Would getting the US out of NATO be a good thing for us? NATO has been such a fixture that I've never given it much thought. It could save us a lot of money, at least in the short term with base closures, withdrawing troops deployed to Europe, etc. Also, given most of Western Europe's insistence on being colonized by Islamist settlers, having lax immigration requirements for travelers and immigrants from Europe may well be a security risk. On the other hand, I've generally assumed that allies are helpful at least in intel sharing and that they maintain a certain stability that is good for us. Maybe I'm wrong, or maybe Trump doesn't care about that anymore.
I can see how NATO may have harmed Europe, allowing them to ignore their own defense and their own people and instead to go crazy with their globalist dreams, but I don't know that that's the case. It would seem to fit a common conservative critique of welfare undermining independence and work ethic, though.
What do y'all think? Is Trump trying to get us out of NATO? Would that be a good thing? Or am I just way off base with this?
3 comments:
InfantryDort has one take: https://x.com/infantrydort/status/2013591409748512877
I have a slightly different one:
Eisenhower had it backward. NATO, to succeed, needed us there for far longer than 10 years. Where we went wrong was in continuing the underwriting past the point where Europe’s nations could pay their own way, which is their “fair share” (to coin a phrase) of the still needed collective defense.
Absent nuclear weapons and a willingness to use them–and we’re the only nation to have demonstrated the willingness, although not for a long time–Europe’s nations could not, alone or collectively among themselves–have stood against the Russian Soviet Union.
Loss of Europe would have bad for our own security, which was the motivation for the Marshall Plan beyond simple humanitarianism, and it still would be bad.
The only thing that’s changed is the necessity of moving the front–the core of an operational (rather than the current sort-of aspirational) mutual defense arrangement–farther east. Russia still needs to be contained.
I don’t agree that we trapped Europe in adolescence, although InfantryDort is right that we contributed to that. Western history is rife with nations overcoming the “trap” their “upbringing” to achieve a measure of adulthood. It’s how we, the US, came to exist, it’s the history of the UK, until it aged into its current senescence. It’s the history of Germany as it unified from the several principalities into one nation. It’s the history of France and its successive Republics. Regardless, though, whether we trapped Europe in adolescence or not, that’s the state of Europe today. That’s what we must deal with, and that’s the need to move the front east. Western and Central Europe need to be cut loose; it will be protected by the farther east front, at least militarily. Whether they grow up, in InfantryDort’s terms, or they start taking their own defense and their defense commitments to each other seriously, in my terms, the only way they’ll do that, is if we walk away from them in favor of the better.
More on my blog: http://aplebessite.com/2026/01/20/a-couple-of-points/#comments
The upshot of that is that we don't need NATO; we can't trust much of NATO members' intentions, they never have trusted us, and they have no capability to support us, except in words (which is all the NATO treaty requires) anyway.
It's time to stand up a mutual defense arrangement (I do not say "treaty," but I don't rule one out) with the Three Seas Initiative nations, and when that's gone operational (as opposed to NATO's aspirational (sort of) condition), it'll be time to walk away from NATO.
Eric Hines
My view of the issue is a variation on the old 'Russians out, US in, Germans down' formula for NATO. The EU would like to have a foreign policy independent of the United States but it has no military forces outside the NATO framework which therefore demands US participation, or at least acceptance aka 'leading from behind' in its foreign operations. That worked tolerably well when we had an obvious common enemy with global reach, and when we had just as much interest in constraining European policies as they had in constraining ours. It is working far less well in an era with multiple powerful antagonists when it is hard to come to agreement on joint policy. As a purely military alliance it is certainly beneficial to both us and the Euros but the close connection to the EU where we have no voice makes it problematic. I don't think that DJT is trying to get us out but he's certainly forcing the contradictions to sime resolution.
I mostly agree with Mr. Hines. NATO is probably not helpful in most respects at this time; it's a kind of entangling alliance of the sort President Washington warned about. It's allowed our 'allies' to try to lead us around by the nose without actually contributing anything, and it's become highly provocative vs. Russia since we expanded it to their doorstep.
There have been other negative effects. The French were never honestly committed to the thing anyway, and have only used it as a way of controlling or guiding us, Germany, and the UK. The Germans have been psychologically infantilized by the decades of occupation. It would be genuinely better for them, and the Scandinavian nations, to have a military that wasn't just a fringe but an active part of their society.
I still think the Eastern European powers -- Estonia, Poland, Hungary, Romania -- are worth protecting, and willing to pay their share in blood and treasure. They are still serious people worth taking seriously. We might prefer bilateral agreements instead of an overarching alliance.
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