Is Macron Right? Is NATO, 70, Brain Dead?
Townhall, Nov 26, 2019, Pat Buchanan

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. Why the shortened agenda?

Among the reasons, apprehension that President Donald Trump might use the occasion to disrupt alliance comity by again berating the Europeans for freeloading on 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% 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 NATO at its birth in 1949.

Corbyn has questioned NATO's continued relevance in the post-Cold War era. A potential backer of a new Labour government, Nicola Sturgeon of the Scottish National Party, is demanding the closing of Britain's Trident submarine base in Scotland as a precondition of her party's support for Labour in Parliament.

Also present in London will be NATO ally Turkey's President Recep Erdogan.

[...]

During the Cold War, NATO enjoyed the widespread support of Americans and Europeans, and understandably so. The USSR had 20 divisions in Germany, surrounded West Berlin, and occupied the east bank of the Elbe, within striking distance of the Rhine.

But that Cold War is long over. Berlin is the united free capital of Germany. The Warsaw Pact has been dissolved. Its member states have all joined NATO. The Soviet Union split apart into 15 nations. Communist Yugoslavia splintered into seven nations.

As a fighting faith, communism is dead in Europe. Why then are we Americans still over there?


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