Why are we in NATO and the UN?
It is a question ever more Americans are asking themselves and it is time we really think this one over. The official justification for NATO, UN and all the rest of the international organizations is that collective security is the solution to the World Wars. That is, if everyone was banded together against the aggressor(s) then the aggression would never occur. It is considered axiomatic that if the USA had been part of the League of Nations in the interwar years, WWII would have been prevented. Our absence from the organization, it is said, sabotaged it and left it incapable of standing up to the aggressor. Really?
Suppose we were in the League in, say, 1938…just what would our understrength and obsolescent 100,000 man Army do in the face of Germany’s territorial demands on the Czechs? Given them something to laugh at?
The idea of collective security is based upon an assumption that everyone thinks pretty much the same way. That is, they weigh up the plusses and minuses and make their decisions accordingly. I have no idea how anyone started to believe this because all of history makes a mockery of it. Especially the history just before NATO and the UN were created. Collective security was never going to stop Hitler. It wouldn’t even have stopped a Germany absent Hitler. There was collective security against German aggression in 1914 where the Anglo-French-Russian alliance was overwhelmingly more powerful than the German-Austrian combination. It didn’t work then. It didn’t work in 1939. It never has worked. It never can work. Its a dumb idea.
The Germans attacked – in both 1914 and 1939 – not because they didn’t face a collective alliance against aggression, but because they thought they could win quick and cheap. In 1914, the German ambitions included essentially annexation for Belgium and Luxembourg, slicing off northern France, Poland and Finland to become German vassals and all of central Africa from the Sahara to South Africa. They really thought that if they could get to Paris in six weeks, they’d gain all of this. To put it bluntly, they figured that for 100,000 dead Germans, they’d gain mastery of Europe and a much larger position in the world. In 1939 it was the same thing – Hitler and his Germans thought they could win a quick victory…annul the 1918 results and gain what they wanted in 1914. It was stupid both times – and collective security stopped none of it. They were being unreasonable. Greedy and wicked. You can’t actually stop such people – you can only kill them when they try.
But now lets go forward – we need NATO, it is said, because we have to defend Europe from Russia. Ok. We’ll leave aside whether Europe is worth defending (in my view, it isn’t) and just concentrate on the claim. Did NATO stop Russia from invading Ukraine? Twice?
No.
NATO is overwhelmingly more powerful than Russia. If NATO wants, it could raise a military force large enough to make mincemeat of Russia in short order.
Did this stop Russia from attacking Ukraine?
No.
Of course not. Because Russia knows full well the situation and the bottom line here is that no NATO country is going to actually send an army to fight and die in the Donbas on the debatable issue of it being actually Ukrainian. The only thing that might have stopped Putin from invading wasn’t the existence of an alliance much more powerful than he…but an army in Ukraine either before or right after the Russian attack. Putin might have listened to, say, two German armored corps stationed outside Kiev in February of 2022. Might. He still may have gone right ahead if he felt confident that the Russian army was stronger. People who start wars aren’t noted for their rational thoughts. Even great conquerors like Napoleon get caught up in their own desires; never fully understanding the folly of what they’re doing. If they did understand the folly, they never would attack. Someone who attacks is someone who left off at least most of sanity some time before (even if attacking a much weaker enemy – like say the USSR against the Finns in 1939…no way Russia was going to lose but Stalin still sent men to die – to die – for what was at best a modest convenience for Soviet strategic needs; that’s just nuts). And here’s the real kicker: suppose two German armored corps outside Kiev would have stopped him? Nice. One small problem: Germany doesn’t have two armored corps. The Germans only have two panzer divisions plus one panzergrenadier. That’s pretty much it. Hard to deter anyone if you don’t have any force to deter them with.
And that gets us to the really fatal flaw behind NATO and the UN – they are predicated upon having a force immediately available to be unquestioningly used against aggression. There was a time when NATO had this – but after the Cold War ended, it all atrophied very rapidly. Everyone kept saying that NATO provides collective security – repeating it like an incantation as division after division, wing after wing, task force after task force was cut from NATO’s military inventory. Even if the theory of collective security was true, it doesn’t work without military force. Only the USA still maintains a sizeable military force…and our current force is run down, demoralized and understrength after two rounds (Obama and Biden) of imposing Woke ideology on it while equipment and training went by the board. I doubt our ability to field even a complete division for ground combat right now – and the streaks of rust I see on our ships makes me doubt heavily that we’ve even got a Navy at the moment. But we’re Patton ready to fight compared to the European military forces…did you know that Gibraltar, the gateway to the Mediterranean, is currently protected by 235 British soldiers and two patrol boats? You hold Gibraltar and you control one of the most vital trade routes in the world…and it is currently defenseless. Makes ya feel safe, doesn’t it?
As we enter Trump II, it is time we really started to think again about what we want? And I am certain that NATO isn’t it – there’s nothing in Europe I’d ever send an American kid to defend and if I’m concerned about our global position than alliance with Japan, India and Vietnam seems far more useful than what we have now. But I also think we have to abandon this concept of permanent alliances. NATO and the UN have proved not just useless, but malevolent – actually undermining our power and position in the world. An alliance is a thing for the moment – to do a particular task. I want an alliance with India not so that 50 years from now we’re still allied with India, but because the USA and India share a common need to deter China’s power grabs. Once the China issue is settled, then there will be no need for a USA/India alliance and it can lapse.
It is time for us to stop doing things just because it is what we’ve been doing. I realize that a huge number of people have invested their whole lives – and make their money – off the current system, but the system is to serve the country, not the country the system. What we have now serves no purpose; not even a bad purpose. Dispense with it and look for new ways.
Blogs For Victory 
I said a while back that it I were President, my first act on day one would be to nail an eviction notice on the front door or the UN building.
WRT NATO, at least Trump got them to pay more during his first term. I wonder if they stopped when Biden became President. I think we’re going to find out just how valuable NATO is if Putin decides to continue on in Eastern Europe after he defeats Ukraine.
Read a story yesterday that Britain and France were considering sending any army to Ukraine if the USA cuts off aid and I’m like what army?
Sure, the French army has some first rate units, British army as well…but their armies are tiny. The British Army is now half the size it was at the end of the Cold War…and while the “Experts” are rating both the French and UK military as first rate, the Woke rot has been spreading in Europe for a couple decades now…how effective they’d really be is unknown. But I doubt that they’re being trained to be killers.
This is important – people aren’t natural at that. I remember reading a history of Market-Garden and one British general was inspecting the airborne troops slated for Arnhem and he remarked, “my God, you’re men are killers”…he could see it; he knew. Keep in mind that the British First Airborne was mostly not combat-tested. A couple parts of it had done combat jumps in Sicily but it was held in reserve for Normandy and its first division-sized engagement was Arnhem…and while they were defeated, they held out for 9 days against two SS Panzer divisions…because they were trained to be killers. Are British soldiers trained to be killers these days? Or to respect pronouns?
Read a story yesterday that Britain and France were considering sending any army to Ukraine if the USA cuts off aid and your point of “what army?” is a good one but the whole thing took me back to what I am thinking might have been the Good Old Days of isolationism. The thing is, when we minded our own business and took care of America and Americans first we did become the beacon of prosperity and liberty and opportunity. And when we had to, we did step in and kick butt. But it was not our mission statement. If other nations want to make bad decisions, let them. If those decisions escalate into potential threats to us, then we can step up and neutralize the threat–and then go back to America First.
Along with the combined military allegiance, I think there also needs to be an acceptable shared social construct. The EU and UK controlling elites are actively working to remove basic freedoms, jailing people for speech deemed unacceptable because it hurt someone’s feelings, pushing DEI, stripping parents of their right to raise their children according to their strong held religious beliefs, removing individual basic protections through gun restrictions / confiscations, pushing abortion and euthanasia even with negative population growth, etc… What value is there to us to protect such a disaster?
I thought the UN should have been tossed from the US decades ago. They’ve only gotten worse, acting against our best interest on a multitude of issues. Considering we are its major funder by a long shot, it would be delightful to watch them scramble and falter into oblivion.
One of our trolls mentioned recently that millions are fleeing X and going to BlueSky. I don’t do social media, so it blew right by me until I saw this:
I did set up a Blue Sky account – it is Twitter in 2017. Highly controlled thought, totally dominated by the Left and just an endless stream of “Orange Man Bad” punctuated by the odd psychic breakdown.
I wonder what the warmonger class thinks about Putin using a hypersonic mid-range ballistic missile that flies at Mach 12 and for which there is no defense.
I really hope we can make it to January 20 before we get into WWIII. And I hope Trump fires every single General we have at the Pentagon. Their actions are irresponsible and dangerous.
I just don’t see Putin or anyone else falling for Biden’s effort to get them to play his game of “Hey, let’s you and him fight”. Everyone can see that anyone who falls for this is going to be marked as a sucker, used by a sad sick petty old man to get other people to fight his battles for him and get even with the guy who humiliated him.
Speaking of useless alliances. Let’s decouple from John Kerry
https://x.com/steveguest/status/1861512833500094651?s=61
He wants us all to “behave” LOL.
“Decouple” is a kinder word than I would have used.
“Decouple” reminds me of the term “unexpected rapid disassembly” instead of “explosion”.
I had my annual checkup with my family doctor yesterday. The subject of COVID vaccine side effects came up, because he knew I had been dealing with two annoying but not life-threatening conditions that began immediately after I got the two Moderna vaccines back in early 2021. I was glad to inform him that both conditions seem to have finally resolved themselves, one early this year and the second just within the last week or so. He said he never would have believed the amount of damage that the vaccines could do were it not for the horror stories from his patients. I said, “at least I don’t know anyone who has died from them.” He said, “I do.” That’s a hell of an admission from an MD.
I got the first two shots and then Covid…at that point I knew that whatever else it was, “vaccine” wasn’t it. Maybe it helped – but that Covid was still the most miserable cold I ever had! But if it doesn’t stop it from happening, I see no further point with it. Same reason I never get the flu shot.
I still stand amazed at how easily people were taken in by absurdity – that a cloth mask is effective against a virus or that a vaccine isn’t supposed to stop you from getting it. That part really amazed me. Once you’re vaccinated against smallpox you could literally bathe in a vat of smallpox virus and not catch it…that is how it works. You know: tells the body how to create the anti-bodies for the virus and, boom, you’re done. Its why in olden days once you had yellow fever you’d never catch it again…surviving it was tough (I think it had a usual 30% mortality rate) but once you survived it, you could be all around yellow fever and no problem.
My wife and I both got COVID, but not until over two years after getting the vaccine, and then we had a very mild case thanks to a regimen of Ivermectin received from a friend (heh). I had a mild temperature and body aches for a couple of days, and some congestion for a few days more.
I never did take the vaccine because I was always suspicious of it … vaccines just aren’t proven in that short of time frame. I always believed it to be the flu shot masked as a vaccine and I never have taken a flu shot. I did catch covid but thanks to my Mexican ivermectin I recovered quickly but have to admit it was one hell of a flu. I did supply some friends and family with ivermectin and we all had the same result … quick results.
It’s absolutely criminal our healthcare industry did not widely promote Ivermectin.
I still think, and have been saying for years, that when the full truth about the whole Covid thing comes out it will turn out to be the biggest and worst scandal in American history. By that time the perpetrators will all be dead or nearly so, sparing them the justice they so richly deserve, but many who were fairly young when they participated in things like refusing to allow Ivermectin or Hydroxychloroquine to be used to save lives will still be around to receive the scorn and derision they have earned. We can never aptly compensate those who were damaged by the “vaccines” but at least we can try to repay the doctors who lost their practices for trying to practice real medicine instead of the voodoo “medicine” of the Faucists.
It would be even funnier if it wasn’t so damn tragic.