Is NATO dying? Walter Russel Mead, leading columnist of the Wall Street Journal, says yes. His opinion is based on the decision of the German government to keep defence spending as low as 1.25% of gross domestic product (GDP) for the next five years.
This decision is not at all driven by fiscal urgency. Germany is expected to have a balanced budget after many years with an annual surplus. It is a clear political choice. Germany prefers to continue its cooperation with Russia on the controversial Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.
NATO and the US are not any longer important to Germany as they used to be. Irritation about President Trump influences German foreign politics. […]
The conclusions of the WSJ columnist are quite cynical. ‘Although political support for NATO is in recession, its bureaucratic structures remain robust. There are battalions of generals, flocks of ambassadors, and armies of paper shufflers who intend to defend their jobs as long as they get paid.
Unintentionally, perhaps, NATO has found a new function: a grand experiment to see how long a bureaucratic structure of cooperation can prolong the existence of an alliance when its key members no longer believe in it’. It looks like the near future of some EU institutions.
With the words ‘in Moscow and Beijing, conclusions are being drawn’, ended Mead his column in the WSJ. Läs artikel