Blog 3 Assignement

    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.