Agreements Between Nations

     John Mills at Gateway Pundit has posted a piece on treaties and their utility, with particular emphasis on the post-Cold War world. It’s a good piece well worth reading, which reminds us that treaties themselves cannot and will not guarantee peaceful relations between nation-states. It got me to thinking about a subject that’s been on my mind for nearly forty years, but which I haven’t addressed all that recently.

     Of all the treaties that were produced in the aftermath of World War II, the one that looms largest today is the North Atlantic Charter, which is the founding document of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). NATO put the nations of Western Europe under a security guarantee, backed by the nuclear arsenal of the United States. All the other provisions of the Charter were essentially decorative. What mattered was that security blanket, intended to keep the Soviet Union from attempting to expand further to the west.

     But NATO’s orientation changed as the years marched past. As the Soviets developed their own intercontinental nuclear strike capability, American strategic planners added to its purpose the deterrence of a Soviet strike on America. The subsequent collapse of the USSR into a loose coalition of sovereign nations seemed to undercut the rationale for NATO, yet there was little to no talk of dissolving the alliance. Today, because of the Ukraine-Russia war, NATO appears to endanger its signatories, including the U.S.

     We can fairly say that NATO achieved its original purpose in deterring the USSR from any attempt to expand its collection of satellite states further westward. Its subsequent purpose of stabilizing American-Soviet relations may also be said to have been fulfilled. But organizations with large budgets and equally large bureaucracies seldom dissipate when their purposes have been achieved. Pournelle’s Law makes that all but impossible.

     Given that the existence of NATO, and Ukraine’s nebulous association with it, have become actual threats to world peace, what argument is there for perpetuating this expensive monstrosity? Does it have any demonstrable purpose that would balance NATO’s destabilizing effect upon American-Russian relations?

     Speaking as an American nationalist, I’d like to know what NATO, which costs the federal government many billions of dollars per year, does for us. Does it provide the U.S. with any benefits whatsoever? Or has it become a parasite upon the federal treasury that also increases the probability that we’ll be drawn into a war that the great majority of us would prefer not to fight?

     That’s all I have for today, Gentle Reader. But I’d like your thoughts on this subject. I view organizations as mechanisms for addressing specific needs. Once the need has been met, the organization should be terminated. That that never seems to happen with tax-funded organizations is well known…which suggests that this business of “mutual-defense treaties” between the U.S. and nations that would never come to our defense must have a purpose of which its proponents dare not speak.