Member-only story
Why NATO Is Finished
Forget the journalistic babble; the facts tell a different story
The generic feel-good narrative promulgated by news media in the West is that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has galvanized NATO and resulted in Western nations banding together to send aid to plucky Ukraine so that it can defend itself against the barbaric Russian hordes.
Like far too many narratives fabricated by the mass media in order to grab and monetize fickle eyeballs, this is both absurdly simplistic and wildly misleading.
So let’s look at the facts.
What NATO really did in 2022 was demonstrate a total lack of cohesion and instead a commitment to abject indecisiveness. This is because NATO is not a monolithic organization but in reality merely a loose collection of sovereign nations that disagree wildly on nearly every geopolitical topic. NATO also lacks any mechanism for imposing discipline, without which command and control is rendered impossible. This is why Hungary and Turkey (both NATO members) regularly flaunt NATO strategic interests and instead act to assist geopolitical adversaries.
The USA, NATO’s key member, assumed Kyiv would quickly fall and famously offered Zelensky not military aid but a ride out of town. The mindless British PM at the time (Fat Boris) claimed on the eve of the invasion that the invasion was “an impossibility.” The French, post-invasion, were focused almost entirely on avoiding any humiliation of Russia’s dictator, and in Hungary Orban was overtly offering assistance to the Kremlin. Much of Europe sat on the fence, unwilling to take sides, though Austria continues to seem quite pro-Russian thanks to the large number of wealthy Russians who’ve bought property and parked some of their billions in that country.
Even after Ukraine demonstrated iron resolve and pushed the Russian horde back from Kyiv, NATO continued to prevaricate and dither. Germany famously refused to send anything more than a few helmets and some medical kit. The Biden administration in the USA, terrified of acting decisively lest Republican politicians should exploit the situation (which they obviously were going to do anyway) continued to refuse meaningful assistance. NATO continued to be totally irrelevant even though war was now on Europe’s doorstep.
