The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) will hold meetings in Chicago next week, but the role of the Cold War-era organization has been called into question, particularly with regards to Afghanistan and missile defense.
In fact, not everyone thinks NATO’s presence is necessary at all. On this weekend’s broadcast of “The McLaughlin Group,” conservative commentator Pat Buchanan, author of “Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?“, said that NATO is damaging the United States’ relationship with Russia, which otherwise would be “a natural ally” of the U.S. in modern times.
“What do I think of Putin? I think he’s a Russian nationalist. I think he’s in office because of a feeling that the United States abused its victory in the Cold War. We moved NATO right up in his face. We bombed Serbia. We had a bunch of American advisers go there and help the oligarchs loot the place. John, Russia is a natural ally of the United States and my judgment for this reason — we have two potential adversaries coming, one is Islamic world and the other, China. Russia is, as I say, a natural ally because they have the same adversaries and I agree with Obama. You should make an effort really to befriend or treat these people as equals, and don’t treat them the way we’ve been treating them since the end of the Cold War.”
Later in the segment, Buchanan suggested it was time to do away with the organization.
“Yes, but why did we move NATO up on to his front porch, and which were three Soviet republics — Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia — into NATO itself, and almost bring in Ukraine and Georgia?” he said. “That is right in your face … we’re too far in Eastern Europe. We should have abolished NATO at the end of the Cold War … at the end of the Cold War, sure. It was hope, for what, defending Europe from the Soviet Union, which has been dead for 20 years.”