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Is the territorial integrity of Ukraine a cause worth America’s fighting a war with Russia?
No, it is not. And this is why President Joe Biden has declared that the U.S. will not become militarily involved should Russia invade Ukraine.
Biden is saying that, no matter our sentiments, our vital interests dictate staying out of a Russia-Ukraine war.
But why then does Secretary of State Antony Blinken continue to insist there is an “open door” for Ukraine to NATO membership — when that would require us to do what U.S. vital interests dictate we not do: fight a war with Russia for Ukraine?
NATO’s “open door policy” is based on Article 10, which declares that NATO members, “may, by unanimous agreement, invite any other European State … to accede to this Treaty.”
Moreover, membership is open to “any other European State in a position to further the principles of this Treaty and to contribute to the security of the North Atlantic area.”
Note that NATO admission requires “unanimous” consent of all 30 present members.
Blinken has often stated this as U.S. policy: “From our perspective, NATO’s door is open and remains open, and that is our commitment.”
What Blinken is saying is this: While America will not fight for Ukraine today, America remains open to Ukraine’s accession to NATO, in which event we would have to fight for Ukraine tomorrow, were it attacked by Russia.
What the U.S. needs to do is to say with clarity that while Ukraine is free to apply to NATO, NATO is free to veto that application, and the enlargement of NATO beyond its present eastern frontiers is over, done.
In this crisis, we need to recall how and why NATO was created.
In 1949, the year China fell to Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin exploded an atom bomb, we formed NATO as a defensive alliance to prevent a Russian drive west, from the Elbe to the Rhine to the Channel.
Of the original 12 members of NATO, the U.S. and Canada were on the western side of the Atlantic. Iceland and the U.K. were islands in the Atlantic. France and Portugal were on the Atlantic’s eastern shore.
Denmark, Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg were astride the avenue of attack the Red Army would have to take to reach the Channel.
Norway was the lone original NATO nation that shared a border with the USSR itself. Italy was the 12th member.
Clearly, this was a defensive alliance to prevent a Soviet invasion of Western Europe such as Hitler had executed in the spring of 1940, when Nazi Germany overran Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg and France, and threw the British off the continent at Dunkirk.
Nations that joined NATO during the Cold War were Greece and Turkey in 1952, Germany in 1955, and Spain in 1982.
But, with the end of the Cold War, the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, the overthrow of Soviet Communism, and the breakup of the USSR into 15 nations by 1991, NATO, its goal — the defense of Central and Western Europe — achieved, its job done, did not go out of business.
Instead, NATO added 14 new members and moved almost 1,000 miles east, into Russia’s front yard and then onto Russia’s front porch.
The Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland joined in 1999. Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia became NATO nations in 2004. Albania and Croatia joined in 2009, Montenegro in 2017, and North Macedonia in 2020.
Understandably, Russian President Vladimir Putin asked himself: To what end, and for what beneficent purpose, was this doubling in size of an alliance that was formed to contain us, and, if necessary, fight a war against Mother Russia?
Alliances, which involve war guarantees, commitments to fight in defense of the allied nations, invariably carry costs and risks as well as rewards and benefits in terms of strengthened security.
But when we brought Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia into NATO, what benefits in added strength did we receive to justify the provocation this would be to Russia, and the risk it might entail if Moscow objected and, one fine day, walked back into these Baltic states?
If we will not fight for the independence and territorial integrity of Ukraine, the second largest nation in Europe with a population of over 40 million people, why would we go to war with a nuclear-armed Russia over Estonia, a tiny and almost indefensible nation with a population of 1.3 million?
Besides Ukraine, two nations have been considering membership in NATO: Finland and Georgia. Accession of either would put NATO on yet another border of Russia, with the usual U.S. bases and forces.
While this would enrage Russia, how would it make us stronger?
Perhaps, instead of adding new nations on whose behalf we will go to war with a great power like Russia, we consider reducing the roster of NATO and restricting the number of nations for whom we must fight to those nations that are vital to our security and bring added strength to the alliance.
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of “Nixon’s White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever.”
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Georgia is in Asia, outside the charter’s membership criteria. But it has become an American puppet state so NATO chances are good.
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It is breathtaking hypocrisy for Nato to complain about a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine while they themselves are illegally occupying parts of Syria.
So of course Nato is a strategic asset as it allows member nations to rape outside countries while claiming mutual defence against invasion of their own territory.
The moral high-ground for the current contretemps is solidly with Russia.
NATO is a a Boys Club whose bullies gang up on and beat up scrawnier or isolated kids. Thus emboldened, they’ve intruded the neighborhood of the kid who had leukemia and are jeering and spitting at him.
Now that the kid has come out to face them, the bullies are stammering and shoving one another to the front, saying “you hit him….no, you…uh, why don’t you hit him!…Let’s ask that Chinese kid over there to tell him to give us his lunch money…”
False.
Mr. Buchanan said the same thing on January 11 (“Where Does NATO Enlargement End?”), misrepresenting with omission the text of Article 5. As noted in comments there, he’s a faux dissident selling the uniparty Establishment narrative that “we” must honor “our” obligations to NATO “allies.”
The truth that columns like this obscure is that there are no “nations that are vital to our security” or that “bring added strength to the alliance.” It’s become readily apparent that NATO exists (i) to maintain Washington’s control over Europe and (ii) to paper over Congressional misfeasance in condoning unconstitutional wars.
None of this has anything to do with the interests of the American people, who the Beltway considers, if at all, tax aphids and cannon fodder. If yours becomes America’s next Gold Star family, be sure to thank Mr. Paleoconservative for his Exceptional! service.
……Yes, by one……can you guess which one?
That’s interesting that the unanimous consent of all current NATO members is required for admission. It seems to me that an easy way to diffuse the situation would be for all NATO members that share a border with Ukraine (Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania) to state in writing that Ukraine will never be a member. It would be in their best interests, since a Russia-Ukraine war would result in a flood of refugees. Then again, maybe Poland has designs on the part of Western Ukraine that used to belong to them, so they would welcome a conflict. Poland has done stupider things in the realm of foreign policy.
Guaranteeing the territorial integrity of Poland was worth the British Empire declaring war on Germany, wasn’t it. Any old excuse to eliminate a most formidable trade rival would do. London envisioned one of two outcomes, that a war declaration would trigger an immediate coup in Germany, or, failing that, that the new war would be a repeat of the Great War, in which the Royal Navy would starve into submission a proud European nation whose armed forces experience had proven could not be defeated by an English ground invasion. The arrogant fools in Washington today seem as blithely unaware of the law of unintended consequences as Chamberlain was in 1939. And with nukes in the mix, what could possibly go wrong? Gott ist mit uns, this time after all.
Nato as a “boys club” is a great description of a once useful organization. But it evolved, as bureaucracies do when their original mission was no longer needed. At this point it spends most of its time and energy just trying to convince many Europeans that by golly there are lots of enemies out there and we alone can save you. A re-energized Russia with an outspoken leader is the perfect “enemy”. This approach is Madness and I have a difficult time understanding how so many U.S. Senators stand behind Nato, and even encourage, this madness. I thought that the Afghan exit debacle would instill some reality into this group, but they act like Afghanistan never happened. Seems that a partial collapse of the US Dollar might be the only “hope” for a return of military sanity.
All these western European members of NATO share a common thread and that is their culture and identity is being destroyed by open immigration from non-white locations as well has having been infected with garbage cultural decay.
It’s not surprising that when NATO/US “liberate” places and impose their puppets that the pressitutes in the U.S media drool in celebration the fact that these former traditional societies can now enjoy “freedoms” of western culture which is of course is the great art of rap, hip-hop and other cheap gaudy forms of decadence and of course the immorality and destructive impact of feminism, gays and the all the rest of it.
Hard cold fact is that NATO membership and affiliation with the west has certain strings attached to it that people in these Christian traditional countries should take a minute to really think about before locking arms with Washington and NATO.
Except that the kid with leukemia turned to his big cousin next door for help against the NATO bullies. So his big cousin comes out with his bulging biceps and muscled legs, carrying a chain-saw, to face them. Upon seeing his big cousin swinging his chain-saw in the air, the NATO gang members started panicking, stammering — “you hit him….no, you…uh, why don’t you hit him” — as they scramble for safety, tripping over each other as they fled the scene.
Meanwhile, the NATO gang leader decided to try his luck in another neighborhood. After failing to recruit any local bullies to join his NATO gang, he eventually settled for a scrawny kid with an axe to grind against the rich kid in the block who had already befriended all the other kids in the neighborhood by buying them gifts.
So the NATO gang leader asks the scrawny kid to pick a fight with the rich kid: “If you fight him, I will become your buddy. And you can join our gang!” Upon hearing this news, the scrawny kid starting jumping up and down with joy as his lifelong wish was to be accepted into the NATO gang. To celebrate, he takes the NATO gang leader to his home to meet his mother. But on their way, the scrawny kid got stricken with a mysterious virus. So the NATO gang leader calls off their plan and leaves the neighborhood while the scrawny kid dies of the mysterious virus.
Morale of the Story: if you want to pick a fight, make sure you can fight!
Turkey is not even a Christian nation. Why was it admitted to NATO? They will never be a reliable ally to defend Christian interests.
Germany is an enemy to Christianity. Merkel’s “Welcome Rape-ugees” and Open [Muslim] Borders policies are a direct threat to those who want traditional European values. Scholz shows no sign of changing course away from Merkel’s Pro-Islamic threats to Christian Hungary and Christian Poland.
NATO needs to be replaced with a new organization focussed on containing Germany.
PEACE 😇
NATO is definitely a liability; of course Blinken is saying that door to NATO membership is open; in politics often you must lie; everyone knows Ukraine and Georgia will never be admitted into NATO; Blinken cannot say Ukraine will never be in NATO because US and Biden would be accused of appeasing Putin; the wily Russian President has made his point; further eastward expansion of NATO will not be tolerated; US foreign policy makes no sense; it is insanity to put offensive missiles on the border of a paranoid nuclear superpower that can destroy you in thirty minutes; do American officials believe they can attack Russia and escape destruction? Putin wants a buffer against NATO because of historic Russian fear of invasion from vapad west and security assurances; he is not some mad Hitler who wants to conquer all of Europe. Trump had right idea NATO should be desolved it serves no useful purpose. Maybe some future US President will pull US out of NATO or the Europeans will kick the Americans out and Europe will build its own defense force as France President Macron suggests. NATO is a cold war relic whose usefulness has ended.
Exactly. NATO deconstructs national identities and supports culture war against enemies foreign and domestic. Stationing tens of thousands of US soldiers in Europe and catering to their tastes has Americanized Europe and promoted the “McDonalds in every airport, all towns are the same” culture that globalists love.
It’s a globalist project and stepping stone toward post-national one-world governance. Arguably it always has been and it certainly has been since the Soviet Union broke up. Any European nation interested in preserving its culture should send us packing.
Seeing kitsch American-Irish bars in Scandinavia made me both mad and sad. And don’t get me started on the promotion of race-mixing and homosexuality.
Can’t wait for the movie based on your screenplay!
I could have fleshed out my tale a bit, as in “the kid who (once) had leukemia (but has recovered)…”
Perhaps Vladimir will get to put a few Judo moves on Joey and the Gang, while Xi applies Kung Fu.
consider reducing the roster of NATO and restricting the number of nations for whom we must fight
PB was alive, and old enough to understand, when the Old Right opposed [US membership in] NATO. The problem with political conservatives is they have faulty memories: Mr. Conservative seems to hold the impression that his intellectual predecessors opposed NATO because it was too big.
In fact, the Old Right opposed, correctly, military alliances as their being intrinsically Big Government and not in the interest of ordinary folks, e.g. taxpayers and draftees. Big picture, they violated the pro-peace, Jeffersonian doctrine of commerce with all ..
Once again we see how conservative opposition to Big Government is practical, not philosophical. They do not oppose public (tax funded) schools. They oppose low test scores, CRT, and non-observance of Columbus Day. Indeed, they’re the loudest voices for broadening tax expenditures on education, e.g. more charters (non-union publics) and institution of vouchers (welfare for privates).
Putin is correct in batting Western provocations away, the West really need this war, the longer Putin holds off the worst the economic mountain of debt and social disintegration will tear at the social fabric of Western societies.
When a whale is dying you don’t want to get too close in case its tail bring you down to.
All Putin has to do is to increase European dependence on Russian energy, the Rothschilds said -rough interpretation- you own the supply of money you own the country, I take it one step further, you own the energy you own every facet .
The West need to steal Russian energy…that’s what this is all about.
The pledge to Poland was the greatest act of stupidity ever committed by any British government. Total madness. The Poles were just as crazy for actually believing it.
NATO SHMATO. The US, the UK and the EU are all falling apart. Imperial Washington is in steep decline. Russia and China are ascendant. Eurasia is the future. If there is one.
Marie Jana Korbelová (Madeleine Albright) started NATO expansion. She used two world wars and Bosnia as excuses. Blinken is pursuing similar tribal interests.
If NATO was an asset it would be stopping the third world invasion of Western Europe. In fact inbred Pakistanis using Britain’s Trident II D5 nuclear missiles against U.S. cities sounds far-fetched but is a possibility. These weapons don’t have permissive action link technology and can be launched by a submarine commander with the support of his crew without any code being transmitted from the chain of command.
Great, you forgot reason (iii): The continuation of NATO is necessary for the massive profits and expansion of the Military-Industrial-Security Complex.
The same Neocons that gave us Afghanistan/Irak/Syria/Lybia etc. ..It is evident that AMERICA is being imploded on purpose, deliberatly melting down its economy/dollar/inflation/…racial civil war/crime waves…NO one will stop the Neocons..
It would be stopping its own invasions of the third world, so there’d be no third-world invasions of Europe.
Instead, it’s always starting those invasions.
Its only excuse is that Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan are all in the North Atlantic. That explains it, right?