President Trump and Defense Secretary Hegseth have recently been critical of NATO, calling for the European NATO countries to pay for their own defense. This is all to the good, though it does not go far enough. As the great Dr. Ron Paul has pointed out, “We also need a change in policy. Americans are beginning to understand the economic costs of maintaining a global military empire. US taxpayers are forced to cover more than half of the entire NATO budget while European countries rattle sabers at Russia and threaten war. If Europe feels so threatened by Russia, why don’t they cover the costs of their own defense? Why do poor Americans have to pay for the defense of rich Europeans? Haven’t we had enough of this? I very much hope that President Trump follows through with his plan to drastically reduce our bloated military budget. We can start by closing the hundreds of military bases overseas, bringing back our troops from foreign countries, and eliminating our massive commitments to NATO and other international organizations. We will be richer, safer, and happier.”
We should exit NATO entirely and we should never have started this nefarious and ill-considered organization. NATO was founded in 1949 and originally consisted of twelve member states, and it has now expanded to 32 nations. It was intended as a way to prosecute the Cold War with Soviet Russia, which would be deterred from invading Western Europe, it was claimed, by the presence of NATO armed forces and the possibility of nuclear war, should a Soviet invasion take place. The NATO signatories are committed to come to each other’s defense in case of invasion.
There was no need for this. As David Stockman points out, the Soviets, exhausted from the great losses incurred during World War II, were in no position to invade Western Europe, and that continues to be the case today, despite the anguished fears of such an invasion expressed by skittish European political figures. “To be sure, Stalin was among the most wretched, evil rulers ever to oppress a decent-sized chunk of mankind and would have remained a blight on his own countrymen and ogre before the world during the remaining six years of his despicable life. But he was no threat to the American homeland as the now open archives of the old Soviet Union prove in spades.”
Stockman means that a search of the Soviet archives hasn’t turned up any documents showing that Stalin planned to invade Western Europe. “These documents, in fact, amount to the national security dog which didn’t bark. Dig, scour, search and forage through them as you might. Yet they will fail to reveal any Soviet plan or capability to militarily conquer western Europe.”
Stockman proceeds to an analysis of Soviet policy that is fully in line with that of the great Murray Rothbard. After presenting Stockman’s case, I’ll try to show that there is a deeper point that requires our attention. Even if you think that Stockman vastly underestimates Stalin’s aggressive intentions, it doesn’t matter. You might find this a surprising thing to say, but I’ll try to justify it. But first, let’s listen to Stockman: “Washington’s standing up of NATO was a giant historical mistake. It was not needed to contain Soviet military aggression, but it did foster a half-century of hegemonic folly in Washington and a fiscally crushing Warfare State – the fiscal girth of which became orders of magnitude larger than required for defense of the homeland in North America. Needless to say, the arrival of the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan and NATO – within 25 months between March 1947 and April 1949 when the NATO Treaty was signed in Washington – sent Stalin’s wartime understandings into a tailspin. Slowly at first and then aggressively in the end his initial fear that the wartime alliance was being abandoned by his capitalist allies gave way to a paranoid certainty that they were once again in the business of attempting to encircle and destroy the Soviet Union.
But even the resulting Soviet departure from the cooperative modus operandi of the wartime alliance arose from what might well be described as an unforced error in Washington. We are referring to the latter’s badly misplaced fears that deteriorating economic conditions in Western Europe could lead to the aforementioned communist parties coming to political power in France, Italy and elsewhere. But as we have seen, that wasn’t a serious military threat to America’s homeland security in any event because the post-war Soviet economy was a shambles and its military had been bled and exhausted by its death struggle with the Wehrmacht. To be sure, communist governments in Western Europe would have been a misfortune for any electorate who stupidly put them in power. But that would have been their domestic governance problem over there, not a threat to the American homeland over here. Nevertheless, Washington’s gratuitous antidote for what was essentially an internal political problem in western Europe was a sweeping course of economic and military interventions in European affairs. These initiatives were clinically described as ‘containment’ measures designed only to keep the Soviet Union in its lane, not a prelude to an attack on eastern Europe or Moscow itself.
But if you examine a thousand random documents from the archives of the Soviet foreign ministry, top communist party echelons and correspondence to and from Stalin himself it is readily apparent that these initiatives were viewed in Moscow as anything but a polite message to stay in lane. To the contrary, they were seen on the Soviet side as a definitely unfriendly scheme of encirclement and an incipient assault on the Soviet sphere of influence in eastern Europe, or the cordon sanitaire, that Stalin believed he had won at Yalta.”
Now, let’s try to justify the claim I made earlier. Our traditional foreign policy was one of non-intervention in European power politics. The great powers of Europe for hundreds of years been locked in constant struggle to prevent one power from gaining hegemony over the whole continent. If one power gets too strong, the others will balance against it. But the United States decided to avoid participation in this never-ending battle. George Washington defended this policy in his farewell address, and it was continued by Thomas Jefferson. It received a classical statement in John Quincy Adams’s address on the fiftieth anniversary of the American Revolution: “the Declaration of Independence:
“Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence, has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will recommend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign Independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. The frontlet upon her brow would no longer beam with the ineffable splendor of Freedom and Independence; but in its stead would soon be substituted an Imperial Diadem, flashing in false and tarnished lustre the murky radiance of dominion and power. She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.”
Our traditional policy, then, was to stay out of Europe, not to prevent one nation from becoming dominant. It is no concern of ours. And this does not mean trying to broker a settlement in the Ukraine war. It means staying out completely. We should not send any weapons there. Let’s do everything we can to return to complete non-intervention in European power politics!
