Without NATO I think nations of Europe and the Mediterranean would become more militarized.
Would Turkey want nuclear weapons (or just a bigger conventional arsenal) to protect itself from Iran or Israel. Would Greece then need the same to defend against Turkey. Would Poland need a bigger army to protect itself from whatever?
Especially these days with the European Union on the ropes, what guarantees the stability that we need if we want to progress toward our other social goals? Without NATO would we have then a whole bunch of separate bilateral and multi-way alliances? Seems kind of dangerous to me.
NATO is a military expression of western the neo-liberal world order under capitalism. That's appropriate. We might need NATO to counter China during the upcoming decades. Thinking back to the original rational for NATO, to counter the USSR, the same still applies. It guards against a resurgent Russia that might seek to exert influence over weak eastern European states.
If we disband NATO our arms sales to Eastern Europe and Mediterranean states will probably triple. I just think it's a recipe for disaster.
There are good arguments for disbanding NATO but I don't think that article really hit them.
I recall writing a letter on a mechanical typewriter to Pres. George Bush Sr. asking him to work with the international community to stop the ethnic cleansing in former-Yugoslavia. That was with a local Amnesty International chapter. Anybody can find a reason to call anything imperialist aggression. Even if it is imperialism, we are a big empire so it's par for the course. It's not perfect, but it's what we got. Even if we had real socialism in the US, we still live on a planet with other nasty countries and it makes sense to have some alliances for collective security. We could do better than NATO, but it is what we've got for now. This is a rough analogy, but it would be kind of like saying lets disband the police because they commit abuse. Well they do commit abuse, but they are also maintaining order. How about instead we take democratic control of the police and make them do what we want. Similar with NATO.
We can disband NATO when some other arrangement guarantees there won't be conflicts between Greece/Turkey, France/Germany, Germany/Poland, Poland/Russia, etc.
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