The House recently passed a nonbinding resolution 362- 63 : "831 - Calling on the United States Government to uphold the founding democratic principles of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and establish a Center for Democratic Resilience within the headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization." What made social media explode in self-righteous indignation is the fact that the 63 (less than a third) of GOP House members voted against it. The latest immature Dem partisan Twitter hashtag: #PatinsParty.
I am not going to defend or explain Trump'a bizarre obsession with autocratic leaders like Putin, but like I've mentioned to leftist trolls on Twitter, they differed on Syria (Putin backs Assad), and Trump signed Ukraine military aid into law, among other things.
Now Trump's stand on NATO, as I've explained in the past, is complex but consistent. He has felt most of NATO members have been freeloading at the expense of US taxpayers, including Germany. You can see the same considerations in Trump's infamous phone call with Zelensky; Ukraine was not a NATO member, but Trump thought that the US didn't see much of a benefit for all the US had invested in Ukraine. the same freeloading issue he had with most NATO countries.
As I've previously pointed out in tweets and/or posts, Trump's view of NATO is complicated. He favored its continuation, but made it clear members which didn't keep its financial commitment for the common defense should be expelled from NATO. He saw reductions in American troop commitments at NATO bases as a tactic to pressure the freeloaders.
I can't say I can succinctly describe the 63 Republicans who voted against the resolution. Massie, like me, is a libertarian-conservative and no doubt would be targeted as Putin's duped useful idiot. But, unlike me, Massie made his peace with Trump, who nonetheless tried to have him primaried. (Massie threw a roadblock on Trump's COVID-19 relief package.) It's possible many, if not most of the remaining Republicans, were Trumpkins who identified with Trump's "America First" principle (nor consistent with actual policy, dominated by neo-cons like Mattis and Bolton),
I would have voted against the resolution--and no doubt the interventionists would label me as Putin's useful idiot. But really some time back, I identified with Robert Taft, an Old Right non-interventionist, who had opposed the creation of NATO post-WWII as a morally hazardous, provocative anti-USSR intervention. Taft would lose the close 1952 nomination to pro-NATO Eisenhower. There was an agreement in 1990 between the Bush Administration and the Soviet Union (which would formally dissolve the next year) that NATO would not expand eastward beyond a reunified Germany. Nevertheless, NATO expanded after the subsequent collapse of the Warsaw Pact. NATO expanded from 17 to 30 countries, many from the old Warsaw Pact. Russia has consistently opposed expansion of NATO to Ukraine for analogous reasons as the US to oppose missiles in Cuba. In 2019, Zelensky's predecessor Petro Poroshenko signed a Ukraine constitutional amendment committing Ukraine to seek membership in NATO and the EU. There are difficulties amending the Ukraine constitution to establish neutrality, especially under current conditions of martial law, a likely concession to end the war.
I don't really worry about what neo-con trolls think about my position. I've been clear and consistent. Russia has violated the non-aggression principle by unilaterally and without provocation invading Ukraine. Ukraine has a right of self-defense, including supplies of a full array of defensive conventional weapons. I oppose military intervention of the US and NATO in the conflict, including the implementation of a no-fly zone, which could risks a wider European war.
Like the Founding Fathers, I reject meddling in European and other international alliances. This includes NATO and an implicit guarantee for American defense of 30 (or more) nations engaging in potentially provocative policies with other nations We are not the policeman of the world. We are heavily in debt and cannot extend an already unsustainable military footprint. Europe basically needs to address its own common defense; we have no constitutional obligation to provide beyond our own defense and enable undue dependence on American security. In a limited sense Trump was right about the freeloader problem but he himself contributed to our unsustainable defense spending and national debt. Furthermore, his blunt, bullying, confrontational diplomatic style with allies was counterproductive and ineffective.
No matter how progressives put lipstick on a pig. Ukraine has issues, not the poster boy for American-style democracy, with its rock star President Zelensky. I'm not going to repeat Carpenter's critique here, but Ukraine has a dismal record on corruption and civil liberties, especially involving independent parties, media and regime critics. Zelensky has largely sidestepped the far-right Azov Battalion which is linked to his National Guard, which has been linked to atrocities since 2014 by international watch groups and more recently with shooting the knees of Russian POW's, a violation of the Geneva Convention.
So what do I think about the "pro-democracy" theme of the resolution? For one thing, Democrats have been using the spread of American-style democracy as a rationale for foreign intervention since probably as far back as the Wilson Administration.. George W. Bush developed a similar doctrine to justify his version of nation building. Similarly, the Obama Administration used the pretext to intervene in the Arab Spring, including the tragedy of Libya.
There are violations of natural rights under multiple regimes, under differing styles of government, including nuclear power China. We do not support or enable these policies, and we don't have the means or constitutional mandate to resolve issues beyond the scope of our own nation. And the fact is that the US has made its own unholy deals with dictators, autocrats and military regimes in expanding its overseas footprint. Not to mention many autocracies posture as democracies.Don't forget Hitler's rise to power started with an election win.
