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Comment by willcipriano | Hacker News Reader

What use is a mutual defense pact when only one of the parties is capable of defending themselves let alone anyone else? Americans are tired of fighting everyone else's wars. We don't even get respect for it, just comments about how we don't have socialized medicine and are backwards brutes. It's pointless.

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> Americans are tired of fighting everyone else's wars.

Did I miss something, or have the last twenty years have been characterized by the US drawing NATO members into the US's wars?

Good point. It really does seem like the US uses NATO countries as proxies for its global imperialism campaign.

Sounds like everyone involved would be happier just to scrap the thing and go our own way then.

I don't know that that's true. I'd argue that the level of military involvement is roughly proportional to the level of military investment; i.e. the US contributes most of the military power, and also instigates most of the military activity.

The only two times NATO was activated was for Kosovo, and then for 9-11.

In one case it was a european war, and in the other the US was attacked.

I would like to add here that Baltics (along with others) have served their fair share as a buffer against Russian expansion into west for good part of the 20th century by being occupied by Soviets and incorporated into USSR. Who knows how far to the west the Iron Curtain would divide Europe if not for these countries. And they paid with tens of thousands deported to prison camps [1] and decades long crippling of societies and economy under soviets. So I think there is also a little bit of moral obligation of West (incl. US) to support them today.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_deportation

The US had steadfast NATO member backing for what turned out to be a badly conceived Global War on Terror.

> Americans are tired of fighting everyone else's wars.

NATO was formed to fight Russia's expansionism, but for 30 years it's done nothing but fight the USA's wars of choice.