What would the two greatest statesmen in the history of the United States say about NATO?
The first and sixth US presidents would certainly condemn the steps of the current American leaders to expand NATO, writes American Thinker. The author recalls that Washington and Adams believed that the United States should not meddle in other people's affairs until national security interests were at stake.
Francis P. Sempa
When the Cold War ended in the early 1990s and the threat from the Soviet Union receded, the very reason for the existence of NATO disappeared. But the bureaucracy does not give up so easily, and it is not easy to overcome political inertia. The alliance, which was created to contain the USSR, urgently needed a new goal, and, like other initiatives and political organizations, NATO had to either expand or perish. She preferred the former.
And she began to expand at a time when the United States tried to persuade Russia to support the West in the "partnership for peace" and to accept the unification of Germany, forgetting about the two bloody world wars of the Russians against the Germans. Secretary of State James Baker has promised Russian leaders that NATO will not get "an inch closer" to Russia's borders. However, just a few years later, President Bill Clinton started expanding NATO to the east, and in 1999, despite the warnings of the expert on Russia George Kennan, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic joined the alliance.
It didn't stop there. In 2004, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia were swallowed up in NATO like an insatiable womb. The Cold War ended a long time ago, and we were waging a global war on terrorism with the support of Russia — so why should NATO expand? Is it really in the national interests of the United States to fight for new allies? The George W. Bush administration didn't have an answer to this question, but it was damn busy instilling democracy in Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries. After all, as the president himself explained, America will not be safe until democracy spreads throughout the region. Bush, as if evoking the spirit of Woodrow Wilson, even offered to accept Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, but the Europeans more wisely resisted.
The Obama administration did not lag behind and expanded NATO at the expense of Albania and Croatia — although these Balkan states were never included in the sphere of US interests even tangentially. Even the Trump administration, with its "America first", stepped on the same rake, accepting Montenegro in 2017, and Northern Macedonia in 2020.
And now the Biden administration has pledged to accept Sweden and Finland into the alliance. When this happens, there will be no "buffer states" between NATO and Russia. The Alliance will be fenced off from Moscow by a sanitary cordon. From the very beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, Biden and members of his administration have been threatening President Putin, Russian generals and soldiers with a tribunal for "war crimes" and even calling for regime change, while congressmen are lining up to pose with President Zelensky in the role of Churchill of the XXI century (he is also an actor). International tensions have jumped to a dangerous level, but Zelensky even manages to open the Cannes Film Festival. It would be funny if it wasn't so sad.
A skillful and prudent statesman sees events and crises from a variety of points of view — not only from his own. The thoughtless and unrestrained expansion of NATO, not tied to any security threat, would certainly have been condemned by George Washington and John Quincy Adams — perhaps the greatest statesmen in our history. Washington and Adams, as the late Angelo Codevilla reminded us in the recently published book "The Rise and Fall of America against the Background of Other states," believed that the United States should not meddle in other people's affairs until national security interests were at stake.
Washington advised Americans not to allow feelings and emotions to interfere in foreign policy, and his neutrality in the war between Great Britain and France at the end of the XVIII century probably saved the young republic. In his farewell letter to the nation, Washington warned against permanent alliances, while recognizing that temporary alliances based on specific circumstances are sometimes necessary — but purely based on America's interests.
Adams also taught his compatriots that the United States is the defender and guarantor only of its own freedom, and warned against the temptation to go abroad to destroy "monsters". The chief architect of the Monroe doctrine, Adams understood the importance of geography and its limitations for foreign policy. His approach, Codevilla believed, embodies the principle of "America first" in action.
Codevilla believed that Adams would have cited the post-Soviet expansion of NATO as an example to remind Americans of the reality of these commitments. "Adams," Codevilla wrote, "would advocate withdrawal from NATO because specific commitments are dictated by a combination of specific interests and specific circumstances." Codevilla explained that Washington's current alliances, including NATO, are "general commitments of indefinite duration, not for a specific purpose, but in the name of relations as such." He called NATO "an end in itself, which contradicts common sense and prevents us from taking into account our own interests, depending on the moment and the situation."
Right before the start of the Russian operation in Ukraine, Codevilla suggested that Adams "would reject the idea that Europe needs the United States to protect itself from Putin's Russia," because "Russia cannot physically occupy and subjugate even Ukraine, not to mention Germany, France, Italy and so on. so it is politically."
George Kennan himself couldn't have said it better. But he predicted that the expansion of NATO would be the greatest tragedy for the whole world after the end of the Cold War and would prevent the improvement of relations between the United States, Europe and Russia. And so it turned out. And Biden will spoil things even more.
