{"id":2816,"date":"2026-07-11T13:06:49","date_gmt":"2026-07-11T13:06:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/interstatelogisticshubs.com\/?p=2816"},"modified":"2026-07-11T13:06:49","modified_gmt":"2026-07-11T13:06:49","slug":"natos-last-stand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/interstatelogisticshubs.com\/?p=2816","title":{"rendered":"NATO\u2019s last stand?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Critics may be misreading the recent NATO summit.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

It looks to them as if the U.S. is unilaterally siding with Europe against Russia.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read more A resistance judge gets sentenced<\/a><\/p>\n

President Trump is smarter: he knows who has the winning hand, and his direct communications with his peers, Xi and Putin, are not always public.\u00a0<\/p>\n

President Trump’s earliest critical instincts toward the EU and NATO still hold. While the U.S. is currently extending them some diplomatic courtesy and limited support, Europe is ultimately surrounded on all sides by powers that make it irrelevant in global influence terms.\u00a0\u00a0Europe has put itself into this predicament, due to its own domestic economic decline from bad policy choices.\u00a0 It is using war as a way to revive its fortunes.\u00a0 Its odds are long.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The EU is surrounded economically by the U.S. to the west; by Russia and China to the east, by a vast Arctic territory to the north that it cannot control, and by India and a rising Middle East power, Israel, to the south. Europe has no strategic maneuvering room. It has limited prospects to reemerge as a serious power, and NATO is long past relevancy, and solvency.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Since his first term, President Trump has been right about Russia, and NATO.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Being \u201cright\u201d means understanding Russia\u2019s long-term economic and trade importance, and appreciating its military prowess. Along with China and the U.S., it makes up the superpower triad. Being right also means he understands that the days are numbered for the EU and NATO, and that the world has changed without them.<\/p>\n

After the Anchorage meeting\u00a0with President Trump,\u00a0President Putin invited his counterpart\u00a0to Moscow: Trump’s\u00a0guarded reply was a reminder that productive relations may be welcome by both leaders, but each is also operating in and surrounded by a complex defense and foreign affairs tradition that doesn\u2019t trust the other side.\u00a0\u00a0Some have called this the \u201ccrucible of belief,\u201d and past experience is hard to overcome. Change will happen slowly.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Europe is part of that shared Eurasian landmass, and its security, but \u201cEurope\u201d is not a unified, single country.\u00a0\u00a0Even within its own limited Western sphere, it has been a region constantly engaged in rivalry and war.\u00a0\u00a0There was a period after Napoleon \u2014 roughly a hundred years \u2014 where relative peace was enjoyed.\u00a0\u00a0But the 20th century has been just the opposite: a nearly unbroken chain of war \u2014 regional, revolutionary, world, and cold \u2014 and now, a new 21st century war is increasingly seen as inevitable.<\/p>\n

There are many political, social, and institutional explanations, but economic decline is at the heart of why the EU is determined to provoke Russia<\/em> (and why it is pleading before the U.S.).<\/p>\n

If Germany, France and the U.K.\u00a0were strongly led, however, with robust domestic industrial growth, controlled borders via immigration, and with less external energy dependence, if not facing domestic energy bankruptcy, such a conflict would not be necessary, or given any serious consideration.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In recent history, one only has to review Angela Merkel\u2019s disastrous \u201cgreen energy\u201d policy, deindustrialization, open borders, and the idling of German nuclear power, as a strong explanation.\u00a0\u00a0She fell completely for naive progressive ideology which asserts that oil no longer matters.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

But for President Trump, the U.S. was going down the same path.<\/p>\n

France and the U.K.\u00a0are just as bad in their string of weak leaders, uncontrolled borders, domestic violence from cultures foreign to their own, and deindustrialization and outsourcing. It is little wonder that Europe\u2019s \u201cleaders\u201d are now economically trapped, and are turning to war as a desperate form of economic recovery.<\/p>\n

Read more Between Iran and a hard place<\/a><\/p>\n

NATO\u2019s putative head, Mark Rutte, was recently in the White House, pitching for war and U.S. financial backing, with slides and charts that looked more like a failed business recovery plan.\u00a0\u00a0The old saying \u201cbe careful what you ask for\u201d may be relevant, as NATO is functioning as a proxy for Western Europe, and looking to the U.S. as its pre-bankruptcy sponsor.\u00a0\u00a0President Trump has seen this before.<\/p>\n

There are obviously many other interests and players driving this strategy, but German-French-British decline may be the largest factor. Scandinavia is somewhat immune, especially Norway with its natural resources and capital, but it is susceptible to European political and policy contamination.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Economic historian Walt Rostow, a White House national security advisor to U.S. presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson, provided a powerful economic model that goes a long way to partly explain why Eurasia, and Europe, have always been unstable and in conflict.\u00a0\u00a0His \u201cThe Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto,\u201d maps how countries grow in relative stages of maturity.<\/p>\n

But it also predicts<\/em> how countries will turn to war when those stages are challenged, interrupted, or allowed through poor leadership, or state interference, to stagnate or backslide.Europe has slid backwards from an advanced industrial and colonial power, to an effective open border welfare state, led by a weak political class with no plans, ideas, commitment, or national loyalties.<\/p>\n

Russia\u2019s Kremlin has recently announced that its Special Military Operation in Ukraine has been converted to formal war.\u00a0\u00a0While predicting its development is problematic, Russia’s power advantage is so overwhelming that NATO can only been seen as engaging in effective suicide.\u00a0\u00a0Given Europe\u2019s cultural tendency to existentialist gloom, perhaps it is understandable.<\/p>\n

When war finally stops, as it must, it usually results in new borders, relationships, alliances, and deals being formed.\u00a0\u00a0NATO and Europe seem to be counting on the chaos of war as a path out of their own weakness<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The U.S. may lend some technical military support to them as a simple matter of arms sales, but this may be their own self-inflicted, poisoned chalice.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And in the end, the U.S., Russia, and China will simply resume their global dominance and power alliance. The EU will likely collapse or shrink; NATO will finally be decommissioned, and the old Atlantic Alliance will bypass Europe and align economically with Eurasia\u2019s east and south \u2014\u00a0because that is where the power is<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

That is what the stages of growth predict.<\/p>\n

The EU is also going to be further eclipsed commercially and militarily and by a rising Israel-dominated Middle East, because they know what they want, they have a plan, and they know how to fight.\u00a0\u00a0European bureaucrats like Rutte, Macron, Merz, and von der Leyen do not<\/em>, and face an interesting fate when they finally realize that this battle is likely their last political stand.<\/p>\n

The citizens of Europe may be relieved.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Matthew G. Andersson is a former aerospace CEO and law and policy author.\u00a0 He has worked in Russia and Europe on commercial joint ventures and regulatory policy, and has testified before the US Senate. He is a graduate of the University of Chicago and University of Texas at Austin where he worked with economist and White House national security advisor W.W. Rostow at the LBJ School of Public Affairs.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Read more An American mullah calls for Jihad<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Critics may be misreading the recent NATO summit.\u00a0\u00a0 It looks to them as if the U.S. is unilaterally siding with Europe against Russia.\u00a0\u00a0 Read more A resistance judge gets sentenced President Trump is smarter: he knows who has the winning hand, and his direct communications with his peers, Xi and Putin, are not always public.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2815,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,1140],"tags":[1141],"class_list":["post-2816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-foreign-policy","category-nato","tag-related-topics-nato-war"],"yoast_head":"\nNATO\u2019s last stand? - Interstate Logistics Hub<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/interstatelogisticshubs.com\/?p=2816\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"NATO\u2019s last stand? 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