Trouble in NATOstan

The recent 70th NATO summit has just ended in London, and the prognosis is not good. Tensions between world leaders were clearly visible with political and personal spats between Donald Trump, Emmanuel Macron and Justin Trudeau a part of the show.

There is much trouble in NATO-land these days. From member-states not spending what the US wants them to, lack of military preparedness, out-dated equipment, political differences, and even who NATO’s ‘official enemy' is. The confused and decrepit alliance is having a hard time staying afloat.

But even in these troubled waters, official NATO PR and propaganda touts it as the ‘most successful military alliance in history,’ and it’s unity as ‘rock-solid.’ But it is quite something else when reality lures it’s ugly head.
 
NATO 'unity' is only on-paper and on-camera. In reality, there is no unity. There are serious problems within the organization caused by NATO member-states conflicting interests. This is something that will not go away, but will only get worse.

NATO is for all practical purposes finished as an effective alliance. It worked for some time, but the world has changed too much; individual member's economic and political interests have diverged since 1949, and the organization is becoming a stone around its members necks. Member-states are forced to associate with people they do not particularly like (ex: Greece and Turkey), have very little in common with, and are in competition against. 

Logically, NATO can be an ideal, successful alliance only if none of its member-states had any conflicting interests, and were not in competition with each other in any way whatsoever. 

But this is definitely not the case today, and never will be. All the differences and competing interests within political, economic, and diplomatic spheres has created overt and covert animosity and bad-blood between these member-states, and this animosity and differences color their other relations, including within NATO. Therefore, there are always going to be disagreements and lack of consensus. 

This lack of unanimity is NATO's Achilles heel. This is the reason for all the huffing and puffing and temper tantrums between the US and the other member states when it comes to NATO's relevance, mission and funding. They know that NATO has a profound weakness that cannot be addressed. Russia, China and others are certainly aware of this.

Also, NATO's 'adversaries' have simply gotten too powerful for NATO to fight and defeat. Certain smarter member-states see this, and have come to the conclusion that any further maligning of these 'adversaries' is unnecessary and futile. It also hurts those member-states economic self-interests with these supposed 'adversaries.'

Also, some countries just don't want to pay more for NATO, or cannot afford to do so.

To paper over the cracks and discontent within NATO, certain member-states are using Russia, Iran, North Korea, Syria as artificial boogey-men to scare people with.

They need an enemy to keep NATO relevant; and the more enemies the merrier!

But keeping everyone ‘united’ by force by creating fake, artificial enemies is a poor cohesive agent. Fake unity against fake enemies is not going to work.

The main point of contention for the US is its demand that other NATO members buy more of its weaponry. The US economy is for all practical purposes a war economy. The military consumes $989 billion per year, 2nd only to social security and medicare spending. US produces very little non-military goods, as most of US manufacturing has been outsourced overseas to maximize profits.

The sale of aircraft and military equipment makes up the brunt of US economic output. This is why Trump has been pushing sub-par US weaponry on other NATO member-states. This has caused friction within the alliance, with the French defense minister criticizing the US insistence on EU’s purchase of the F-35 plane.

What we are seeing is NATO fatigue setting in. Only regressive-minded deluded dreamers in marginal European states like Poland, Romania, Ukraine and the Baltic countries still think of NATO as something necessary and effective.

But the joke will be on them.