Opinion by John Rosenberger, Colonel, USA, Retired
As President Trump and President Putin negotiate a lasting peace between Russia and Ukraine in the weeks ahead, the outcome now is indisputable. We, the U.S. and NATO, lost our proxy war in Ukraine, a war that will go down in history as one of our worst foreign policy disasters, even worse than our ignominious withdrawal from our 20-year war in Afghanistan.
Hundreds of thousands of Russian and Ukrainian soldiers and civilians are dead, and even more are wounded and maimed. We fought to the last Ukrainian soldier, with no skin in the game. Sorrow blankets the land. Ukraine’s infrastructure has been decimated. Russia is substantially stronger economically and militarily, with stronger ties to Iran, North Korea, and China. Sanctions had little if any effect. The economies of Western Europe lie stagnant or contracting, the paucity of their military forces, capabilities, and industries starkly exposed. Political upheaval is in the air across Europe. $183 billion of our U.S. taxpayer money proved a foolish investment, enriching the corrupt Zelensky regime and the U.S. defense industry, and served no purpose other than protracting the war.
Lest we forget, it was all borrowed money increasing annual deficits and the U.S. debt, which now exceeds $36 trillion. Not surprisingly, the war’s political and military pundits are growing silent. The years of utter propaganda and untruthful narrative espoused by U.S. and NATO political elites and think tanks to justify and sustain the war appears for what it was. NATO’s viability and utility have been further diminished, having proved useless for deterring Russia for over a decade, much less demonstrating that its combat equipment and methods of training enable an army to defeat Russian forces on the battlefield. Calls for dissolving NATO and creating a new security arrangement for Europe become louder each passing day. An unbiased, objective look at NATO’s performance as a military organization since 1989 strongly supports the need.
For those who believe NATO is the most effective military alliance in history, I offer a more pragmatic, realistic view based on cold, hard facts. Since the Soviet Union collapsed some 35 years ago, new reasons were forged by the political elites of member nations to justify and sustain NATO’s existence. NATO morphed into an organization far removed from the purpose it was originally formed to achieve and did achieve. Yet, the treaty has never been changed. For example, from March to June 1999, NATO launched an offensive air campaign attacking the armed forces of Serbia over a period of 78 days until Serbia agreed to withdraw from Kosovo and end its conflict with Kosovo Albanians. Politicians of NATO nations, without the direct authorization of the United Nations Security Council, justified this war ostensibly to end and prevent egregious human rights abuses. Article 5 of the treaty was not invoked. It was ignored. Not a single NATO country was attacked by Serbia. Nor has peace been restored. For the past 25 years, some 4,500 NATO soldiers have remained in Kosovo to preserve an unstable peace at immense cost and expense with no end in sight.
Next, consider the war in Afghanistan. NATO assumed command of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan in August 2003. This military operation marked the first deployment of NATO forces outside Europe and North America. By 2006, NATO forces were engaged in intensive combat to defeat Taliban insurgents across the entire nation. All 30 nations of NATO contributed forces to this effort. ISAF continued operations until December 2014, when the U.S. withdrew most of its forces. For these 11 years under NATO command, soldiers suffered under fifteen commanding generals, continual mission turbulence, and conflicting rules of engagement. Many commanders served six months or less. The rest, a little over a year. The Taliban was not destroyed. Just the opposite. On the heels of the U.S.'s humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, followed by the unexpected and rapid collapse of the Afghan National Security Force, Taliban forces stormed across the nation and retook control of Afghanistan. 3,606 NATO soldiers were killed during operations from 2001-2021, and thousands more were grievously wounded: 68% of the casualties were from the U.S, 12% by the United Kingdom, 4.5% by Canada, and the remainder from other NATO nations. The cost was almost $1 trillion, the majority paid by U.S. taxpayers on borrowed money, and it achieved nothing.
Add to this the fact that NATO was unable to deter Russia from invading and seizing Crimea and large portions of eastern Ukraine in 2014. President Putin sensed NATO’s political, economic, and military weakness and rightly judged that NATO would not intervene and engage in direct conflict with Russia. Eight years later, in February 2022, NATO failed to deter Russia from extending its invasion into Ukraine and securing even larger areas of territory in the eastern oblasts of Ukraine and Crimea. Having failed to deter Russia, NATO, led by the Biden administration, without invoking Article 5 of the NATO charter, decided to go to war against Russia in support of President Zelensky’s uncompromising political objective—recover all territory lost to Russia. Without any viable military strategy—demanded by Congress and ignored for two years—or a political objective to achieve other than “to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine”, NATO limited its support to providing combat equipment, ammunition, and military supplies, but placing restrictions on all long-range missile systems that could strike deep into Russia for fear of provoking Russia into using nuclear weapons. NATO provided just enough to sustain the war, but not to win it. NATO nations knew full well their populations would never support the employment of NATO air and ground forces in direct combat against Russia. Instead, NATO decided to fight to the last Ukrainian soldier, with no skin in the game, hence the proxy war that it was.
Let's review the bidding. Based on its performance as a military organization since its founding mission was achieved in 1989, it’s evident that NATO, under U.S. leadership, is anything but the most effective military alliance in history. Granted, it may serve a political purpose, but it has proved inept at the conduct of war and devoid of political and military strategies that brought lasting peace to any conflict it touched. Moreover, the idea that NATO could cobble together one or more army corps, blending forces from 32 nations, speaking as many different languages, all equipped and highly trained to prevail against Russia under the conditions of the Russia-Ukrainian battlefield the past three years, is laughable.
There is no reason the American taxpayer should continue to support a security alliance that no longer serves the purpose for which it was formed in April 1949 nor serves as a deterrent. It's time for European nations to shoulder the burden of their own security and seek different means. No doubt the trans-Atlantic political elites and globalists will be apoplectic, let them. The people of the European nations deserve a security arrangement and military capability far better than NATO has provided. It’s time to turn out the lights.
Colonel (Ret) John D. Rosenberger served 29 years in the U.S. Army as a combined arms warrior and lifelong student of military history and strategy. Among his military assignments, he directed the SACEUR's training program for NATO CJTF HQs and commanded the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, the vaunted OPFOR at the National Training Center. He has written and published extensively on issues related to battlefield leadership, the art of battle command, military readiness, and Joint combined arms training. He recently published op-eds highlighting critical shortfalls in military capabilities in the Pacific. The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of JANUS Research Group, Department of the Army, or the Department of Defense.
