Keeping the US in, the Russians out and the EU down?

When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes

It's a nice name for a dog.

You can't be me, I'm taken

... NATO is for fighting the wars that are sparked by reckless US military adventurism.

Or was the question about the legitimate rationale for NATO as opposed to the empirical regularity?

AHA ... if it was about the rationale, that would be to anchor a cordon sanitaire around the Soviet Union. That rationale was more than a little thread-bare by the 70's, of course, and with the collapse of the Soviet Union, no longer exists. However, if NATO is rolled up, then the ratio of comfortable to sucky postings in the US global base network will tilt even further toward sucky, and further there will be a serious risk that a majority of US foreign policy will slip from the hands of the Pentagon back to the State Department. So NATO is also there to prevent those things happening.


I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

The purpose of NATO is to provide western dictators with a rogue armed force that is not directly responsible to any democratically elected body, and thus can be used to circumvent legal restrictions on the use of military power imposed by legitimately elected governments. Unlike the forces of the US, the UK or other governments, or even those of the UN, it is not directly subject to any oversight by civilians, and, perhaps more significantly, it is not subject to any judicial authority. So NATO troops can commit any crime, any violation of the Geneva accords, anything at all, and there is no way to prosecute them or to institute due process. It's a dictator's wet dream, an army they can use without having to account for their actions to any government or citizens.