Gene Healy forcefully stated several reasons in yesterday’s Washington Examiner in support of US withdrawal from NATO. The US’ European NATO partners have developed a bad habit of embroiling the US in conflicts that don’t involve a direct American national interest.
Worse, many of them have pared down their military spending to the point that they can start minor wars, but cannot see them through without US help. As an example of this, Healy cites how France and the UK have admitted they are running low on armaments needed to continue the war in Libya.
If Healy had his way, Uncle Sam would tell these “military ‘welfare queens’” that there will be no more “free-riding off America’s lavish defense budgets.”
There’s much wisdom in Healy’s article. It made me think immediately of George Washington’s Farewell Address and the advice it provides regarding foreign policy – including the part about how “it is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world; so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it…Taking care always to keep ourselves by suitable establishments on a respectable defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies.”
Healy also hinted at another reason to pull out of NATO. He expresses concern about how the European side of the alliance appears dangerously vulnerable to being entangling in the schemes of Utopian thinkers like Bernard-Henri Levy, the French “philosopher” who wants NATO to use its military power to remake the world, one war at a time, whatever the cost.
It is Levy who is credited with persuading France’s President Nicholas Sarkozy to begin bombing Libya on behalf of the rebels.
Levy is the Libyan rebels’ chief cheerleader, but they are not his only pet cause. He’s a long-time supporter of the Chechen nationalists at war with Russia’s government (who he says, the Chechens’ fighters bloody record aside, “have only rarely succumbed to the temptation of terrorism”), and he’s nursed a long-running grudge against Vladimir Putin.
After Libya’s Gadhafi, will Russia’s Putin be Levy’s next target? I don’t mean with a NATO bombing campaign against Moscow – Levy cannot be that stupid or Utopian to even contemplate such an action. Even he must understand the dire consequences that would follow.
What I fear more than a shooting war is Levy using his influence over France’s “Sarkoleon” to promote a West European-Russian feud, out of vengefulness for Putin & Co. refusing to see the conflict with Chechnya Levy’s way. Such a feud (as foolish as it would be unnecessary) would likely draw in the NATO countries, including the US.
If you take Washington’s Farewell Address as a guide, then the way forward is clear. Once an effective way to meet a temporary emergency, NATO has outlived its usefulness and is proving all too successful at entangling its members in quarrels little connected to their true common interests.
Time for Uncle Sam to turn in that NATO membership card.
