Pat Buchanan's Amen Corner

NATO is an expensive proposition. We maintain dozens of bases and scores of thousands of troops from Norway to the Balkans, from Spain to the Baltic republics, from the Black Sea to the Irish Sea.

What do we get for this? Why do we tax ourselves to defend rich nations who refuse to defend themselves? Is the security of Europe more important to us than to Europe?

In the early years of World Wars I and II, Europeans implored us to come save them from the Germans. We did. In the early Cold War, Europeans welcomed returning GIs who stood guard in the Fulda Gap.

Now, with the threat gone, the gratitude is gone. Now, with their welfare states eating up their wealth, their peoples aging, their cities filling up with militant migrants, they want America to continue defending them, as they sit in moral judgment on how we go about it.

This isn't an alliance. This isn't a partnership. Time to split the blanket. If they won't defend themselves, let them, as weaker nations have done to stronger states down through the ages, pay tribute.

Sixty years after World War II, 15 years after the Cold War, Europe's defense should become Europe's responsibility.

--Pat Buchanan

I've been saying this ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union. NATO was an anti-Soviet alliance to which the Europeans made only minimal contributions. The Soviets are long gone. The alliance should be over, and our troops should come home.

Instead, we added the former satellite countries to this origami tiger of an alliance, in spite of earlier promises to respect Russia's sphere of influence, or security.

Amen, Pat.