Paul J. Saunders
As the North Atlantic Treaty Organization conducts its seventy-fifth-anniversary summit in Washington, Americans increasingly wonder about the value of U.S. alliances. Some officials and pundits dismiss such questions as isolationism and either implicitly or explicitly criticize the questioners. Others (including some U.S. allies) seek to prove that America’s alliances are “worth it” with reams of data. Neither chiding nor charts will likely build public support. Instead, U.S. leaders must explain what our allies can do for America today and in the future—and why that matters.
During the three decades following the end of the Cold War, America’s leaders largely failed to define the purpose of U.S. alliances in a simple and straightforward manner. Before 1991, NATO’s purpose was clear: to deter and, if necessary, to defend against and ultimately defeat a Soviet invasion of Europe. After 1991, NATO’s goals included a confusing mixture of extraterritorial peacemaking, counterterrorism, and social work combined with an apparent desire to expand its territorial limits. While America’s allies contributed importantly to this, America’s citizens grew distant from and eventually skeptical toward much if not most of it.
Underlying this is the reality that U.S. leaders failed to define a vision for American foreign policy or U.S. international leadership that Americans were prepared to support. The American wars in Afghanistan and Iraq—better known for their cost in irreplaceable lives, money, and leadership attention than for their advancement of U.S. interests—soured Americans on international activism.
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