Gongol.com Archives: March 2024

March 8, 2024

NATO gets bigger and better

Sweden has joined the NATO alliance, which is a welcome step forward for global security. It's unfortunate that a defensive treaty alliance like NATO remains necessary, especially so long after the original circumstances that brought it into being had changed. The Cold War was over when the USSR threw in the towel in 1991. ■ But the world still contains heavily-armed countries led by unstable autocrats. And the truly regrettable fact is that, no matter how stable and well-ordered we think they will be in the future, the dangers posed by sinister leaders will always be fast-moving. Much too fast-moving for anyone to spin up a thoughtfully-crafted countervailing coalition. ■ NATO doesn't start fights; its existence precludes them. An agreement to come to mutual aid in a time of trouble is also a commitment not to come to blows within the club over matters that can be resolved in more genteel ways. And it quite obviously has the effect of raising the expected cost and difficulty for any external power that tries to do a member wrong. ■ The alliance has always benefitted the United States. That is has never done so exclusively is the dead giveaway that it serves a constraining role in the world, and one worth sustaining unless someone supplies a compelling counter-argument.