‘Judging Freedom’: How Weak Is NATO?

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‘Judging Freedom’: How Weak Is NATO?

Today’s discussion with Judge Andrew Napolitano went into the reasons why the commitment of all NATO member states yesterday to raise their military budgets to 5% of GDP from the present 2% was political theater as much as the fawning of Secretary General Rutte over Donald Trump was theater.

However, this theater was not staged for our amusement. It had business to achieve, which was to prepare an exit ramp from NATO for Mr Trump and the USA.  Of course, the American president cannot take the country out of NATO in the legal sense, since that would require a two-thirds vote of Congress which he cannot expect to receive. But he can sharply curtail American contributions to the NATO budget and reduce US military forces on the continent now.

I compared this to the political theater that Trump directed just a few days later when he sent B2 bombers and cruise missiles to attack Iranian nuclear bases from which everything of value had already been removed and then declared that he had destroyed the Iranian nuclear program.  That too was a very serious piece of business.  He thereby deprived prime minister Netanyahu of all reason to continue his war on Iran and a cease fire followed almost immediately.

The overriding message I was making is that we should pay attention not to the words of Trump and his associates, which are largely double-talk intended to confuse the journalists, whom Trump despises. We should follow the direct consequences of his actions, which, for the moment, are making a very considerable positive contribution to international relations.

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Published by gilbertdoctorow

Gilbert Doctorow's latest book, "War Diaries. The Russia-Ukraine War, 2022-2023" is a unique contribution to literature on the war thanks to the author's reports on the Russian home front written during his periodic visits to St Petersburg at a time when Russia no longer issued visas and nearly all Western journalists had left the country. Doctorow's two-volume "Memoirs of a Russianist" published in 2020 also constitutes a category of its own, consisting largely of diary entries rather than reminiscences written decades later.. Volume 2 focuses on the community of 50,000 expatriate managers working and living in Moscow during the 1990s, about which none of his peers has yet to write. Gilbert Doctorow is a professional Russia watcher and actor in Russian affairs going back to 1965. He is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College (1967), a past Fulbright scholar, and holder of a Ph.D. with honors in history from Columbia University (1975). After completing his studies, Mr. Doctorow pursued a business career focused on the USSR and Eastern Europe. For twenty-five years he worked for US and European multinationals in marketing and general management with regional responsibility. From 1998-2002, Doctorow served as the Chairman of the Russian Booker Literary Prize in Moscow. During the 2010-2011 academic year, he was a Visiting scholar of the Harriman Institute, Columbia University. Mr. Doctorow is a long-time resident of Brussels.

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