Writing in
The National Interest the Cato Institute’s Justin
Logan asks whether Estonia would be worth a war and whether the
existence of an alliance like NATO creates any interest that would
be worth fighting for.
Unlike Ukraine, Estonia is a member of NATO, the military
alliance made of up 28 countries that was formed in part as an
anti-Soviet expansion organization. Article 5 of the North
Atlantic Treaty states that an attack on a member state in Europe
or North America would constitute an attack on each member and that
such an attack would be met with assistance that could include
military force for the attacked party from other NATO
members.
As Logan points out, this sort of alliance made sense in the
wake of the end of World War II, but that there is no risk today of
Moscow dominating Europe today:
The early Cold War rationale was strong. Leaving Germany
vulnerable to the Soviet Union risked allowing Moscow to dominate
Europe. But that’s not going to happen today, with or without NATO.
If Russia annexed all of Ukraine and seamlessly integrated it into
the Russian Federation without a hitch—something that’s not going
to happen—the Russian economy would be about 14 percent larger,
equivalent roughly to that of Italy and Turkey combined.
NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has said that he
would not hesitate to invoke Article 5 if Estonia were attacked,
although as Logan points out, Rasmussen is vague about what exactly
he would do next, saying “ambiguity strengthens the
deterrence.”
As Reason’s Zenon Evans
mentioned earlier today, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in
Europe recently suggested that he may send American troops to NATO
members in Eastern Europe. Russia claims that it does not intend to
invade eastern Ukraine, despite the
large Russian military buildup taking place near the
Ukrainian border.
As Logan points out, the lesson that should be learned from the
ongoing crisis in Ukraine is that it is dangerous to have numerous
military alliances in places where there are no interests that
justify a military engagement:
The lesson is not that Washington should have started World War
III over Ukraine, but rather that there is danger in littering the
globe with alliance commitments in places where there is no
interest that warrants war. This is particularly true when those
countries seem to have beenemboldened by the alliance commitment,
and have politics that reflect the NATO commitment better than they
reflect the nation’s geography or power position. Eventually one or
more of NATO’s bluffs could be called, and a U.S. president could
find himself—or herself—threatening war in a context where it has
no vital interest, and war was never intended or even seriously
considered.
More from Reason on Ukraine here.
from Hit & Run http://ift.tt/1kwsj6g
via IFTTT