The vital need for EATING, POTATO

This blog post is a brief tangent from my personal life to discuss what I'm actually learning at the John C Whitehead School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University. Not that I learned any of this in school, per se, but it's the type of thing I feel like I should be learning and/or discussing in school. This post is actually the result of a conversation with my father.

Last week, a very important birthday occurred. (Look, it's an attention getting device! Doesn't it make you want to read on to find out whose birthday occurred, and why it's important, and what all of this means? I'm practicing my newspaper writing skills; I'm thinking about trying to write for a paper or two next year on campus to boost my activity points since apparently you have to be involved in at least TWO clubs, instead of just one, to get full priority points for housing. Anyway...) The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO to its friends, turned 60 years old. NATO is widely regarded to be one of the most important and successful military alliances in history, allowing the United States to reinforce the defense of Western Europe against the Soviet Union during the Cold War (if this were a research paper I'd give you a link or a footnote here. Since it's a newspaper article, I can just make these unsubstantiated claims. This could just be my opinion, for all you know). In fact, NATO was so successful that it never had to be used (the Soviets never attacked Western Europe), which is the hallmark of any strategy based on deterrence. The Soviet Union collapsed, the Berlin wall fell, and the principle reason for NATO's existence ceased to, well, exist.

However, NATO didn't go away with the fall of the Soviet Union. Though primarily a defensive alliance, in the 1990s and now 2000s NATO has expanded across Europe, first taking in Central and Central-Eastern European countries like Poland and the Czech Republic before expanding even further Eastward to countries like Romania and Bulgaria. Many US policy analysts wanted to use NATO as a tool for the military integration of Europe with the US at the head, and many countries in the former Soviet Union wanted to join to protect themselves from a Russia many still did not trust (it's another unsubstantiated claim, but you trust me, right?).

While there was a rational reason to expand NATO, as well as a rational reason for Eastern European countries to want to be included, Russia has not taken kindly to what it views as US intervention and meddling in its perceived sphere of influence. Last year, after Ukrainian and Georgian entry into NATO was debated among NATO members, Russia and Georgia got into a war highlighting Russian tension with the idea of continued Western expansion right up to its borders. This event caused some in the alliance to question the wisdom of having a "mutual defense pact" (an attack on one is an attack on all) with a small country right on the Russian border with a lot of unresolved ethnic problems and border disputes since the fall of the USSR. Is it in America's best interests to pledge to fight Russia over Tbilisi?

Further cracks in the alliance have appeared as a result of the war in Afghanistan. While the members of NATO, for the first time, invoked the mutual defense pact after the 9/11 attacks, it has been difficult for the United States to get its European allies to shoulder what the US views as their share of the burden in the Afghanistan conflict. Meanwhile, it is arguable US forces still deployed in Germany could be of much better use in Afghanistan, or elsewhere around the world. Much like General Motors (I stole this comparison from the internet), NATO is an organization that has stood the test of time, but now needs real changes in order to remain viable in a changing world.

In recent years, NATO has been used to essentially allow Europe to free-ride on the United States, who have essentially been paying for Europe's defense. While there is still the need for protection against Russia, and the need to integrate Eastern European countries into the broader European community, a US-led NATO is not the appropriate organization. In the present time Europe is more than capable of defending itself without US assistance against Russia should the need arise, because Europe is not the war torn Europe of the early 1950s and Russia is not the Soviet Union. The United States also has a vital need for troops currently stationed in Europe to be available to be deployed in other areas around the world with both troops and funds in short supply. Additionally, the European Union has been a great uniting force for Europe, and increases economic instead of military ties, allowing for Eastern European countries to be included while being much less threatening to Russia and performing the task of European integration much better than NATO probably ever could in its present form.

Therefore, the United States should suggest a fundamental restructuring of NATO into a new European Defense organization without US involvement. This organization could be called the European-Asian Treaty Institution for Nominal Governance (EATING), and would allow Europe (and Turkey, thus "Asian") to provide for a combined defense force for the continent against any possible Russian aggression. The United States should then, with other major allies the world over, form an alliance not based on geography but based on the shared values of liberal democracy. This alliance would include countries like the United States, India, Japan, Poland, Australia, Canada, Israel, and the UK and pledge itself to the defense of democratic values the world over, called the Peace in Our Time Alliance Treaty Organization (POTATO). Through EATING and POTATO, both Europe's defense will have been secured without burdening the United States, freeing up US troops to enter into a new global alliance uniting members of liberal democracies dedicated to preserving and protecting that form of government worldwide.

I hereby call on the world to begin EATING and POTATO as soon as possible.

(By the way, despite the ridiculousness of the names I've come up with for the sole purpose of making my title look funny, I really think this idea has some merits. It'll probably never happen due to institutional inertia, but we can dream, right? At least, that's what I think.)