But why NATO?

Why does NATO exist? Let’s look at history.

In 1800, there were only a handful of democracies in the world. The United States and France,  though France, were in decline. The United States had a massive slave population, so by modern standards, the United States was not a democracy. There were no democracies to be allied to.

Fast forward 100 years, and slavery had been ended in most of the world. Most of Africa was colonized by Europe. But most countries in Europe were still monarchies. Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia dominated Eastern Europe. There was not a lot of room on the world stage for making big alliances of democracies. Only around 10 countries scored 8 or higher on the Polity IV scale.

The first real wave of democracy happened after the First World War, but it was pretty limited in scope, and in the 1930s, everything came crashing down.

Cold War

But since 1945, there has been a steady increase in the number of countries that are democracies. Countries in Western Europe were starting to form stable democratic systems. But as these were forming there was a series of events which deeply concerned democracies in Western Europe:

• 11 November 1945: Only the Communist Party was allowed in the Yugoslav election
• 2 December 1945: Only Communists were allowed in the Albanian election
• June 1946: The Polish People’s Referendum ended democracy in Poland; the 1947 election was completely manipulated.
• November 1946: In a fraudulent election, communists take over Romania’s government.
• May 1947: Hungarian PM Ferenc Nagy is removed in a coup d’etat
• February 1948: Czechoslovak coup d’etat
• 7 October 1949: East Germany is officially founded.

The Soviets conquered Bulgaria after being under Nazi occupation. They didn’t have an election until the 1990s.

So basically, from 1945 to 1946, the Soviet Union used fraudulent elections (or no elections at all, in the case of Bulgaria) to take over countries politically. In 1947 and 1948, they used a coup d’etat to conquer Czechoslovakia and Hungary. In response to this threat, most remaining European democracies chose to form NATO. Following the establishment of a totalitarian one-party state in East Germany, they refused to negotiate with the Soviets because they feared more “neutral countries” would find themselves with coups in the future.

That is why NATO was founded. The Soviet Union made a very real threat of attacking sovereign states in Europe, and most states joined NATO in response. Finland was promised neutrality if it did not join NATO, and the Soviet Union kept that promise. We had learned in the 1930s that if we did not stand together as democracies (which was the first wave of democratization), what would happen? We were knocked out one by one. Isolationism in the United States and other countries did not create peace; it only led to the worst war in the history of the world.

NATO exists to prevent another world war.

After NATO prevented further incursions into Europe, the Soviet Union moved to Asia:

• 25 June 1950: Even though the Soviet Union already controlled North Korea, they invaded South Korea
• 1955: The Vietnam War as communist insurgents attack South Vietnam
• 1968: Prague Spring is suppressed
• 1974-1991: Ethiopian Civil War, Soviet Union supported the Derg
• 1979-1989: Soviet-Afghan War

Castro is an exception because he was homegrown. He was not put in power by the Soviet Union.

However, it was clear in the Cold War that membership in NATO or the Rio Pact protected countries from being invaded, like Vietnam, Korea, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. It is certain, based on statements made by Soviet leaders, that if it were not for these alliances, the Soviet Union would have pushed further.

In 1955, the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand signed a collective security agreement with Pakistan, the Philippines, and Thailand. This was called the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization. This is the entire reason the United States was at war in Vietnam.

After the Vietnam War was over, the Soviet Union spread between Ethiopia and Afghanistan. Constant war and poor economic mismanagement led to an economic meltdown. After the fall of the Soviet Union Russia’s economy was in shambles, with former state assets now concentrated in the hands of their new ruling class, the oligarchs.

The 1990s

The Soviet Union collapsed, China was weak, and the United States was the undisputed world power. No one else came close. As a result, there was relative peace. The Bosnian war in the 1990s was horrific, and there were continued wars in Africa, states with low levels of economic development and major internal problems. but these were limited in scope to small regions. Only two wars in the 1990s killed over 100,000 people, the First Congo War and the Eritrean-Ethiopian War. Historically, these are extremely low numbers. By historical standards, it was the most peaceful decade in history.

This chart from ourworldindata.org makes the chart very clear. The Russian Invasion of Ukraine is the deadliest interstate conflict since the fall of the Soviet Union.

War of Terror

Even the American War on Terror, which started in 2001, is the period with the fewest deaths in global conflict overall and doesn’t come even close to the Eritrean-Ethiopian War in 1999 and 2000. Fatalities started to increase with the Arab Spring in the 2000s, but despite immense population growth, there were only 100,000 deaths per year globally. 100,000 out of 6 billion people in 2010 was the equivalent of 30,000 people per year in 1930 when there were only 2 billion people worldwide. For comparison, the Holocaust killed approximately 1 million people per year on average, the Great Leap Forward killed 11 million people per year in 1960, and World War II killed over 12 million people per year.

Despite our globalized world and the War on Terror, the 2000s were incredibly peaceful by historical standards, and the 2010s were still well below historical averages. We have not seen a war that killed over 0.1% of the world’s population per year since the Great Leap Forward.

In other words, NATO and the Rio Group work.

We had 30 years, which were incredibly peaceful by historical standards, since the fall of the Soviet Union.

But in 2020, something changed. Donald Trump, while insulting our allies and showing signs he didn’t have the same feelings of solidarity with America’s democratic allies, signed a treaty with the Taliban, completely bypassing the legitimate government of Afghanistan in preparation for a withdrawal from the country.

We had been in Afghanistan for 20 years. This is true. 212,000 people were killed over 20 years, the highest estimate. That is 10,000 people per year. In exchange, Afghanistan was relatively free, and girls went to school. The Afghanistan War was ongoing during the most peaceful decade in history.

We threw it all away.

Biden fulfilled the negotiations with the terrorists and withdrew from Afghanistan on 30 August 2021. The Taliban took over the country immediately. Women were pushed out of work and school within weeks.

But we had peace, something so many Americans wanted. Biden gave a speech claiming we weren’t going to worry ourselves about foreign affairs and focus on our dire problems at home. Americans cheered.

From 2014 until 2022, there was a sleeping conflict in Ukraine since Russia had control of the Donbas, Luhansk, and Crimea. On 24 February 2022, less than 5 months after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and the fateful speech of American withdrawal, the Russian army invaded further into Ukraine.

Biden and Trump had claimed they would not focus on external affairs.

Putin had called their bluff.

The United States has sent Ukraine far less than they need to expel Russians fully from their territory. We have forbidden them from attacking Russian military installations inside Russia.

Billions of dollars have been sent to Ukraine, but not nearly enough to fully repel the Russian invaders and send them either back to Russia or to hell.

There were few interstate conflicts because the United States went in and created a ceasefire any time they got out of hand. Also, who was going to start an armed conflict in the 1990s? Russia was very weak. China had not built up its military. We saw terrorism from the Gulf States, but aside from that, there were no countries with the economic and military strength to invade democracies. China was developing and deeply intertwined with the US and EU. It still is. Russia was economically weak. There was a credible threat to the attacker that the United States was defending the defending nation, which was enough.

But this is Trump’s legacy, and Biden has refused to reverse it. The credible threat of the United States defending attacked nations is far weaker than in the past. The only way to get it back is to return to our policy of credible retaliation toward aggressor countries.

Bush fueled the flames of the argument that the United States is not a trustworthy partner when we invaded Iraq. But there was no one to oppose us, and no one liked Saddam Hussein anyway. Saddam Hussein was guilty of genocide. The biggest concern is it diverted resources from Afghanistan, and Bush lied about the initial reasons why he started the war. Iraq was then overrun by terrorists, where at least it had been stable albeit authoritarian under Saddam Hussein.

The main challenge for the United States in foreign policy over the next 10 years is rebuilding trust. We need to defend Ukraine to the point where they defeat the Russians and then let them and Georgia into NATO as soon as possible to prevent further Russian aggression. We need to push for a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by the end of this year for two main reasons. The first and obvious reason is the inhumane treatment of Palestinians needs to end. The other reason is it weakens the United States in foreign policy. Both reasons are important.

We are in a wave of protectionism/nationalism (the two go hand in hand) right now, which has been spearheaded by a large number of anti-democratic politicians and fools. This needs to be reversed.

Defend our allies, support democratization, and build complex interdependent trade webs worldwide. That is the only path to a bright future I can see.

In light of the Invasion of Ukraine, it is the same situation we were in in 1945. Same challenges. Same solution.