Time for a Frank Discussion on NATO

The US continues to shoulder the burden of an alliance that may have outgrown its usefulness.

February 7, 2019 Ari Lieberman

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was formed in 1949 as a collective defense pact against the aggressive designs and intentions of the Soviet Union. Turkey was accepted into NATO in 1951. The latest NATO entry was the tiny Balkan nation Montenegro, which ascended in 2017.

The United States shoulders the lion’s share of NATO’s budget and the defense of Europe. According to one estimate, US expenses associated with the defense of Europe totaled US$36.0bn in 2018, which represents 5.5% of the US defense budget and 6.3 times the amount President Trump is asking to facilitate the construction of a barrier or wall on the US-Mexico border.

With the fall of communism and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the threat of a mass Soviet invasion of Western Europe instantly vanished. Western style democracy and free enterprise triumphed decidedly over totalitarianism and stifling socialism.............To Read More.....

My Take -  Bretton Woods is dead, we just need to bury it. These "allies" have been, on the best of occasions, leaky vessels. It's high time they learned to swim on their own. Having said that - Europe is doomed, and whether NATO exists or not is immaterial to Europe’s eventual collapse.

They've destroyed themselves with regulations, debt, taxes and immigration. Their economic outlook is dismal and when the day comes to pay the piper, Europe will dissolve into small regional nations, which has been the foundational social paradigm of Europe for centuries.

It's already happening in Spain and Italy with regions of those nations demanding regional autonomy, and when Europe’s economy collapses, along with he EU, that demand for regional autonomy will increase. Europe is doomed, and we need to get that.

Most importantly, we need to realize we owe them nothing when it happens. Helping Europe is throwing good money after bad, and throwing American lives away for them is completely unacceptable.