Why has NATO been so generally accepted in Europe by almost all the major political parties and especially puzzling, the social democratic ones? Its economic costs, illegal aggressive wars, environmental damage, and the risks of nuclear annihilation would seem to make it a prime platform item. Well-informed political activists are unlikely to believe that an invasion of Switzerland or Denmark is imminent. There are significant anti-NATO movements, such as No to War No to NATO, but so far they haven’t been able to turn the tide. More

In the mid-1990s, I was a professor of international relations at the National War College and a member of the Brookings Institution’s Russian Study Group that held regular off-the-record discussions of key issues.  This was an important time when the leading subject for the study group was the question of expanding the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).  The group had rather high level membership from the National Security Council, the Departments of State and Defense, and the intelligence community, particularly CIA and INR, the intelligence arm of State.  These individuals were for the most part supporters of the absurd idea that we had won the Cold War and there was a mood of triumphalism and exceptionalism that was obvious in their support for NATO expansion. More