Nato's musical chairs

Is the alliance populated by allies or enemies?

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) came into being April 4, 1949 in the aftermath of World War II with twelve nations creating an alliance to offset what they saw was the growing power of the Warsaw Pact, an Eastern European alliance led by the U.S.S.R. The founding members of NATO were United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Belgium, France, Iceland, Italy, Norway, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, Portugal and Iceland. It is remarkable that Italy, an ally of Germany during WWII under the Fascist leader Benito Mussolini, was now an ally of United States and Canada. Italy had signed the “Pact of Steel” in 1939 cementing their alliance with Germany and The Tripartite Pact in 1940 which joined with Japan in an alliance to counter the influence of United States.

Italy switched horses after Mussolini was overthrown by the July 25, 1943 Italian election, and Italy joined forces with the “Allies” and declared war against Germany. Millions of allied soldiers and civilians died in the war against Germany, and later (post Pearl Harbour) the war against Japan.

In 1945, on the eve of Japan’s intended surrender, the United States dropped two atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, more to signal the rise of the U.S. as the most powerful nation in the world than to shorten the war, which was on its last legs in any event. Harry Truman succeeded Franklin Delano Roosevelt on April 12, 1945, barely one month before the war with Germany ended with VE day on May 8, 1945 (some argue May 9th). Hopelessly out of his depth (which is not a surprise since many American Vice Presidents are weak leaders whose role on the Presidential ticket reflected the desire of the primary candidate to have a VP who would not challenge them and would appeal to voters, an obvious reason for Joe Biden’s choice of current VP Kamala Harris), Harry Truman acceded to his advisors and generals who wanted to make sure United States emerged as the world’s greatest power post war and demonstrate nuclear capability before Russia had a chance, ordering the unnecessary bombing of Japan with Little Boy and Fat Man bombs on August 6, 1945 and August 9, 1945. The massive casualties inflicted on Japanese civilians did cement the U.S. role in world politics even at the expense of the opportunity for the nascent United Nations to become a viable element of world peace instead of the peurile, useless forum for nothing more than competing ideologies that it is today. Roosevelt and his widow Eleanor worked tireless to build a close relationship with Russia under Stalin and the atom bomb decision destroyed that hope and kicked off the Cold War and Arms Race which persisted evert since.

Harry Truman rushed to drop the atomb bombs waiting only 11 days after issuing the Potsdam declaration demanding Japan’s unconditional surrender before authorizing the attacks on Hirohshima and Nagasaki killing thousands of Japanese civilians, mostly women and children, having by then received intelligence that Japan was about to surrender. Truman’s decision to bomb both cities was unnecessary under any interpretation of the events, it was just to test the differing bomb technologies arising from the Manhattan Project - one a uranium bomb and the other a plutonium bomb.

A mere decade after the end of WWII, in 1955 Germany became a member of NATO as part of an agreement that ended the occupation of West Germany by United Kingdom, France and United States. By that time, the so-called “Cold War” was in full swing and NATO was an alliance to defend against the Warsaw Pact.

Spain officially was “neutral” during WWII but fascist leader Franco allowed Spanish volunteers to fight alongside German soldiers during the war. Spain joined NATO in 1982. While Japan has never joined NATO, Japan has authorized a NATO office in the country and cemented close relations with NATO. The birth of NATO created as U.S. allies World War II enemies Germany and Japan and arguably Spain and Italy all in an effort to prevent the growth of influence by U.S.S.R. and its Asian neighbours Korea and China.

During my lifetime, German and Japan have been both enemies and allies of United States and Canada. U.S.S.R. originally conspired with Germany in the early days of WWII while expanding militarily into adjoining independent nations, but fought against Germany after “Operation Barbarossa”, the name given to Germany’s attack on Russia which began June 22, 1941. More Russians were killed fighting Germany than the combined losses of life by all the allied countries including U.S.A., Britain, Canada, France, and Australia but the confrontation between NATO and Russia turns on ideology, not the outcome of battles.

From the perspective of its American leadership, NATO is a defensive organization. But if you look at the map of Europe, it is easly to conclude that Russia sees NATO as an organization determined to diminish Russian influence and has a reasonable concern that the presence of American forces and arms throughout NATO countries such as Poland, Turkey, Finland, Romania, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania are a threat to Russia. NATO’s aggressive expansion into the region was sure to be seen as a threat by Russia. Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia were invited to begin accession talks at NATO’s Prague Summit in 2002 and in March 2004, they officially became members of NATO.

While the United States committed to the defense of Ukraine under the Clinton administration (the “Budapest Memorandum”), the U.S. has limited its support for Ukraine since the two-year old Russian invasion began to sending money and arms, and NATO has rebuffed requests by Ukraine to join NATO. Ukraine is where the rubber hits the road in the ideological conflict between democracy and communism, a conflict exacerbated by the geopolitics of energy and mineral resources. If you leave aside ideological rhetoric and simply consider geography, it is easy to conclude that Russia has a better argument regarding Ukraine than United States and similarly China has a better argument regarding Taiwan.

Ukraine is rich in uranium and natural gas. Europe is short of natural gas but relies on the fuel extensively. Uranium is vital to nuclear arms and nuclear power. Ideology collides with need and performative U.S. sanctions on NATO “enemies” like Russia, Iran, and Iraq do little to stop the necessary flow of Russian oil and gas into world markets, and the U.S. pretense that it “stands with Ukraine” is belied by the thousands of Ukranians whose lives and livelihoods have been destroyed by the war while the American military-industrial complex profits from the war and members of the Biden family apparently have received millions of dollars from Ukrainian companies.

The shifting winds of global geopolitics get distracted by short term events such as the Ukraine war and the Arab-Israeli conflict which has been a never-ending story since Israel was created by the United Nations in 1948. As world leaders deal with headlines, China and India keep expanding their economies and increasing their power, almost laughing at and certainly snubbing their noses at the deluded leftist policies of the Western democracies who pretend CO2 causes climate change while watching as India and China expand their use of cheap and reliable coal power generation and acquire interests in metal and energy resource rich areas of Africa (Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zambia) and Latin America (Chile, Peru, Ecuador). These regions are major sources of Electric Vehicle (EV) battery metals like cobalt and copper while China itself controls 60% of the world’s graphite. No doubt Ji Jingpin takes heart in trends towards autocratic socialism in United States and Canada fueled in part by the climate change charade and by the socialist forces in academia and schools that are teaching our children nonsensical views of history, absurd ideas of gender, and promoting DEI and ESG which are both destructive to prosperity and do nothing to improve income or wealth inequities.

NATO is all but useless, Russia is less a threat than China, and it is time for our leftist leaders to be tossed to the curb and our countries to abandon the climate change nonsense, develop our resources, and recognize the real threats rather than the imagined ones. Militarily, an alliance between Russia, China and North Korea is a possible reaction to the expansion of NATO given their somewhat similar ideologies and geographic proximity, and recent conversations between Vladmir Putin, Kim Jong Un and Ji Jinping suggest such an alliance is more than a remote possibility.

While a China-Russia-North Korea alliance is a potentual threat, for Canada and the United States the real threats are not foreign but domestic - the growing trend towards socialism. If successful, American Democrats and Canadian Liberals will keep limiting personal freedoms, intrude further into economic intervention, and stifle the free market capitalism which has made both countries prosper since the industrial revolution. As Pogo famously quipped “I have seen the enemy, and it is us”.