Originally Posted by
Sonnabend
Moron.
Oh please, put down the Mad Magazine and grow up, you arrogant jackass. This is common knowledge. What do you imagine the inclusion of Georgia and Ukraine into NATO means if not a deployment of military hardware? NATO isn't a damn social club or mere political alliance.
The neoconservative policy group "U.S. Committee to Expand NATO" (later renamed U.S. Committee on NATO) spearheaded two phases of NATO expansion. The committee’s motto -- "Strengthen America. Secure Europe. Defend Values. Expand NATO" -- aptly sums up the main arguments of those who believe that this cold war institution, established in 1949 to contain the Soviet Union, should continue as an instrument of U.S. military power, despite the expiration of its founding rationale.
Among the U.S. Committee to Expand NATO's first board members were neocon honchos Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and Stephen Hadley. Hadley served in the Bush administration as a national security adviser to Condoleezza Rice. And I'm sure you've heard of Wolfowitz and Perle.
The expansion of NATO is in reality a cover for increased US interventionism in Europe and beyond. It will be a conduit for more unconstitutional US foreign aid and US interference in the internal politics of member nations, especially the new members from the former East. It will result in the further expansion of US military bases, right up to the border of the former Soviet Union.
The neocons promoting NATO expansion increasingly say that Russian opposition doesn't matter, that Russia will have to accept expansion because it has no other options. But that is not the way the Russians see it.
Three possible responses from Russia, in particular, should be noted.
Alliance with China
Over the last few years, Russia's relations with China have been growing warmer. The basis of their rapprochement is their mutual resentment of U.S. policy. NATO expansion is one of the reasons Moscow is drawing closer to Beijing.
Pressure on Neighbors
If NATO expands to the east, Russia will respond by putting pressure on its closest neighbors. A Russian scholar at Moscow's USA and Canada Institute warned that "Russia will meet NATO's advance eastward with its own advance westward."
Repudiation of Arms Control
Russia still possesses a vast nuclear arsenal capable of destroying the United States. Indeed, despite Washington's worries about security threats around the world, that arsenal still represents the only threat to America's national survival, and consequently it still deserves attention as our highest national security priority.
There is also the question of expense. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the cost of NATO expansion over a 15-year period would be $125 billion for new bases, with the United States expected to pay $19 billion. We should not be wasting US tax money and taking on more military obligations expanding NATO. The alliance is a relic of the Cold War, a hold-over from another time, an anachronism. It should be disbanded, the sooner the better.
Once the very picture of success, in one generation America has gone from being the World's largest creditor to its largest debtor. Money we do not have is spent to prop up some foreigners and kill others. $30 billion dollars explicitly has been approved in America's 2009 budget. The White House raised its deficit forecast to a record $1.84 trillion. And Obama recently released details for a $3.6 trillion fiscal-2010 budget. Meanwhile, America's aging infrastructure weakens ever more under the groaning increased demands of out-of-control population fueled by illegal immigration and its literal offspring. Roads, bridges, New Orleans sea levees and thousands of other public works become obsolete, unsafe and generally inadequate. America's money goes to war, expanding NATO, foreign aid, etc. but not to America's basic needs.
http://www.armedforces-int.com/news/...f-cold-war.asp
http://www.eagleforum.org/column/199.../97-09-03.html
