Does NATO Need to Wean Itself Off The US?

The most recent NATO summit resulted in most members agreeing acquiescing to Trumpˋs "proposal" (a.k.a., 'demand') that its members commit to spending 5% of their GDP on defense which, broken down, means that around 3.5% of a given nationˋs GDP is to be committed to actual military spending while the remaining can be spent on infrastructure that supports the military in some way, shape, or form. The 5% goal is to be met by 2035. But the agreement may not be because of Trump made the request or that the leaders of those NATO nations thought that Trump was right.

To try to get his way, Trump has also levied tariffs on Canada and the EU, which includes most NATO members,  in order reach trade deals that produce favorable trade outcomes for the US. Trump's tariffs will hurt the economies of the NATO nations from which there is suppose to be an increase in military spending. This kind of mixed message is like telling a runner to run faster while injuring one of their legs.

We should also note one other thing. While Trump is not hesitant in slapping tariffs on allies, so far his tariff policies toward Russia, despite the horrendous atrocities that it visits on Ukraine, have remained unchanged--that is until recently. Trump has just threatened to apply tariffs to Russian imports if it doesn't agree to a peace deal in 50 days. Here, we need to remember why Trump received the name 'TACO,' which means Trump Always Chickens Out. Israel also gets a free ride here despite the atrocities that it commits against the Palestinian people. When one views both the attacks that Russia and Israel practices against their targets as well as the end goals of the two leaders of those nations, we might be tempted to regard Netanyahu as the Vlad Putin of the Middle East. Of course, the same can be said of Hamas. 

Having seen Russiaˋs invasion of Ukraine and noticing Russiaˋs renewed interest in its military resources near Finland, some in NATO are expecting a Russian attack on a NATO nation by the year 2029. And it isn't just the leaders of some European nations who feel uneasy with Russia, many citizens from those European nations have increased anxiety too. Because of Trump's inaction to Russia's war of aggression, we might also want to consider the question of how much does Trump owe Putin for his 2024 election win? Only a few journalists whom I have read or heard have considered that question. Putting all of that together, how much can NATO nations trust Trumpˋs verbal commitment to Article 5 of NATOˋs collective defense agreement is difficult to answer. 

Here we should note that there are 3 possible responses the US could employ should Russia attack a NATO member nation: do nothing while possibly talking a good game, rush in to defend a fellow NATO member nation, or attack NATO nations to show Putin that the US has undeniably aligned itself with Russia. And so was NATOˋs collective decision to follow Trumpˋs demand a recognition that they need to become less dependent on, if not totally independent from, the US in terms of trade and military aid?

We should note that Russia has already been attacking NATO nations. And it has been doing so in the same way that it has orchestrated the shift in the US's geopolitical alignment. My personal opinion is that many of the authoritarian with hierarchy movements rumbling through Europe and North America are tools of Russia. Evidence of that claim can be found in Russiaˋs support for such movements as well as their statements of support for Russia's aggression. The AfD in Germany provides an example here. These movements often employ a façade of being an ethnocratic movement in order to secure a base of support within the population, but the desired end of the candidates supported by these movements is to install an oligarchy. BTW, Russiaˋs oligarchy also presents itself as a religiously-based ethnocracy.

Will a Russian military attack  a NATO nation in the near future? Seeing Russiaˋs difficulties in Ukraine, an attack against a NATO member when NATO, not counting the US, is well-armed would seem unlikely. And so now we are looking at a doubled-edged window of time when it would be least costly for Russia to attack a NATO nation while NATO is still too dependent on the US to face Russia's military without US help.

We have one other consideration to mull over here. That is Europe's independence from NATO includes developing a coordinated nuclear deterrent which includes a new command post for the release of nuclear weapons. That command post would be shared by France and Germany. But what happens to that command post if what has happened in the US happens in one of them?

And so NATO members need to wean themselves off of their financial and military dependence on the US. That means that NATO members must find suitable markets outside of the US for their goods, increase their development and production of quality weaponry, and invest substantially into all kinds of research. To buy time, which includes appeasing some of the demands made by Trump, NATO members must continue to support Ukraine so that even if Russia should conquer Ukraine, as I believe is inevitable, its success in Ukraine will take long enough for NATO to buy time to become economically and militarily independent from the US. 

 

Of Lessons Learned And To Be Learned

 There are times when what we've learned in the past can help us, and there are times when those same lessons can hurt our efforts to learn something new. Sometimes what we have learned from past mistakes applies to today. For example, I learned from my father's alcoholism to be careful about participating in potentially addictive behaviors. Thus, I no longer drink alcoholic beverages, but when I did drink them, I was very strict with myself regarding how much I drank. And though my personality type lends itself to addiction, I have avoided being addicted to drugs, gambling, smoking, and alcohol.

But sometimes the lessons learned in the past interfere with learning new things. The video below illustrates that point by showing kids, who were raised on modern cell phones, trying to figure out how to use a dial phone:

I saw the same two effects when teaching computer science. I saw times when past learning sometimes helped people learn something new and I saw times when past learning interfered with learning something new.

When leaders face a new problem or crisis, they often try to understand that problem or crisis solely in terms of  past lessons. I remember part of the movie 13 Days, which is a movie about the Cuban Missile Crisis,,when our nation's leaders were hesitant to negotiate a deal with Russia regarding the removal of their nuclear armed missiles in Cuba because of the lessons learned from WW II's Munich agreement. And yet, unlike what happened after Munich, the deal brokered with the USSR saw a successful resolution to the crisis.

And so we face a problem, or perhaps even a crisis, regarding Putin's intentions toward the Ukraine. Should we compare Putin to Hitler who was being driven by imperial desires and thus no agreement could quench his hunger for new territorial acquisitions? Or is Putin more comparable to Khrushchev who was reacting to American nuclear armed missiles located near Russia's border in Turkey?

Determining with whom we should compare Putin requires both a good knowledge of history as well as an understanding of who Putin is as a man and a leader.

History tells us this: because of past invasions from Western European nations, Russia easily feels threatened by the West. After all there was the Swedish invasion of Russia in the early 1700s, the French invasion of Russia in the early 1800s, the WW I and WW II German invasions of Russia, and the Western incursion into Russia in the Russian Civil War following the October, 1917 Russian Revolution. Was it any wonder then that following WW II, the Soviet Union created the 'Iron Curtain' where it controlled and used Eastern European nations as a buffer against the West.

Of course, the Soviet Union finally dissolved and part of that included the reunification of Eastern and Western Germany into one nation. Part of the understanding between the two leaders, George H. W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev, was that NATO would not move eastward by offering memberships to former Warsaw Pact nations that were part of the old 'Iron Curtain.' But not long after that, under President Clinton if memory serves, NATO did exactly that by offering NATO memberships to Eastern European nations. Here we should note that NATO is a nuclear power. And around the time that John McCain was running for President, there were proposals that floated the idea of putting putting strategic defensive equipment in Eastern European nations  that bordered Russia. Russian leaders countered with the threat of using tactical nuclear weapons to removes those defenses.

Well that is at least a part of the historical context to the current standoff over the Ukraine.  What we should also note is that Putin is an authoritarian tyrant who, according to Gorbachev, should have loosened his controlling grip on the Russian government by allowing the freedom for Russians to form their own political parties that would produce viable contenders to his candidacy in elections. Furthermore, Putin's past actions in the Caucasus along with the strong suspicion of his ordering of assassination and incarcerations of political rivals and public critics testify to his authoritarian personality. And there is also the question of whether Putin wants to revive the territorial boundaries of the 9ld Russian Empire that existed under the Tsars.

So what should we make of Putin's troop buildup on the Ukrainian border? Does Putin have imperial desires or does Russia feel threatened by NATO's relationship with the Ukraine and is planning to act as the US did in Latin America during the 1980s when it opposed Leftist revolutions in Nicaragua and El Salvador or in nations that saw Leftist leaders win democratic elections in Guatemala and Chile? We should note that with Chile, the US did to that nation what some, including myself, suspect Russia of doing in the US today: trying to destabilize the nation to prepare it for a coup.

An overview of the potential Ukrainian crisis tells us that not enough of us are willing to share power and wealth, traits that will lead to our self-destruction regardless of what Putin's intentions are. In the meantime, all we can hope for from our President is that he will take actiong that will give him time to accurately read Putin's intentions before determining what further actions to take. In addition, we can also hope that these two nuclear-armed giants will not play games of chicken with everyone's future on the line.