I served with NATO forces in the 1980s. Then it was a noble and necessary bulwark against Soviet aggression. But the Soviets bit the dust in 1991 and since then, as the president has opined, the NATO alliance has become a gathering of many useless backsliders with a non-existent mission whose vast majority of members refuse to spend the very minimum on their own defense. And the United Nations? It’s an anti-American serpentarium.
NATO is so nonimportant to our national security, so silly and weak, so obsolete, that its secretary general is reduced to this:
Today’s castaway on @BBCRadio4 #desertislanddiscs ?is #NATO Secretary General @jensstoltenberg. He’ll be speaking to @laurenlaverne about his remarkable family, his formative years & more recent challenges + of course the music he would take to the island. Listen at 12.00 CET! pic.twitter.com/DOQrzfVZu7
— Oana Lungescu (@NATOpress) July 12, 2020
So what do we do about these ungainly relics of the Cold War and WWII? We don’t pull out of either at first. We decrease our contributions and participation until they die on the vine. We stay in NATO but ignore it. We eventually leave the UN and kick it out of New York City.
Though if we do that it will leave a hole in our global national security posture. Here’s what we fill it with: A new alliance.
Call it the “United Federation of Democracies” (UNIFED). Its base would be the Five Eyes nations of the Anglosphere: Us, the Brits, New Zealand, Australia, and Canada. Any nation could join if it meets these requirements: functioning democracy/free republic, free market, already spending 2% GDP on their own defense. You must maintain those statuses to remain in UNIFED.
Possible global partners would be Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, India, Israel, Poland, several European nations, Colombia, Brazil, several Scandinavian nations, and any other country in the world that meets all the requirements. There would be some democracies that meet 2 out of 3. No dice.
How would the Russians and the Chinese, our biggest global competitors, react? The Russians would be tickled we were lessening our involvement in NATO. That is until they realize the new alliance is stronger, more lethal, and would ring them from coast to coast. The Chinese would blow a gasket when we officially recognized and officially allied with Taiwan. Tough. As the president has pointed out, they have been eating our lunch for years on trade. Now they’re making moves in the Pacific to challenge our fleet. This should give them a nice wake up call.
As for the UN, sure, there are decent reasons (most having to do with the compromising of foreign diplomats) to stay in. But if we can replace it with a real organization, not the current Bolshevik talking shop, it would advance the strength of free countries around the world. Thus UNIFED, after a hopefully successful decade, could become a diplomatic organization as well.
And just think of the deep and almost sensual satisfaction of kicking the UN out of New York and watching them relocate to some garden spot like Lagos or Phnom Penh.
Yes, the proposal is radical. Yes, it would be initially chaotic and redundant to a point. But WWII was over 75 years ago. The Cold War was over almost 30 years ago. It’s time we drove a newer national security vehicle.
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I agree. Today as Russia gets ready to repeat what occured in 1935 all we see from Nato and UN is a joke. The Germans will not do anything to russia because it buys gas from them. Italy flattly says no help if it hurts their economy, and on and on. This is exactly the way we ended up with a world war. If Nato is to damn scared then the US should bite the bullet and move aircraft and Sams into
the Ukraine and make it clear to Putin that he will likely lose his entire army if he
movies forward. The Ukrainions can handle Russia if we clear the skies and Russias missiles. Will it cost a lot of planes and pilots, yes. But better than let putin rebuild USSR when we have chance to do the right thing. I spent a year in Vietnam for nothing lossing over 50,000 men and 6000 aircraft. This is what our
uneducated population and our government always do and get us into a bigger mess like WW2.