NATO - why bother?

What is NATO for?

I know what it was founded for. The defeat of the USSR. The USSR no longer exists. The old Warsaw pact is dissolved.

When that occurred, why was NATO not disbanded?

There were a few Europeans who felt it was important 'to keep America engaged in Europe'.

There were a few Americans who though it was important 'to maintain America's footprint in Europe'.

But really, why?

I am not advocating being unfriendly to the Americans in any way. But why would anyone want troops from another country deployed in their own country? There is only one reason, to repel a threat.

That was why we had NATO, to repel a threat. The threat of the Soviet Union. As noted above, that threat is now extinct.

The military is a government department. Much like any other. The only real difference between the military and other government departments is the political right loves the military and hates other government departments, while the political left is more suspicious of the military than of other government departments.

In this it displays some similarity with the police.

NATO was a sort of supranational governmental department, dominated by the US, but with significant contributions from others. As such NATO was, and remains, a bureaucracy. Soldiers are a certain sort of bureaucrat. This is particularly true of officers. They are, in many ways, the archetypal bureaucrat.

They believe the world would fall apart without them.

NATO, like any other bureaucracy, eventually directed itself to its own benefit. To self preservation. To really answer the question 'What is NATO for' one must only read Ludwig von Mises book, Bureaucracy - http://mises.org/etexts/mises/bureaucracy.asp

In many ways NATO is the prime example of bureaucracy at its worst. Having achieved the objective, NATO should have disbanded. But instead of the 'peace dividend' promised by George Bush the elder at the end of the cold war, NATO sought a new reason for its existence. It went into full self preservation mode. Compromising the peace it had helped secure by inviting former Warsaw Pact countries to join.

Eventually NATO would find a new reason to exist. The war on terror. I sometimes wonder if, without the bureaucratic muscle that NATO provided, if the 'hawks' that hate government but love the military would not have found it a little more difficult to engineer the war on Iraq and the war on terror.

Nevertheless, as the troops have now left Iraq, and will soon leave Afghanistan, it is time once again for Western Nations to review their defensive posture. We do so in a significantly different economic environment.

Whatever the priority of Obama and America, let us be clear, China represents no military threat to any European nation.

We may seek alliance with America. We do not need the bureaucracy of NATO. And we cannot afford the luxury. Time to close it down.