Removing sentimentality from NATO: 'The proper attitude to any alliance is to keep a tight focus on the business for which it exists, while being ready to dissolve it without illusion or sentiment, never mind rancor, as situations change'-Codevilla, Nov. 2014

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"The proper attitude to any alliance is to keep a tight focus on the business for which it exists, while being ready to dissolve it without illusion or sentiment, never mind rancor, as situations change... Europeans were becoming mere consumers of American provided security."

Nov. 17, 2014, "Would George Washington Mourn NATO?" Angelo M. Codevilla (click paragraphs below to enlarge)

Celebrating the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as the cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy was an obligatory ritual for two generations of American statesmen. As the decades passed however, mention of it and of “our European allies” has come with decreasing conviction and increasing embarrassment. Few dispute that, today, the alliance’s formalities are a pretense likelier to get its members into trouble than to pull anyone out of it. Civilizational changes have emptied it of substance. Readjusting American strategy to take account of those changes makes far more sense than talking about “revitalizing” or “rebuilding” an alliance on bases that no longer exist.
American statesmen who treated NATO as something of an end in itself erected it into a totem. They would have done well to recall George Washington’s common sense teaching about alliances, namely that, by nature, they are expedients for particular purposes in particular situations. This means that the proper attitude to any alliance is to keep a tight focus on the business for which it exists, while being ready to dissolve it without illusion or sentiment, never mind rancor, as situations change.
- See more at: http://www.libertylawsite.org/2014/11/17/would-george-washington-mourn-nato/#sthash.KHcnZQz9.dpuf

Would George Washington Mourn NATO?

 











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