Nothing that a US taxpayer cash infusion won’t cure.
by Ted Snider
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/the-growing-fissures-in-nato-unity
Despite the damage done in Ukraine and NATO’s now apparent inability to support Ukraine’s defense against Russia strongly enough, one item in the western win column is the claim that NATO is more unified following the damage done by Donald Trump. Even aside from NATO preparing for the possible consequences of a second Trump term, that win may not be so unequivocal.
Vladimir Putin “thought NATO would fracture and divide. Instead, NATO is more united and more unified than ever—than ever before,” President Joe Biden said on February 21, 2023 and again in Europe on July 13. “I would argue NATO is stronger than it’s ever been,” he said. “President Putin’s war continues to be a strategic failure,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on February 8, 2023. “In fact, that alliance—NATO—is stronger and more united than it’s ever been.”
But fissures have appeared. The smaller NATO powers are mad at the larger ones, as are the middle powers, and the large NATO powers are mad at each other.
The smaller and newer NATO countries have recently raised the divisive question of “whether there are first-rank and second-rank countries in NATO.” “Are we equals or are we not equals?” asked Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas.
The Eastern European members of NATO feel passed over in two ways. First is their lack of representation in the top NATO jobs. The second is the dismissal of their more aggressive stance against Russia and their dismissal of Russian and NATO red lines.
Senior officials in the small Baltic nations of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, which were all once part of the Soviet Union, maintain that the big NATO powers in Western Europe push them off to the side because of their more aggressive position in support of Ukraine against Russia. They complain that the large Western powers “do Russia policy without consulting people who know far more about Russia than [they] do.”
The Eastern European members of NATO have consistently seen themselves as dragging a reluctant, Western-centric NATO into the battle against Russia in defense of Ukraine. The East, led by Poland and the Czech Republic, has much more aggressively pushed for maximally arming Ukraine and dismissing the risk of escalating the war. Poland led the campaign to send tanks and fighter jets to Ukraine. The Czech Republic recently announced that it was on the verge of purchasing 300,000 artillery shells from countries outside of Europe to make up for European Union shortfalls and has said that the EU could obtain half a million more. By percentage of GDP, Estonia is the leading donor to Ukraine with Lithuania third, Latvia fifth, and Poland eighth. That is ahead of the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Germany.
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