How NATO Expansion Makes America Less Safe

The “North Atlantic” Treaty Organization was formed in the aftermath of World War II to protect war-torn and disunited Western Europe from the Soviet Union as well as reintegrate defeated Germany into Western Europe. Americans believed it was in their interest to defend Europe in order to prevent the U.S.S.R. from dominating Eurasia.

With the end of the Cold War the justification for NATO disappeared. The Soviet Union split, the Warsaw Pact dissolved, the global communist menace vanished. There no longer was any there there, as Gertrude Stein said of Oakland.

President Putin is no friend of liberty, but he evidences no design—and possesses no capability—to recreate a global empire. Under him Russia has reverted to a pre-World War I great power, focused on winning respect and protecting its borders. A Russian invasion of Eastern Europe, let alone the core western members of NATO, is but a paranoid fantasy.
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Attempting to establish friendly, democratic regimes along Russia’s borders, and turn them into military outposts as members of the historic American-led, anti-Soviet alliance, is geopolitically aggressive. As America developed, Washington demonstrated little patience for European “meddling” in Central and even South America, which it considered to be America’s backyard. Perhaps U.S. intentions were better, though the Latin Americans might not agree. Nevertheless, European security guarantees for America’s neighbors would have made Washington less rather than more tractable.

Worse, NATO expansion brings the political and territorial disputes of new members with each other and Russia into the alliance. The organization then threatens to act as a transmission belt of rather than firebreak to war.

Countries reliant on their own resources are more likely to compromise. In contrast, having a superpower in their corner makes them more likely to be intransigent. Although most of the new NATO members, and especially the most recent additions like Albania and Croatia, are money pits for American aid, at least these nations are geopolitically irrelevant. Moscow has no reason to pay them any mind.

Georgia, bordering Russia and home to the independence-minded provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, matters much more to Moscow. While renewed conflict is unlikely, it is possible. If Tbilisi was a NATO member, the U.S. would be obligated to come to Georgia’s defense. The result would be a possible nuclear confrontation with Russia over issues of negligible importance to America. Such a policy would be madness.