U.S. Soldiers, assigned to the 1st Battalion, 64th Armor Regiment, 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, conduct gunnery with M1A2 Abrams tanks during exercise Combined Resolve V at 7th Army Joint Multinational Training Command in Grafenwoehr, Germany, Oct. 8, 2015. (U.S. Army photo by Visual Information Specialist Gertrud Zach/released)
Are Americans willing to commit to a nuclear war with Russia to protect the smallest nations in its sphere of influence? It’s unlikely many Americans, tired from endless intervention in the Middle East, will see their way to blessing a war with Russia over countries they can’t find on the map. Pat Buchanan writes in The American Conservative:
Under NATO, we are now committed to go to war for 28 nations. And the interventionists who took us into Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Yemen want war guarantees extended to other nations even closer to Russia.
One day, one of those guarantees is going to be called upon. We may find that the American people were unaware of that commitment and are unwilling to honor it, especially if the consequence is a major war with a nuclear power.
A week from now, the 29 member states of “the most successful alliance in history” will meet to celebrate its 70th anniversary. Yet all is not well within NATO.
Instead of a “summit,” the gathering, on the outskirts of London, has been cut to two days.
Among the reasons: apprehension that President Donald Trump might use the occasion to disrupt alliance comity by again berating the Europeans for freeloading off the U.S. defense budget.
French President Emmanuel Macron, on the 100th anniversary of the World War I Armistice, described NATO as having suffered “brain death.” Macron now openly questions the U.S. commitment to fight for Europe and is talking about a “true European Army,” with France’s nuclear deterrent able to “defend Europe alone.”
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose nation spends 1.4 percent of GDP on defense and has relied on the U.S. and NATO to keep Russia at bay since the Cold War began, is said to be enraged at the “disruptive politics” of the French president.
Also, early in December, Britain holds national elections. While the Labour Party remains committed to NATO, its leader, Jeremy Corbyn, is no Clement Attlee, who took Britain into the alliance at its birth in 1949.
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