The Wall Street Journal Stands Up For NATO

Yesterday,

A second Republican senator spoke out in defense of Nato on Thursday, joining Mitch McConnell and the Democrats, after Donald Trump said that he was “absolutely” considering withdrawing from the alliance after it refused to take part in the joint assault with Israel against Iran.

“Nato stood by America when we were under attack and came to our aid after the September 11th attacks. Their soldiers fought and died alongside our troops in Afghanistan,” said Thom Tillis, a Republican, and Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat, who co-chair the Senate Nato observer group.

McConnell and Tillis are both lame ducks who seem to be opposed to anything Trump has ever proposed, but by gum, The Wall Street Journal has their backs:

Could the Iran war do what even Vladimir Putin couldn’t and blow up the North Atlantic Treaty alliance? That’s no longer an idle question as most of Europe refuses to help the U.S., and President Trump responds by threatening to leave NATO. This would be the dumbest alliance breakup in modern history.

Several paragraphs of irrelevant blah-blah follow, but they don't explain why this would be "the dumbest alliance breakup in modern history". The writers finally wander back to the point:

A U.S. withdrawal from NATO would nonetheless serve only Russia, Iran and China. Blowing up NATO has been the main goal of Russian strategy since the alliance formed in 1949.

But NATO was formed as an anti-Soviet alliance, not an anti-Russian alliance. Putin would probably like to get rid of NATO, but it seems to me that, especially with Sweden and Finland joining, the original 1949 alliance is overextended -- the point of NATO in 1949 was to place territories that the US primarily had won back from the Nazis under the US nuclear umbrella. The calculation under Truman and Marshall seems to have been that this was something the US, primarily with the support of the UK and the Royal Navy, could afford.

The idea of adding Soviet satellites like Poland, Hungary, or Czechoslovakia to NATO between 1949 and 1991 would have been wildly impractical, and NATO did nothing when Soviet tanks went into several of those satellites during that period. Adding the former satellites to NATO became cost-effective only when the Soviet Union collapsed and the potential for any type of revanchism became much more remote.

In addition, as of 1949, Iran was a Western ally, and China was much less of a factor. At the start of the Korean War, Truman was able to use the UN to provide a legal foundation and justify an international alliance against Soviet-backed North Korean and Chinese forces. Under those circumstances, he didn't need NATO.

The world has changed a lot since 1949. Iran is no longer aligned with the West, and China is a more formidable adversary than Russia. Meanwhile, the European powers have already factored in the disappearance of the Soviet Union; the decline or the Royal Navy since the 1990s has been a topic of discussion for weeks. And as we saw yesterday, the German defense minister effectively admitted that the only naval force the European NATO members can assemble is "a handful of frigates".

The Journal concludes,

The larger reality is that Russia and Iran are working together as an axis against the West. The two share weapons, especially drones and missiles, and Russia is providing intelligence to Iran about American targets. Mr. Trump is especially obtuse on this point, refusing even to acknowledge this Russian harm to U.S. troops, much less condemn it.

. . . This axis of adversaries that includes China wants to weaken the Western alliance and the free world. It wants the U.S. and Israel to fail to defeat Iran, and Russia to defeat Ukraine militarily and become the dominant power in Europe. If the Western allies let this happen, it will be the height of folly and an historic tragedy.

This at least is an effort to answer the question my old colleague Phil used to ask in meetings, "What problem are we trying to solve?" The Journal's answer appears to be that Iran, China, and Russia have formed a 21st-century Axis against the US, and we can solve this only with NATO's help. But even if we were to invoke Article 5 against Iran, or even Russia or China, the best NATO could provide would be "a handful of frigates", which wouldn't be much help at all.

Is it in our interest to live in a fantasy world where this isn't true? In addition, in 1949, the British controlled the Iranian oil industry via the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, which was 51% owned by the UK government to ensure oil fuel for the Royal Navy. The UK at that time was also the leading NATO partner, and it was capable of acting to ensure its control. This is no longer a factor -- why try to pretend things haven't changed?

In other words, Trump has made what seems to be a realisic appraisal of the current world situation, which in part simply ratifies the NATO members' own appraisal of the Russian threat, or at least their appraisal that the US would decisively defeat a Russian threat without much need for other than token NATO assistance. Therefore, Trump is pursuing US policy goals in this changed environment using resources other than NATO.

It's also intriguing that the Journal throws Ukraine into the argument. As things stand, once it's become plain that neither Russia nor Ukraine wants to end that war, which is heading for a four-year stalemate, Russia in particular has been squandering ammunition, personnel, and equipment that it can't use against NATO. On the other hand, adding Ukraine to NATO simply adds one more country to the growing number that the US would be committed to defend without much serious assistance from other members.

Trump is simply making the realistic assessment presidents are expected to make.