On February 22, 2017, Politico Magazine published an article
titled, “Does Trump Herald the End of the West?” by James P. Rubin, in which it
describes how the end of NATO would affect our political affiliations and ultimately
our national government. It pointed out President Trump’s comments about other
European counties getting a free ride while the U.S. picks up their tab. The
author informs us that these comments are not new and that the Obama as well as
the Bush administration felt the same way about our NATO allies. The author
argues that our president’s “insult-driven diplomacy” will affect how European
nations view us and cause them to lose confidence in the United States.
I felt that the authors intended audience would be leftist
democrats since his disdain for the President seems to be quite clear as he
refers to the white house as a “modern day Babel” and speaks of the president’s
current term as “weeks of chaos and confusion”.
This is also backed by the fact that the article’s author served as US
Assistant Secretary of State of Public Affairs under the Clinton administration.
He points out some of President Bush’s shortcomings (and there are many) like
the lead-ups of Iraq and Afghanistan but he fails to mention how President
Obama never fulfilled his promise on bringing home the troops, closing
Guantanamo Bay, or his approval of air strike drones. The article only
criticizes republicans and not democrats like our author. Mr. Rubin has
attended Colombia and Boston University and has a BA in political science and
writes for Politico in addition to London’s The Sunday Times.
I do not believe that the U.S. leaving NATO would have catastrophic
repercussions since NATO has only exercised Article 5 (requires member states
to come to the aid of any member state subject to an armed attack) once and
that was due to the events that took place on September 11, 2001. The government
spends just under $500 million annually on NATO which could be put to much
better use if we put that money towards our struggling citizens or injured
veterans and would directly benefit our national government. I think our allies
such praise us if anything for refocusing our budget on what matters most. If
you are a medic in the army, the first thing that they teach you is if you and
your squad are injured, you first take care of your injuries as this is the
only way to help out your teammates. We can apply that same logic to our
government, it is clear that we have domestic issues that must first be resolved
before we can think about helping other counties.
