Every geopolitical crisis presents a way for the warfare state to justify its expansion.
The Russo-Ukrainian conflict is no exception.
In an episode of the Ron Paul Liberty Report released on April 6, 2022, former Congressman Ron Paul and Ron Paul Institute Executive Director Daniel McAdams discussed new plans by the US government to establish permanent military bases in NATO states that border Russia. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has given Western powers a second wind, now using the fallout from this crisis to justify further militarization.
Army General Mark Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has recently called for new rotational forces in permanent bases in Eastern Europe. Poland, Romania, and the Baltic States are among the NATO member states that Milley believes could be hosting new bases.
Paul said that the number of American troops still in Europe is “shocking.” According to an Axios report released in March, there are roughly 100,000 American troops stationed in Europe.
McAdams said that the Russo-Ukrainian conflict is the best thing “that’s ever happened to NATO since the end of the Cold War.”
Since the Maidan Crisis of 2014, NATO has been training and supplying the Ukrainian military with arms in preparation for an eventual confrontation with Russia. In addition, the CIA has sent operatives to Eastern Ukraine in efforts to reassert Kiev’s grip over the breakaway Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics.
McAdams stressed that this conflict does not advance any US “national interest” and will just bleed the country in terms of manpower and resources. Paul also dropped major historical wisdom about empires spreading “themselves too thinly around the world” by intervening abroad and carrying out quixotic foreign adventures. Instead, Paul proposed that the US do away with its standing army and abandon its debt-financed economic policy
Although Russia’s neighbors have legitimate security concerns, they should look towards cooperating with each other, not bulky alliance structures such as NATO.
A modernized version of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth that could balance against any Russia plots to dominate Eastern Europe while also serving as a check against the West and its increasingly dysfunctional values.
While NATO could potentially be repurposed into a European-centric security system that protects against mass migration from the global south and a resurgent Russia, the US should exit this alliance. This alliance no longer serves the US’s national interests.
