A conversation with the Cato Institute’s Ted Galen Carpenter

Talk of NATO as past its sell-by date began thirty years ago, with the end of the Cold War and the collapse of NATO’s fifty-year adversary, the Warsaw Pact. Strong U.S. advocates of the western alliance agreed with the summary view of the late republican Senator Richard Lugar: NATO—”Out of area or out of business”. And NATO did, indeed, move decisively “out of area”: Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq and Syria are a far cry from the north Atlantic, and few if any of these posed an immediate threat to NATO’s historic territory.

What could possibly go wrong?

Toward a war of attrition? Or major power war?

In Davos and beyond, NATO’s upbeat narrative plays like a broken record, while on the ground, Russia is stacking up wins that could sink the Atlantic order.

There have been several calls for Ukraine to give up territory to Russia in the last week and get a quick peace, starting with French President Emmanuel Macron, then an op-ed in the NYT “The War in Ukraine Is Getting Complicated, and America Isn’t Ready”, published on May 19, and now Henry Kissinger speaking at Davos yesterday.

A number of think tank scholars and former US officials question if the decision to join was a wise one

Your friend is taking a taxi to a job. It’s too big a job for him, so you offer to go along to help. You pay the fare and bring along the right tools for him to use. Just after you set out, though, you order the taxi driver to stop and redirect him from your friend’s job site to a destination of your own. Whose ride is it now? Whose job is it now?

One supposedly crucial and unfortunate feature separating Ukraine from formal members of NATO is that Kyiv does not have a security guarantee under Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty.

Kiev is Losing Stuff Faster than the West can Send it