David Sims wrote a well reasoned piece yesterday:
Of Belief and Pragmatism, Self-Interest and NATO.
"We have no eternal allies and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are perpetual and eternal and those interests it is our duty to follow."
Lord Palmerston, 1848
Correct. And it is time for America to do its duty and follow its interests not for our good alone, but for the good of the world. Because the game has changed and America’s old teammates are woefully unable to play the new one. We’ve gone from a battle of pragmatism to a battle of belief, and belief is one thing Western Europe does not have. Whereas we are still the city on a hill.
We have all the interest in maintaining military “alliances” with the likes of France, Germany and Belgium that a sprinter does wearing an overcoat. NATO was always ever formed for one purpose and one purpose only – to repel a post-World War II invasion of Communists in Western Europe.
As one wag put it, its purpose was to keep “Russia out, Germany down and America in.”
Nobody needs keep Russia out of anything anymore, and EU bureaucracy is doing a far better job keeping Germany down than any army could. Hence there is no reason for America to be in. Hence no reason for NATO.
Posted by feste at March 1, 2003 10:55 AMUm, what's the "permalink" link do?
I would click on it, but I am a-skeerd it might eat my 'puter or sumpun.
:)
Good question! It is a link to each entry in the blog, it enable others to create a link back to this entry in the archives.
weblog software assigns each entry an unique file name so they can be retrieved, sorted, edited, closed or opened from the blog archive directory by the blog management tool.
Blog designers took advantage of this feature to create a simple cross-blog linking tool.
Clicking on the permalink of this entry for example, will simply open the archived version of the entry.
It won't eat your 'puter, your lunch mebbe. *G*
Thankee. I feel much better now.
Now, got any hot investment tips?
:)