From Defense News, by Matthew Kambrod*, reference the posts above concerning the relevance and role of NATO
* (
Matthew R. Kambrod is a 1962 graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point with a master's degree in international relations from George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Prior to his retirement from the Army in 1987, he was Deputy for Aviation in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Research, Development, and Acquisition, where he had executive oversight of all Army aviation programs in terms of development and procurement of both aircraft and their systems. Earlier tours in the Pentagon included assignments involving the development of policy, doctrine, and requirements related to Army aviation force structure, training, and operational issues.)
https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/...-a-pipe-dream/
Commentary - NATO defending Europe is a pipe dream
.....First, believe this: NATO is no more. The singular, powerful deterrent to Soviet aggression in the ’70s, ’80s and through the first decade of 2000 is factually gone. Clearly, the name is there. Thirty nations subscribe and meet regularly in Brussels, but their collective security —
the very purpose of the alliance — was guaranteed by U.S. military power and U.S. military power alone. To believe otherwise is to believe fiction. That crucial underpinning is now gone.
In Europe, troop strengths under the Obama administration declined by 85 percent since the height of the Cold War, withdrawing combat-ready armor and infantry divisions poised instantly to battle Soviet forces. Anti-armor attack and assault helicopters were removed, to include U.S. Air Force A-10 attack aircraft embedded to counter the ever-increasing tank forces of Soviet armies.
Of equal importance, the key to rapid reinforcement of NATO was strategic airlift capable of inserting troops and weapons systems in a sequence, indisputably bolstering forward-based U.S. combat units. C-5 cargo aircraft, essential to that reinforcement, were halved in operational numbers, and some key C-17 units providing strategic airlift had been inactivated.....
Today, our “real world” deployable ground force for reinforcing NATO consists of very limited
combat-ready brigades, perhaps a single division, leaving Putin in a position to threaten Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania or Poland at will and with total impunity, just as he did when annexing two Georgian provinces in 2009 and Crimea in 2014.
Worth adding is that at one point in time, U.S. military power in Europe could be rapidly deployed to the Middle East and proved a realistic deterrent to Russian maneuvering in that theater and on the African continent. No more, America......
If one were counting on successful diplomatic interaction among NATO nations and Russia, think again.
To believe that successful diplomacy in Europe can ever be conducted unless buttressed by overwhelming military power, with the full understanding by all participants that force will be used if diplomacy fails, would also be fiction. In this context, U.S. diplomacy addressing military issues today has no teeth — little more than a fable, and worthless versus Russian counterparts backed by powerful Russian forces.
NATO, emasculated by the absence of U.S. military power poses no great threat to Vladimir Putin.