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#Nato: From #ColdWar to #Ukraine, a #History of the World’s Most Powerful #Alliance


source: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n15/tom-stevenson/ill-suited-to-reality

In 1998, John Lewis Gaddis bemoaned that the decision to admit #Poland, #Hungary and the #Czech Republic was taken with almost no public debate and that ‘with remarkably few exceptions’ historians saw it as ‘ill-conceived, ill-timed and above all ill-suited to the realities of the post-Cold War world’. Enlargement violated the principle of magnanimity in victory, and risked driving #Russia to forge an anti-hegemonic alliance with #China.


....

#Military spending by European states has increased by more than 60 per cent since 2014. Yet G7 meetings are still surpassingly easy for US diplomats to run. Nato is both stronger than ever and just as unsuited to averting the next world #crisis.


#politics #diplomacy #finance #arms #future #USA #security #defense #Europe

in reply to anonymiss

Interesting read.
..."It was also formed at a moment of anomalous American strength and devastating European weakness. Few international military alliances have involved quite so lopsided a balance of power among their members."