. a lot of money in different ways, and Trump doesn't know anything about NATO.


To sum up, your post contains a substantial number of inaccuracies, distortions, and outright fabrications about NATO, its history, its past interventions, and its current state. Your comments on the influences behind U.S. foreign policy rest to a significant extent on caricatures, misrepresentations, and misleading generalizations. To be sure, there are plenty of legitimate debates that have been and continue to be had since the end of the Cold War over the continued existence of NATO, over its expansion, over some of the interventions it has conducted, over the challenges it faces (for example regarding the state of the armed forces of its European members -- both separately and collectively), etc. Yet for those debates to be fruitful, they require at least an understanding of what NATO currently does, how it works, and what it has done in the past. I'm not saying you're being purposely disingenuous when you're accusing NATO of being simultaneously "obsolete" and "to a large extent a vehicle for the execution of neoconservative foreign policy", but at the very least your post betrays both a heavy bias and a fundamental lack of understanding of the subject matter. And that's unfortunate, especially considering the very rude comment that you recently addressed to Plansix. If you would like to learn more about these issues, however, I can send you some additional references, as well as electronic copies of a few of the sources that I cited in this post.