John DayParticipant@Dr. D: This? Big Serge, NATO at the...

John Day

Participant

@Dr. D: This?
Big Serge, NATO at the Crossroads Incoherent Security Architecture and the Problem of Grand Strategy [Whose interests does NATO actually serve?]
NATO, in its original conception, was designed to resolve a very particular security dilemma in Western Europe. In the immediate wake of World War Two, Western Europe – specifically Britain and France – had to consider how it might be possible to mount a defense against the colossal Soviet forces that were now conveniently forward deployed in Central Germany…
.. Washington is caught in a bind of its own making, created by decades of writing checks that it would prefer not to cash It has pledged to fight the “Third World War” for Tallinn and Riga, should the need arise, and has promised in no uncertain terms to extend that guarantee to Kiev as well at some point in the future…
..In the end, Ukraine becomes the poster child and archetype for the mismatch between NATO’s promises and its material basis of power. It has now been 16 years since Kiev was first enticed with the prospect of NATO membership. But what did they actually get? A wrecked power grid, the loss of 20% of their territory (so far), and hundreds of thousands dead, wounded, or missing. The 45 million strong Ukraine that received those lofty promises so long ago is now a shattered and battered husk with perhaps 25 million citizens left. From NATO, they receive too many words and far too few shells, vehicles, and air defense interceptors.
NATO is, after all, a military alliance. When it was originally created, the hard calculus of divisions, manpower, and operational minutia were a foundational element of its construction. West Germany was brought into the alliance not due to lofty rhetoric about democracy and friendship, but due to the need to mobilize West German manpower and industrial capacity, and the desire to defend forward of the Rhine – a far cry from the induction of the Baltics, which brought no strategic advantage whatsoever. What NATO needs now is not another member, another noncontributing security commitment deep in the Russian strategic space, but a hearty dose of realism.
https://bigserge.substack.com/p/nato-at-the-crossroads