#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.

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#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

Tom Stevenson · Ill-Suited to Reality: Nato’s Delusions

The descriptions of Nato by US leaders have often had little to do with the defence of Europe and a lot to do with Nato...

^{Tom Stevenson (London Review of Books)}