Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis, USA, Ret., writes in The National Interest that the relationship between the U.S. and NATO needs to change, a need made more pressing by the escalating tensions between Greece and Turkey.
The first step in this process should be for the United States to transition from being the frontline defense of NATO countries to a supporting role. European democracies in the 1950s were poor and destitute. No more. Germany, for example, has the world’s fourth-largest economy. It is more than financially capable of providing the bulk of its own security. U.S. troops, meanwhile, should be redeployed to home bases where they can focus on defending America’s borders and global interests.
Any military alliance system the United States enters into (or stays within) must include reciprocating benefits for both countries and result in a strengthening of U.S. defenses. It should not be a one-way street where America provides the majority of the benefits to other lands and shoulders the majority of the risks of a new war.
This is particularly true for nations across an ocean from us, as most NATO nations are. One exception, if Canada refused to carry its share we could not leave them to their own devices; 3000 miles of undefended shared border makes that clear. I'd be willing to listen to a similar argument for Iceland and Greenland (owned by Denmark). Fortress North America works for me.
Europe can clearly afford its own defense. If it chooses to forgo a defense, relying on "soft power," so be it. At the end of the day, nations which choose national suicide must be allowed to do so.
