France Bombs NATO, Again

[Geee]

American Spectator

Nervous self-congratulation will be the order of the day next week in London as representatives of the 29 member nations convene to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

There will be much relief expressed that President Donald Trump has changed his mind, now saying NATO is not obsolete after all. Applause will ring out as it is extolled as the most successful military alliance in history, the one that defeated the Soviet Union. Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, whose term was recently extended for another three years, will be lauded. New, self-justifying tasks will be found: space will be seized upon as a new defense dimension, and artificial intelligence capabilities must be developed, along with secure 5G networks. Brows will be furrowed over the vulnerable Suwalki gap along the Lithuanian–Polish border and Russian maneuvers in Belarus. And rapturous pleasure will be expressed about the lavish new $1.23 billion glass and steel Brussels headquarters, built to show that, even when peace breaks out, the plethoric NATO bureaucracy is here to stay. (See “NATO Reconsidered” in the April 2011 issue of The American Spectator.)

But there will also be nervous glances over the shoulder at glaring issues that can no longer be ignored. With the organization having lost its basic raison d’être nearly 30 years ago with the implosion of the Warsaw Pact, cracks in the façade of Western unity are becoming ever more visible. This was inevitable; a Brookings Institution study found that, over the past five centuries, the average duration of collective defense pacts was 15 years.

National interests and defense needs change. Today the U.S. pays lip service to protecting Europe but is really more concerned about the Middle East and China, not necessarily in that order. In peacetime, members have the leisure to squabble over who pays their fair share into the alliance’s $2 billion budget — and who doesn’t. Britain is preoccupied with its long-running Brexit drama and will inevitably feel less involved after it leaves the European Union and edges politically closer to the U.S. Germany is fast getting over its post-WWII complex and beginning to show signs of going its own way on economic and defense policies, to the displeasure of France and Eastern European members.