Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos.
Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal.
Once again, NATO is in crisis. It seems like this is happening every three or four years. It predates and will postdate Trump. We are engaged in a bombing campaign to disarm the Iranian theocracy that, for 47 years, has killed Americans in embassies and military installations.
It supplies the terrorists of Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis. It funds and subsidizes terrorists in Europe, tried to kill President [Donald] Trump—I could go on forever.
So we decided enough is enough, because we felt that their ballistic missiles had a range that could harm Europe and soon us, and that was proven by its launching of two missiles toward Diego Garcia Islands in the Indian Ocean.
And what was the result of our NATO allies when we said, “We don’t have to do it, we’ll do the heavy lifting along with Israel, you don’t have to do anything. I know we helped you in Ukraine. I know we helped you in Serbia. I know we helped you, French, in Chad. I know we helped you, British, when you went to the Falklands on that long adventure and you needed fuel and reconnaissance and resupplies and Tomahawks.
“We know all that, but we’re not asking that. All we want to do is land at the bases that we share with you on your soil under NATO.” So Spain said, “Nope, can’t do it. You can’t fly through our airspace.” We said, “Well, maybe if we’re going from our base in Britain, we’ll go across France.”
Nope, can’t do that either.
“Well, how about when our bombers want to refuel in Italy?” No, you can’t do that. Can’t do that. “Well, how about Diego Garcia? We’ve used that before.” And Mr. [Keir] Starmer, “not our war, not our war.”
I think somebody should have said the Falklands were not our war either. And 1939, 1940 it wasn’t our war either in 1941, 1942 but we came over there. But nevertheless, that was what they wanted to do.
So the question is, what do we do? Well, we’ve almost finished the campaign in Iran. Apparently, we didn’t need those bases, because we’re still supplying them very well with bases we do have access to.
The Greeks have been wonderful. There’s a NATO base at Souda Bay, Crete, and they’re helping repair the new Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier.
It seems to me that when they say they won’t do it, part of it is they can’t do it.
They have made a series of investments, policies, protocols that have paralyzed that entire continent. They have dreamed of utopia and the good life, and the result is their fertility rate is 1.3. They are shrinking. They are aging. They’re not competitive. So they don’t have the manpower, even though they have a 450 million-person population. Europe is larger than us by 100 million.
And even though they have $22 trillion GDP, which is the third largest, apparently they don’t want to invest that in their own defense or they haven’t so far. They don’t want us to use it when we need it.
They have no energy to speak of. They went whole hog, a complete Green New Deal—solar, wind. We’re not going to use our natural gas reserves. We’re not going to drill for them. We’re going to be dependent on the Middle East and Russia.
So we’re going to put you in an absurd situation, U.S.: You’re going to come over here to Europe to defend us from a potential [Vladimir] Putin invasion while we beg you not to sanction that oil. We need it. So we want to give him money for the oil so he can use the money to buy arms to invade Ukraine and maybe us.
When Trump said it was crazy, they laughed at him.
It’s not just energy. It’s not just fertility. They have no borders, so to speak. They’ve had millions of people coming from a hostile Middle East and Arab world who had no intention of fully integrating, assimilating, and acculturating.
Under their systems of parliamentary democracies, those factions have some veto power over policy. But more importantly, they’re terrified of Islam. They’ve had so many terrorist incidents, they think the only proper way to deal with radical Islam is to appease it, and appeasing it is what they do.
Add all that up. They also have a utopian idea of defense. They had been pretty much unarmed until the invasion of Ukraine, and now they’re trying to catch up.
But when you have a continent that has been unarmed, that is shrinking in population, that has high-priced, limited energy, that has energy shortages, that doesn’t have the confidence to defend its own borders, and that has let in millions of people who don’t like their host, the result is it can’t defend itself.
And therefore, it creates an exegesis to explain that reality. And the exegesis is: We are morally superior to you. We have all these bases. We have the ability. We have fleets. You don’t. And we think, as morally superior people, we don’t want you using them, and we don’t think you’re protecting us on your unilateral crusade.
Yes, the missiles could hit us. Yes, they could be nuclear-tipped if you hadn’t intervened. But that’s not our problem. Our problem is you trying to use these bases for your misadventure in Iran.
Even though the Iran thing is going perfectly well, it’s a month into it. We’ve almost destroyed the war-making potential of Iran.
So what’s the future? Do we get out of NATO? I don’t think we get out of NATO. I think we just let it die on the vine.
We just say, “You know what? We were a full NATO member. Oh, you want us to go into Ukraine again and defend you, but Ukraine’s not a NATO power. There’s no Article 5. This is your problem. This is on your doorstep.”
“Oh, you want us to go into Serbia and the Serbs are acting up again? That’s not a NATO problem either. They’re not attacking any NATO nation. I don’t remember Kosovo being in NATO.”
“Oh, you want to go into Africa to your old colonies and stop the Islamists from taking over Chad? That’s not our problem.”
“Oh, you think that Argentine government might want the Falklands back someday? That’s not our problem.”
That’s our attitude.
Meanwhile, we can have very productive bilateral, coalition-of-the-willing relationships. We can say to the Czechs, we can say to the Poles, we can say to any of them, “You know what, we’d like to have a base in the Azores, Portugal. What do you want to do?
It’s up to you. You want a bilateral agreement, because NATO doesn’t mean much anymore. But we will have a special relationship with you, and we will guarantee your territorial integrity and national security in exchange for a partnership.”
And I think we could find six or seven European powers that together would make ideal alliances with the United States. And then we can just go through the motions with NATO.
Don’t cause any more trouble with them. Just say, “You guys are wonderful, and we’re going to treat you like you treat us. We are one of 32 nations, and we’ll pay one thirty-second of the budget.
We’re tired. You guys have had two big world wars. You’ve been the birthplace of Western military dynamism. Go to it. Re-arm. We’ll just kind of lag along, half-walk, and we’ll tell you we’re a fine NATO power.”
We’ll be kind of like Canada. Canada pays about 1.5%. We’re on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, like Canada. You love Canada. You don’t like us. We’re going to be your Canada.
We will expend as much effort and as much arms and as much intervention as Canada does, and that will be the new NATO.
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