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Comment by SpicyLemonZest | Hacker News Reader

The US hasn't withdrawn from any of its military alliances, and thus far has expressed no plans to do so.

I feel like this is where a lot of NATO commentary gets bogged down. There's a large group of people, conventionally referred to in US media as "the blob" (https://www.vox.com/22153765/joe-biden-foreign-policy-team-r...), who believe that the United States has an affirmative duty to engage in lots of global military interventions above and beyond the actual commitments it's made. I don't think they're lying - people seem to genuinely believe, for example, that the US is betraying NATO by cutting off support for Ukraine when most NATO members would prefer to expand support. But the North Atlantic Treaty simply does not contain a promise to align foreign policy in this way.

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> people seem to genuinely believe, for example, that the US is betraying NATO by not supporting Ukraine

You’re correct in this being incorrect.

The informed concern is in Trump and Musk’s coziness towards Putin. That brings up questions around what, if anything, Trump would do if Putin annexed Latvia.

It does, and it would be wise for the US to take steps to defuse those questions. This is why US troops often (and have continued in the new administration) engage in various celebrations and joint drills with NATO allies; there was a detachment of US troops in an Estonian Independence Day parade late last month, which I'm quite confident will not be happening for Russia Day in June no matter how much US-Russia relations warm.

But reasonable questions about the strength of an alliance aren't the same at all as withdrawal from or betrayal of the alliance.

The NATO treaty doesn't imply in his wording any obligation for a military reaction to an invasion of a member of NATO. There's no penalty to just respond with a strongly worded letter, but there's an expectation an ally will react militarly.

Will your allies trust you any longer if you just follow the letter of the treaty? I don't think they will. More critically, nor will anyone else.

The US have historically positioned themselves as "defenders of democracy" and have multiple times used that positioning actively. It's inevitable for an expectation to be there for them to do just that. The US is free to violate expectations and just follow the letter of the treaties it has, it is a sovereign nation after all, but the surprised and frankly childish "we have no obligation!" reaction to the blowback is more unreasonable than the expectations for its support of Ukraine, particularly in how it has been handled politically.

One of the US's most recent foreign deployments is the Iraq War, which was based on a lie and extraordinarily unpopular among NATO members. I think abandoning Ukraine is very bad, and I agree it's unreasonable to expect Europe to be OK with it, but the US's current position in NATO was never based on a foundation of good behavior or uniform foreign policy alignment.

There was effectively uniform foreign policy between the US and its allies for the last thirty years, even under the first Trump presidency, and this included at least a certain degree of interventionism (first Iraq war, Yugoslavia...) which solidified international institutions (differently from the second Iraq war and Afghanistan, which weakened them).

Even if they didn't agree, EU nations and Canada at least sent their soldiers to die in Iraq and Afghanistan anyway.

Why are you surprised people expect such policy alignment after thirty years of it?

Why are you surprised people consider this a betrayal of what NATO stood for in the past, as a proxy of the democracies of the west? Just because there is no violation of the letter of the treaty?

I'm not sure why you keep saying "surprised". I'm not surprised. But it's not the case that EU nations and Canada sent their soldiers to die in Iraq; France in particular sided with Russia to block the Security Council from authorizing military action, leading to substantial tensions with the US and widespread disapproval from the public on both sides. European demonstrations against the war remain one of the largest mass movements in history.

I don't think it was surprising that the Iraq War led to anti-American sentiment, I don't think it's surprising that the current about-face on Ukraine is leading to anti-American sentiment, and I won't be surprised when it happens again in the 2040s.

> But it's not the case that EU nations and Canada sent their soldiers to die in Iraq

They did, not all of them but many did. On Canada I may be wrong, sure. I believe even Ukraine has KIAs in Iraq.

> France in particular sided with Russia to block the Security Council from authorizing military action, leading to substantial tensions with the US and widespread disapproval from the public on both sides. European demonstrations against the war remain one of the largest mass movements in history.

The Iraq and Afghanistan wars broke the model the US and EU had been trying to push until that moment, alienating the south of the world from it and providing certain countries with a justification for their future actions. France had the right of it in the UN assembly.

People were angry back then for similar reasons they're angry and shocked now, and once again it has to do with expectations.

I also don't believe the Iraq war alone is not really enough to deny the alignment between EU and US foreign policy in the last 30 years or so anyway. You won't have complete agreement with 30 nations involved ever.

> But the North Atlantic Treaty simply does not contain a promise to align foreign policy in this way.

I think this in your original comment highlights your surprise at what those people believe, or at least your not understanding it?

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