NATO Theatrics and its Russian Pantomime Villain

Strategic Culture

The NATO summit this week began with US President Donald Trump berating the European members in particular for “free loading” on American military power.

There were even reports of Trump warning the other 28 members of the military bloc that he was ready to withdraw US forces from the nearly 70-year-old alliance if they did not stump up vastly more financial contributions.

It sounded like a mafia-style shakedown, as Canadian lawyer Christopher Black aptly put it.

By the end of the two-day summit, all appeared to be well again, with Trump suddenly hailing the military alliance as a vital defense organization after all, and America remaining as its lead member.

One can’t help feeling that the display of American hectoring was all a show of theatrics. As soon as the European members acquiesced to the US president’s demands for increasing military spending, the military club was all one big happy family again. Or so it seems.

Befitting the theatrics was the tedious ploy of once again using Russia as a pantomime villain.

Russia’s foreign ministry condemned the NATO characterization of Russia as a security threat as a pretext for still more escalation of offensive military power on its borders. Moscow poured scorn on NATO claims that it is a “defensive” organization, when it is in fact building ever-more offensive power on Russia’s Western flank. 

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