Joe Doakes, once of Como Park, emails:

The American government should put the interest of American citizens first, before all other countries. If not America First, then who?

I agree with Thomas Jefferson’s vision of American foreign policy: 

Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.”

 A century ago, Europe got itself into trouble and America bailed them out.  We went back two decades later and did it again.  We’ve been babysitting them ever since. 

True, the NATO treaty does not require Europe to assist us in our Iranian endeavor. But they should.  The missiles launched by Iran could have reached Paris or Bonn but not New York. The oil bottled up in the Strait of Hormuz was headed for them, not us. 

What brings the issue to a head is not their unwillingness to help, but their inability.  The British navy has a dozen operational vessels.  French, Spanish, and Italian air forces claim 400 combat aircraft each, but how many are operational and how many have the legs to reach the Middle East?  How many German tanks?

NATO was formed with eyes East toward Russia but The Fulda Gap is no longer the threat. President Trump is correct that the United States should reconsider its membership in NATO. And then let’s talk about the United Nations.

Joe Doakes

 

Even as NATO’s civilian populations swelled, their militaries shrank to – I’m not kidding – 1/6 of their 1992 size. They shifted their missions to “peacekeeping”, and treated their militaries accordingly – becoming global mall cops.

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Wednesday, April 8th, 2026 at 7:06 am and is filed under War And Peace. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.