On January 7, US president Donald Trump promised to withdraw the US from 35 international organizations and 31 UN agencies:
The Memorandum orders all Executive Departments and Agencies to cease participating in and funding 35 non-United Nations (UN) organizations and 31 UN entities that operate contrary to U.S. national interests, security, economic prosperity, or sovereignty.
Unverified: then the White House deleted the announcement from their website (personal note: I did receive 404 on it for a while).
Correction: announcement is still up or has reappeared. An archived copy is also available in case they change their mind.
The US wasn’t alone and did gather other NATO nations to invade Iraq.
But as to why NATO proper was not used it’s simply Iraq wasn’t a NATO member and the US (though not from lack of trying) couldn’t connect Iraq to 9/11 well enough to justify Article V’s use.
Oh, so there is more than the US’s say-so at play.
It’s almost like it’s a voluntary agreement to coordinate and defend each other. One which doesn’t intrinsically depend on the US in any way, but just happens to have the US as by far the largest member.
It’s voluntary yes but the US isn’t just the largest member but it’s baked into the system the US is in charge.
Think it like the situation with Amazon Web Services. When it shut down it took out roughly 2/3 of the websites with it. Essentially for all intents and purposes the core of the internet was gone and that had a nasty ripple effect.
That’s obstinately what would happen if the US was removed from NATO.
Oh, okay. AWS is actually a good analogy. It’s a huge pillar of the existing infrastructure, and if it was gone it would be a pretty huge, unprecedented crisis. The internet would still come back, though. (Since I’m on all alt platforms already, I actually didn’t notice it was down until I saw it on the news!)
Similarly, NATO would be in a bind, but I have every reason to think the considerable power and common interests of the remaining parties would see it through. One big question I’ve seen mentioned is the American officers that staff parts of it. Either they could keep working there even if the US is not a member, which is possible, or there would be just be a period of interruption to it’s coordination functions while the ranks are refilled. Since Britain and France are nuclear powers, just article 5 is a strong protection already, though.
Yes it would come back but it would be a good long while because we are having to start from the bottom all over again.
That’s the part you seem to not be getting. We are talking a process that would take YEARS to get done, if it would even happen at all.
How much of NATO is actually needed in the short term? The last bit there was kind of going in that direction. Just being a nuclear power that would credibly respond to actions against any member seems like it would provide safety for a few years.
Over the longer term, a coordinated structure to respond to novel threats starts to matter.
Given Russia is looking to take Ukraine and likely the other former Soviet countries and now we have the US is eyeing for the western hemisphere you are going to need NATO as a whole.
As for nuclear deterrence that only works if you are willing to use it. And I doubt France or the UK is willing.
Russia is having trouble fighting just Ukraine + Western weapons. Europe would not have trouble winning (at whatever cost) if it came to it in the near term, NATO or no.
I feel like it should go without saying that the US would not be supporting NATO, if NATO was fighting the US. So, zero days to build back up without them, and they probably blow things up on their way out.
Why? Unless you think none of the nuclear powers are willing. France in particular does not have a reputation for passivity.
Yes Russia is struggling but at the same time Ukraine (despite the efforts) is also not winning. Furthermore the military coordination is done via NATO, so its loss would create problems. Yes it’s not going to be Russian tanks on the streets of Paris, but it will be Russian tanks making a mess All over Eastern Europe.
Obviously yes but also NATO would stop existing. Seriously where within how NATO is structured are you getting that the loss of the US would be a shrug?
Erm because Nukes wipe out whole cities? We are talking literal WMDs here, what of that screams “yeah we totally are willing to be the first to launch a strike.”