TGIF: Inept Con Man in the White House

Trump is hardly the first con man in the White House, but he is by far the most flagrant, and his scale is gargantuan. He's also rather inept. His latest confession came in a recent message to Norway's Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store:

Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America.

I've italicized confession. Here is Trump admitting that, in his quest for the Nobel Peace Prize, he prioritized something over "what is good and proper for the United States of America." In year two of his second term, that will change, he warns.

What did he put ahead of America's interest? Peace. There's another confession.

You hear that, MAGA? You got that, America Firsters? Your Dear Leader acknowledges that he has not been an America Firster at all, but a Nobel Peace Prize for Trump Firster. His goal wasn't to Make America Great Again, but to make his White House or Mar-a-Lago mantelpiece great.

Alas, the Nobel committee gave the prize to Venezuela's opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado, a deserving recipient. Having lost the prize, presumably out of Norwegian spite, Trump has now reduced the cause of peace to merely one of several concerns.

So much is wrong with what Trump wrote to Store. First, Trump has not been thinking "purely of peace" since Jan. 20, 2025—far from it. He's aided and abetted Israel in its savage battering of the people of the Gaza Strip. His touted ceasefire, which Israel has violated over a thousand times, is a farce. He, along with Israel, attacked Iran while pretending to negotiate with its diplomats. His conduct regarding Russia's war against Ukraine hardly speaks of a person who thinks purely of peace. He invaded Venezuela and kidnapped Maduro. He has bombed boats and executed their crews in the Caribbean. He's bombed Somalia repeatedly, along with several other countries, including Syria. I'm sure I've missed some things.

Don't get me wrong. Trump does not lie. Lying implies one knows the truth and says something else. In contrast, he seems sincerely to believe, or hope, that what he says will shape reality. How can you be lying if your words create the facts? He's the ultimate primacy-of-consciousness subjectivist. As I observed in Trump's first term, the only way to shut him up is to inject him with sodium pentathol, i.e., truth serum.

One may wonder why Trump complained to the Norwegian prime minister. He doesn't pick the Peace Prize winner. Greenland, over which Trump had threatened tariffs against Western Europe, is a territory of Denmark, not Norway (as Trump acknowledged further on). And what does Greenland have to do with the Nobel Peace Prize? At any rate, not winning the prize hardly justified Trump's damaging tantrum, after which he claimed he did not care about the prize, classic sour grapes. Isn't it time he grew up?

Notwithstanding his embarrassing bluster at Davos over Greenland—which he several times called Iceland; could he have meant Graceland?—Trump (for now) has backed down. Europe and the stock market pushed back, and Trump again caved. He says he won't use force. He's cancelled the tariffs, and he claims, vaguely, that he and NATO have worked out a "framework of a future deal" for Arctic security. The top man at NATO says the sovereignty of Greenland, which Trump had insisted was absolutely necessary, was no part of the post-speech discussions.

In other words, Trump antagonized friendly nations and shook the world economy—then settled for the status quo. An open-ended security arrangement with NATO and Denmark has existed in treaty form since 1951! Did no one tell Trump? It must have been a blow to his ego. If he thinks he's saved face, he's pathetically mistaken. He looks like a damned fool, and everybody knows it.

Trump's monomaniacal quest for adoration and gratitude is so warped that he seems oblivious to the harm he does. Noninterventionist libertarians have opposed U.S. membership in NATO since its founding in 1949 because a strictly limited government would not obligate its taxpayers or military to defend other countries. Preparation for war is the health of the state. It's also provocative. So the U.S. should leave NATO. However, gracefully leaving an alliance and nihilistically smashing it on the way out are two different things. While Trump clearly has no intention of leaving NATO, he seems intent on wreaking havoc anyway.

In his first inaugural address, Thomas Jefferson cautioned against "entangling alliances." That was good advice. But Trump is showing that things could be worse than the current alliance system. Presidential pugnacity toward people who bear us no ill will is bad for them and us. Jefferson also called for "peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations." Trump must have missed part.

TGIF: Trump Loves NATO

Trump is either contentedly ignorant of the things he talks about or callously scornful of his adoring fans, whom he sees as rubes eager to swallow whatever he says. He could be both. Above all, Trump is a Trump supremacist.

Does he believe in NATO or not? (Believe in it? Hell, I've seen it!) Trump wants it both ways. He loves the response he gets at rallies when, populist-style, he seems to put NATO down as a freeloader on America. But he doesn't really put it down. He is a devout NATOist.

How can that be? Look at his record. He's called for expanding NATO to the Middle East! (He said it would allow the U.S. government to disengage, but how likely would that be?) During the Trump administration, North Macedonia joined the alliance. (Another country for potential American rescue, thank you very much.) And NATO members near Russia think Trump left the alliance stronger than it was before he took office. Yes, once or twice he threatened to pull the U.S. government out, but that's like the guy who starts to walk out of a car showroom in a bluff to get undercoating and rustproofing included in the price of the car.

So let's not play games. Trump loves NATO. It enables him to be a big cheese on the world stage. His fans say we should take him seriously, not literally. What does that mean? Trump is a shameless snake oil salesman. (That doesn't mean I think the alternative is better.)

Take the latest brouhaha. Trump has upset the usual suspects by saying that if a NATO member government were "delinquent" in paying "its bills," "I" -- he personally? -- would not protect it from an attack by, say, Russia. He even said he would "encourage [Russia] to do whatever the hell they want." He's rather casual about other people's lives.

The first thing to notice is that he would protect members that had paid what he calls their "bills." He believes in NATO's mutual defense commitment. QED.

Under Trump (like any other president), Americans could be forced to fight for and/or materially assist other NATO governments that came into conflict with non-NATO countries. That's the point of NATO! An attack on one is an attack on all. The collective defense commitment under Article 5 -- which has been invoked only once, by the U.S. government after 9/11 -- provides wiggle room with the phrase "such action as [each member government] deems necessary," but still it expresses an intention for mutual defense. And, most importantly, the U.S. government's nuclear arsenal is in the background.

The next thing to understand is that Trump's talk about bills and dues is balderdash. NATO members don't pay dues. What Trump must be confused about is the members' agreement to try to raise their military spending to at least 2 percent of their GDP. That money does not go to NATO; it's part of their government budgets. This agreement is understood as a guideline, not a commitment. Members have no deadline, so they can't be delinquent. According to the Washington Post, using NATO figures, 11 of the 31 members have met the guideline. (Iceland has no armed forces.)

How does Trump know that 2 percent is the magic number? He doesn't. How does he know that striving for 2 percent by raising taxes or cutting other spending wouldn't destabilize one country or another? He doesn't. But the issue gives him another chance to pretend that the United States is the aggrieved party internationally. NATO members are taking advantage of America.

That's been his shtik since he started running for president in 2015. No demagogue would get far by ranting that the United States has bullied other countries long enough and it's time to stop. No, his pitch is that the United States has been trampled on by others long enough. That's how a populist rallies support. The fact is that for decades in foreign affairs, the U.S. foreign-policy elite has called the shots and others have knuckled under or else. As President George H. W. Bush said in 1990, "What we say goes." This power has been waning recently: other people will take only so much pushing around, and other power centers rise up.

One reasonably winces at Trump's invitation to Russia, although Russia is unlikely to be interested in accepting it or even capable of doing so. We wince because when a government, any government, crosses borders, innocent people die. It's not something even to joke about.

To point out Trump's buffoonery, however, is not to defend NATO. Decades ago, libertarians started calling for the U.S. government to leave the alliance and the others. That was during the Cold War. It was motivated by, among other things, an understanding that what looks like defense to you might look like aggressiveness to him. Glancing back and pronouncing NATO a success because World War III did not happen might be a post hoc ergo proper hoc fallacy (after this, therefore because of this). We don't know what would have happened had NATO not existed or if it did, the U.S. government had not participated, especially if free entrepreneurship in security had been allowed to flourish. Maybe we were just lucky over 40-some years, especially concerning nuclear war, which would have ended the world.

Moreover, by what right does the U.S. government commit American individuals to fight or otherwise assist in another government's war? It is not an answer to say: "That's what governments do." That begs the question regarding the state's authority. I suspect Trump wouldn't understand.

TGIF: NATO and Collective Insecurity

Collective security, the official goal of NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, seems plausible on its face. A group of nations ostensibly concerned about a common threat agree to defend one another in the event of an attack. "All for one and one for all," as the Three Musketeers said.

But like many things, the principle, even if sincerely invoked, is more problematic than the first glance indicates. This is particularly true with governments, and in no area more so than foreign policy and armed forces. Schoolyard analogies involving bullies do not hold.

NATO was established soon after World War II ostensibly to keep the Soviet Union from overrunning Western Europe. The Red Army was present in Eastern and Central Europe, including eastern Germany, having driven back the Wehrmacht in the Allied defeat of Nazi Germany. It is by no means clear that Soviet dictator Josef Stalin aspired to have his armed forces conquer Western Europe, and his doctrine of "socialism in one country," which suggests a conservative foreign policy, hardly supports a militarily aggressive posture toward the West. For one thing, the Soviet Union was exhausted from the savage war -- it lost well over 20 million military personnel and civilians -- and was hardly in a position to begin a new one against the Americans.

While many American politicians, fearing a return of the prewar public sentiment against foreign intervention, spoke of a Soviet threat, not all agreed. The influential Republican senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio, whom I will discuss below, questioned the consensus and thus the official premise of the Cold War.

On April 4, 1949, 12 countries -- the United States, Canada, Great Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland -- signed the treaty that created NATO. (The Warsaw Pact, the Soviet Union's counter-alliance with the Eastern European countries it occupied, would not be founded for another six years.) Since 1998, 18 more countries have joined NATO, for a total of 30, including former Warsaw Pact members and the former Soviet Baltic republics that border Russia -- with the predicted disastrous consequences. (Austria is not a member, having agreed to neutrality in 1955, in return for the Soviet withdrawal. West Germany became a member in 1955, and then a reunified Germany became a member in 1990 as the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact were being dismantled.)

The heart of the treaty, the "all for one and one for all" provision, is Article 5:

The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognized by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.  [Emphasis added.]

Note the italic phrase: in the event of an attack on a member, each other member will assist by taking "such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force." Strangely, this clearly provided wiggle room is never mentioned in the news commentaries about NATO and the Russia-Ukraine war. Why would that be? The reason for the hedge was that, in light of the constitutional delegation of the war power exclusively to Congress, the Senate would have had a problem ratifying a treaty that obligated the country to go to war automatically. (Ironically, President Truman went to war in Korea, which was not a NATO member, without a declaration of war. He called it a "police action.")

The Senate ratified the NATO treaty 82-13 on July 21, 1949. Among those who voted nay was Sen. Taft. Who was he and what were the grounds for his vote?

Taft was the elder son of the late President and Chief Justice William Howard Taft. Sen. Taft had earlier voted to approve U.S. entry into the United Nations but doubted it would be effective, among other reasons, because, of the veto power held by the five permanent members of the Security Council: the United States, Soviet Union, Great Britain, France, and China.

Because of the influence and respect he had earned, Taft became known as Mr. Republican and was the Senate majority leader at the beginning of the Eisenhower administration, from January 3 to July 31, 1953, when he died. He had tried for the Republican presidential nomination three times, in 1940, 1948, and 1952, but failed because the Republican establishment had committed itself to bipartisan multilateral internationalism. As a principled noninterventionist, Taft had no chance.

Earlier, Taft had spoken against U.S. entry into World War II, having witnessed firsthand the unprecedented horrendous destruction and tyrannical aftermath of the first world war, propelled by U.S. intervention under President Wilson. Like other antiwar Republicans, Taft ended his opposition to entry into World War II after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. (He objected to President Roosevelt's shameful internment of Japanese-Americans beginning in 1942, which the Supreme Court later endorsed.)

Taft's opponents smeared him as an isolationist, an unfair charge. His default position was against U.S. foreign military intervention because he feared it would lead to war, a loss of American liberty and economic stability, constitutionally compromising alliances, and foreign resentment of America. On the other hand he supported an internationally administered rule of law, complete with a court and enforcement mechanism, to protect smaller, weaker nations from domination. That regime, however, would have had no power to meddle in the internal affairs of nations. Taft did favor giving Western Europe assurances regarding a Soviet military threat. (More below.) Taft also voted for, after initially opposing, both Truman's postwar military aid to Turkey and Greece and the Marshall Plan for Western Europe.)

He also opposed the U.S. government's encouragement of American investment in other countries because he foresaw that it would lead to imperialism, again, creating resentment against America. Taft thought the United States should set an example by protecting its own freedom, not by imposing values on others. Taft, who disliked the label conservative, which he associated with the plutocracy, was not a consistent libertarian, but it's clear that individual liberty and the imperative to limit centralized bureaucratic power topped his political values. For that reason he inspired several future libertarian stalwarts, including Murray Rothbard, Ralph Raico, and Leonard Liggio, to join Youth for Taft when the senator ran, unsuccessfully, against Dwight Eisenhower for the 1952 Republican nomination.

On April 12, 1949, Truman in a speech to the Senate urged ratification of the North Atlantic treaty, expressing the official line: "The security and welfare of each member of the community depend upon the security and welfare of all."

In opposing NATO, Taft gave a speech to the Senate on July 26, 1949. In it he criticized the alliance system for, among other things, subordinating U.S. foreign policy to the policies of the other member nations, which might unjustifiably provoke an attack. Note its current relevance:

[T]he Atlantic Pact goes much further. It obligates us to go to war if at any time during the next 20 years anyone makes an armed attack on any of the 12 nations. Under the Monroe Doctrine we could change our policy at any time. We could judge whether perhaps one of the countries had given cause for the attack. Only Congress could declare a war in pursuance of the doctrine. Under the new pact the President can take us into war without Congress. But, above all the treaty is a part of a much larger program by which we arm all these nations against Russia…. A joint military program has already been made…. It thus becomes an offensive and defensive military alliance against Russia. I believe our foreign policy should be aimed primarily at security and peace, and I believe such an alliance is more likely to produce war than peace. A third world war would be the greatest tragedy the world has ever suffered. Even if we won the war, we this time would probably suffer tremendous destruction, our economic system would be crippled, and we would lose our liberties and free system just as the Second World War destroyed the free systems of Europe. It might easily destroy civilization on this earth…[Emphasis added.]

Taft continued (again note the relevance):

If we undertake to arm all the nations around Russia from Norway on the north to Turkey on the south, and Russia sees itself ringed about gradually by so-called defensive arms from Norway and. Denmark to Turkey and Greece, it may form a different opinion. It may decide that the arming of western Europe, regardless of its present purpose, looks to an attack upon Russia....

How would we feel if Russia undertook to arm a country on our border; Mexico, for instance?

He also said America could not afford the foreign policy of which NATO is a part.:"we can’t let them [the Russian and Chinese communists ] scare us into bankruptcy and the surrender of all liberty, or let them determine our foreign policies.... If the President is unwilling to recommend more taxes for fear of creating a depression, then we must have reached the limit of our taxpaying ability and we ought not to start a new and unnecessary building project...."

And more: NATO "is a step backward -- a military alliance of the old type where we have to come to each others’ assistance no matter who is to blame, and with ourselves the judges of the law."

From his prominent position, Taft made sure the public would hear a debate about postwar foreign policy. The bipartisan establishment surely would have preferred he had not done so.

As he prepared to run for the 1952 Republican presidential nomination, he published his book A Foreign Policy for Americans, in which he called for American "moral leadership" rather than imperial domination:

I do not think this moral leadership justifies engaging in any preventive war, or going to the defense of one country against another, or getting ourselves in a vulnerable fiscal and economic position at home which may invite war. I do not believe any policy which has behind it the threat of military force is justified as part of the basic foreign policy except to defend the liberty of our own people.

For some time now, American foreign policy has been sadly contrary to Taft's advice. The price measured in lives and treasure, for Americans and non-Americans, is beyond measure. Taft would be horrified but not surprised by what NATO has wrought and by what is happening today.

Further reading:

"The Republican Road Not Taken: The Foreign-Policy Vision of Robert A. Taft" by Michael T. Hayes, Independent Review, Spring 2004

"New Deal Nemesis: The 'Old Right' Jeffersonians by Sheldon Richman, Independent Review, Fall 1996

TGIF: Shades of Gray in the Russia-Ukraine War

If you're looking for morality tales -- clashes between the clearly good and the clearly bad -- I suggest you look elsewhere than the geopolitical theater. There we find only conflicts between shades of darker gray.

This seems to have been the case throughout history. Empires and would-be empires vied with rival empires and would-be empires for territory, resources, taxpayers, and soldiers. No surprise: governments will be governments, and that's not good. This is not to say the shades of gray did not differ at all, perhaps even significantly on occasion, but the objective was always, first and foremost, booty and control of people. The interests of commoners were rarely if ever the cause.

We see this in Russia's war on Ukraine. Let's be clear: Vladimir Putin and his Russian government freely chose to send military forces across the border into Ukraine. Their military personnel complied. They ultimately are responsible for their choices and therefore the death, injury, and mayhem that is taking place. (I make an exception for proven false-flag operations on the Ukrainian side, should any come to light.)

Now that the issue of primary culpability is out of the way, we can go on to talk about contributory culpability. I hope I've left little room for anyone to argue assigning contributory culpability to others is intended to let the Russian government personnel off the hook.

What sort of culpability do I have in mind? It's on the order of setting a trap and loading it with bait in order to lure a target. Russia had to choose to step into it, but those who set the trap did not have to do what they did. Hence, they contributed to a terrible situation.

Many experts analysts have long pointed out that the U.S. government at least since the late 1990s has knowingly been provoking Russia by expanding NATO up to the country's western border, incorporating most of the allies and some of the republics of the late Soviet Union. For years the U.S. government and other NATO officials have talked publicly about inviting the former republics Ukraine and Georgia to join. Everyone knew that Ukraine was an especially sensitive matter because it had long been a buffer between Russia and states to the west, Poland in particular. The Soviet Union had been invaded three times in the 20th century, twice by Germany and once by Poland, both NATO members since the demise of the USSR.

The warnings against NATO's march eastward were too many to count and came from people as diverse as Henry Kissinger and Noam Chomsky, Soviet-rollback guru Paul Nitze and Soviet-containment architect George Kennan. The current director of the CIA, William J. Burns, warned in 2008, when he was George W. Bush's ambassador to Russia, that no Russian leader -- conservative or liberal -- would ever stand for the admission of Ukraine and George into NATO. Burns's leaked memo was written shortly after publicly NATO declared that it welcomed applications for membership from those states.

That was 14 years ago and six years before the U.S. State Department helped foment a Nazi-backed coup that drove a Russia-friendly but democratically elected president from power -- even though he had been making concessions to the opposition in the streets, including a call for early elections. What motivated the U.S. government was that president's intention to reject an exclusive economic and political relationship with the European Union in order to accept a loan with liberal terms from Russia.

Aside from the overt NATO talk, there's the matter of the U.S. government's putting missile launchers in Poland and Romania. As outfitted, they are for defensive anti-missile missiles, but that could be changed. Moreover, defensive missiles obviously can be useful in an offensive campaign. Remember that Donald Trump, the reputed Russian agent, had earlier denounced the Reagan-era treaty that banned intermediate-range nuclear weapons from Europe and elsewhere. No one could have been surprised when all this was worrisome to the Russians. (Recall what happened in 1962 when the Soviet Union tried to put missiles in Cuba. John F. Kennedy imposed a naval blockade on the island and was ready to launch a nuclear war if the missiles were not removed.)

Since the Russian invasion, Joe Biden and his foreign policy people have denounced Russia sanctimoniously for its violations of international law and brutality, including the inexcusable deaths of noncombatants. It is not inappropriate to ask when an American president has ever respected international law when it was inconvenient for U.S. objectives. In the 21st century alone, American presidents have launched illegal aggressive wars in the Middle East and other places to effect regime change and other geopolitical objectives even partially on behalf of other states, such as Israel. In the process Americans have killed untold noncombatants. They have tortured prisoners. They have wreaked sickening destruction, creating hordes of refugees -- and so on. Yet day after day, lying American officials -- but I repeat myself -- admonish Putin for his bad behavior. There's nothing like setting a good example.

The Ukrainian leaders must also share in the blame. Those leaders who have been West-leaning have not been shy about aspiring to join NATO, knowing full well how the Russians would interpret those words. Since the 2014 coup -- in response to which Russia annexed a long-standing security area, the Crimea with its Russian naval base, to keep it out of NATO hands -- Ukrainian presidents could have made overtures to Russia, assuring that they would not seek NATO membership and offering to make Ukraine neutral in the manner of Austria since 1955. They did not do that, even though the current president, Volodymyr Zelensky, a former comedian and actor, was elected on a peace-with-Russia platform.

Superfically, Zelensky is an appealing figure. He's young and charismatic, and he wears t-shirts. His country has been invaded, which of course puts him in a sympathetic light when he appears on television. But is that the whole story of the man? It also seems that despite the terms of the Minsk agreements, he has been unwilling to talk to leaders in the heavily Russian-ethnic Donbas region, in the far east of Ukraine, about home-rule. Two provinces there, Luhansk and Donetsk, have since declared their independence, which Russia has recognized. The Ukrainian military has been shelling the area since the 2014 coup, and Donbas forces have fought back. The casualties on both sides have been high.

Moreover, as Jacques Baud, an intelligence expert who has worked for NATO, the UN, and Swiss strategic intelligence  writes:

On [March 24, 2021], Volodymyr Zelensky issued a decree for the recapture of the Crimea, and began to deploy his forces to the south of the country. At the same time, several NATO exercises were conducted between the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea, accompanied by a significant increase in reconnaissance flights along the Russian border. Russia then conducted several exercises to test the operational readiness of its troops and to show that it was following the evolution of the situation. [Aaron Mate's video interview with Baud is here.]

Baud also writes, "In violation of the Minsk Agreements, the Ukraine was conducting air operations in Donbass using drones, including at least one strike against a fuel depot in Donetsk in October 2021. The American press noted this, but not the Europeans; and no one condemned these violations."

It begins to look as though Zelensky has cavalierly used the Ukrainian people for his own ends: instead of seeking peace, he sought or was willing to risk war with Russia, assuming the U.S. government and other NATO states would back him up with perhaps more than arms shipments. He still demands a NATO no-fly zone, which would all but assure a new world war and perhaps an all-out nuclear war. So he also shares in the responsibility.

As usual, there's blame aplenty to go around.

American Infallibility

Beneath the widespread stubborn American refusal to understand the Russian government's motives for its condemnable invasion of Ukraine is the equally widespread stubborn refusal to learn from the U.S. government's wrong moves with respect to Russia over the last 30 years. But even deeper is the widespread stubborn refusal to even entertain the possibility that the U.S. government might have made any wrong moves at all.

The Stable Genius Is Good at Names

So, Trump wants to add Middle Eastern nations (so far unspecified) to NATO so that the alliance can be more involved in the region. We need another obligation to go to war there like a hole in the head. That's very peculiar for a Putin marionette who supposedly dislikes NATO, which by the way has grown already during his tenure. One always proposes larger missions for useless organizations. Such is the incoherence we've come to expect for the 45th occupant of the White House.

According to Politico, Trump said to reporters while describing in a call with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg:

I think that NATO should be expanded, and we should include the Middle East. Absolutely ... because this is an international problem.... And we can come home, or largely come home and use NATO. It’s an international problem. We caught ISIS. We did Europe a big favor.

So, I have actually said that I think the scope of NATO should be increased. And they should be looking for ISIS. We will help. But right now the burden is on us, and that has not been fair.

He went on:

NATO, right, and then you have M-E, Middle East. You call it NATO-ME. What a beautiful name. I'm good at names.

No, uh, if you add the two words, Middle East, at the end of it, because that's a big problem. That’s a big source of problems. And NATO-ME, doesn’t that work beautifully, Jon? "NATO" plus "ME."

NATO-ME -- as though America hasn't done enough damage in the region. This is our "stable genius" at work in the White House. Heaven help us.

TGIF: An Idiot Abroad

I've got a few leftover thoughts from Donald Trump's trip to Europe. As usual, I oppose both Trump and his mainstream critics. It's possible for both sides to be wrong in a dispute.

Read TGIF at The Libertarian Institute.

TGIF (The Goal Is Freedom) appears on Fridays. Sheldon Richman, author of America's Counter-Revolution: The Constitution Revisited, keeps the blog Free Association and is executive editor of The Libertarian Institute. He is also a senior fellow and chair of the trustees of the Center for a Stateless Society and a contributing editor at Antiwar.com. Become a Free Association patron today!

TGIF: Trump’s Military Budget Is Not NATO’s Fault

President Trump’s budget proposal would increase military spending $54 billion, not quite a 10 percent increase over the current level.  According to Quartz, the increase alone is more than all but two countries — China and Saudi Arabia — spend on their militaries. (China spends $145 billion, Saudi Arabia $57 billion, Russia $47, and Iran $16 billion, the International Institute for Strategic Studies reports.)

Read TGIF at The Libertarian Institute.

TGIF (The Goal Is Freedom) appears on Fridays. Sheldon Richman, author of America's Counter-Revolution: The Constitution Revisited, keeps the blog Free Association and is executive editor of The Libertarian Institute. He is also a senior fellow and chair of the trustees of the Center for a Stateless Society and a contributing editor at Antiwar.com. Become a Free Association patron today!

NATO and Its Problems

I recently discussed NATO with Adam Camac on his Wake Up Call Podcast.
 

NATO and Trump's Misconceptions

Again Trump has it backwards. According to NATO's internal logic, the US should pay the members -- not the other way around -- for providing services to the empire and a tripwire for war. The empire doesn't protect; it provokes and endangers. Who would willingly pay for that?

NATO's Broken Promise

If you want to understand the context in which the US demonization of Russia and Vladimir Putin is occurring, read Joshua Itzkowitz Shifrinson's excellent piece in the Los Angeles Times, "Russia's got a point: The U.S. broke a NATO promise."

In summary, U.S. presidents, Democratic and Republican, broke a 1990 promise to Russia not to extend NATO eastward to the Russian border, a promise made in return for Russia's pledge not to interfere with the reunification of Germany and its membership in NATO. (We may well ask why NATO continued after the Warsaw Pact and then the Soviet Union disappeared.) The US promise was broken when the members of the defunct Warsaw Pact and the Baltic states were incorporated into NATO, and two former Soviet Republics, Georgia and Ukraine, were widely discussed as future NATO members. (This has not happened yet, but the US government has intervened in both countries to keep them from being too close to Russia. In Ukraine this took the form of a coup, ousting an elected president, however objectionable he was.)

Since NATO was formed in opposition to the Soviet Union and its alliance, the expansion to the Russian border was reasonably interpreted as threatening. That a strong man--Putin--emerged to push back against American military provocation and economic intervention in the Russian economy should have been expected.

Shifrinson writes:

NATO’S widening umbrella doesn’t justify Putin’s bellicosity or his incursions in Ukraine or Georgia. Still, the evidence suggests that Russia’s protests have merit and that U.S. policy has contributed to current tensions in Europe.

Western provocation of Russia is dangerous. NATO holds military exercises close to the Russian border, and it wouldn't take much for an "incident" to lead to a crisis and worse. Instead of engaging in moves and counter-moves, the two powers should be talking about dismantling their nuclear arsenals.

What Do Terrorists Want?

After the terrorist violence in Brussels many people, including Barack Obama, said we should not change our way of life and live in fear because that is what terrorists want. Maybe, but is that all they want? It seems that something important is left out of the story. In the classical model of terrorism, instilling fear (along with causing death and injury) is not an end in itself. It's a means to an end.

Let's Have Candor from the NATO Summit

Don’t hold your breath, but it would be refreshing if NATO leaders meeting in Wales this week spoke candidly for once about Ukraine.

Read it here.

Press TV Interview

Press TV interviewed me about U.S. policy toward Ukraine. You can listen here.

George Kennan on NATO Expansion

As told to Thomas Friedman, May 2, 1998:

"I think it is the beginning of a new cold war,'' said Mr. Kennan from his Princeton home. ''I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else. This expansion would make the Founding Fathers of this country turn over in their graves. We have signed up to protect a whole series of countries, even though we have neither the resources nor the intention to do so in any serious way. [NATO expansion] was simply a light-hearted action by a Senate that has no real interest in foreign affairs.''

''What bothers me is how superficial and ill informed the whole Senate debate was,'' added Mr. Kennan, who was present at the creation of NATO and whose anonymous 1947 article in the journal Foreign Affairs, signed ''X,'' defined America's cold-war containment policy for 40 years. ''I was particularly bothered by the references to Russia as a country dying to attack Western Europe. Don't people understand? Our differences in the cold war were with the Soviet Communist regime. And now we are turning our backs on the very people who mounted the greatest bloodless revolution in history to remove that Soviet regime.

''And Russia's democracy is as far advanced, if not farther, as any of these countries we've just signed up to defend from Russia,'' said Mr. Kennan, who joined the State Department in 1926 and was U.S. Ambassador to Moscow in 1952. ''It shows so little understanding of Russian history and Soviet history. Of course there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then [the NATO expanders] will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are -- but this is just wrong.''

Op-ed: Obama Should Steer Clear of Ukraine

President Obama insists he does not regard the conflict in Ukraine “as some Cold War chessboard in which we are in competition with Russia.”

He’d be more credible if he were not following his predecessors in acting as though the Cold War still exists. Although the Soviet empire, including its Warsaw Pact alliance, disbanded beginning in 1989, Republican and Democratic presidents have pursued aggressively anti-Russian policies up to the present.

Read it all here.

This Can't End Well

Israel is going to keep stopping ships headed for Gaza. Turkey promises military escorts for future convoys. If Israel and Turkey duke it out, wouldn't the U.S. have to go to the aid of its NATO ally Turkey?

Regarding Russia, Georgia, and the U.S.

The Russian invasion of Georgia (like the U.S. invasion of Iraq) is inexcusable. The intractable dispute between the government of Georgia and the Russian-backed separatists in South Ossetia in no way warranted Russia’s air and ground attacks against innocent Georgians. Once again, “mere” people suffer for what governments do.

That said, we would be telling only part of the story if we ignored the role played by the U.S. government and its neo-imperial foreign policy. The Bush administration’s loud sponsorship of Georgia (and other former Soviet republics and satellites) for membership in NATO, and its training and equipping of the Georgian military, could have no other effect than to provoke traditional Russian fears of encirclement by the West. As the old saying goes, just because someone is “paranoid” it doesn’t mean no one is after him. The Bush plan to bring NATO -- which was established as an anti-Soviet alliance after World War II -- to the Russian doorstep is reckless and provocative. It surely emboldened Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s recent military violence against the separatists in South Ossetia, which the Russians then exploited opportunistically and ruthlessly. (Brendan O'Neill's analsysis here is worth reading. Hat tip: Jacob Hornberger. Also see Juan Cole's take on the Bush-Putin Doctrine here.)

If it is from such recklessness, provocation, and opportunism that wars are born -- yet another demonstration that the Bush foreign policy is the biggest threat to peace in the world today.

O Goody! Another Reason to Go to War!

"Henceforth, should any danger threaten your people, America and the NATO alliance will stand with you, and no one will be able to take your freedom away."

--George II on the occasion of NATO membership invitations to Croatia and Albania