NATO - Protecting Our Country for Decades

Thoughts to Share With Your Senators and Congressional Representatives

I always envisioned Conscience of a Whig as a place for more than one author. Today I am happy to introduce the first guest author to grace these premises. My guest, Rick Sanders, is a retired Army Colonel and a retired Department of Defense Senior Executive.

—Denis Kaufman

Write to your Senators and Representative in the House and let them know that our continued support to NATO is critical to maintaining peace and that Russian aggression is unacceptable.

Mr. Elon Musk and Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) recently called for the US to leave NATO, and it’s possibly one of the worst things we could do for our national security.

Since the Soviet Union’s break-up in 1991, Russia has attacked its neighbors – Chechnya (1994, 1999-2000), Georgia (2008), Ukraine (2014 and 2022) to regain territories whose sovereignty it had agreed to respect. It has meddled in the affairs of other states like Estonia and Moldova and elections in Western Europe and the US (the Mueller Report). Vladimir Putin has said he wants to reestablish the Russian Empire - it once included Poland, the Baltic States, Finland, Armenia, Azerbaijan, all of the former Soviet republics.

Despite Putin’s claims that NATO and Ukraine were threatening Russia, neither has ever done so. NATO members bordering Russia requested to join NATO and were not forced. NATO has never had war plans to invade the USSR or now Russia. NATO has always been a defensive alliance and Ukraine never took hostile actions against Russia before it was attacked. Only recently has Ukraine responded against militarily significant targets in Russia. Russia is carrying out an unprovoked war against Ukraine with North Korean and Iranian support, focusing not just on military but on civilian targets. Russia and its allies are all repressive dictatorships and longtime declared foes of the US. Our President’s suggestion that Ukraine should essentially surrender in order to achieve “peace” will only encourage more aggression. The war could end peacefully today if the Russian aggressor were to simply withdraw its forces from Ukrainian sovereign territory.

Thanks to NATO, we have enjoyed 80 years of relative peace in Europe and North America. While some NATO nations do not spend the recommended 2% of GDP target on defense, they provide other services as part of the relationship, e.g., basing US forces without charging us “rent,” and sharing their sensitive intelligence. When the US was attacked on 9/11, the NATO countries under Article 5 its charter came to our aid in defeating al-Qaida in Afghanistan, and our allies sent home their own dead and wounded.

Russia has never helped us but NATO members have. Undermining NATO is not in our national interest. If the US approves Russia re-establishing its empire, Putin will be emboldened to attack NATO countries that were once part of that empire or were subjugated by the Soviets. That, not Ukraine’s defense of itself, could provoke World War III.

The US needs to stay in NATO. It’s in our best interest and is certainly more moral than siding with dictatorships. The Administration’s courting of Russia holds no benefit to America, only to Russia and some greedy billionaires.