Closing Thought–07Mar19
I was watching an interview on MSNBC of Rep. Moulton (D-Mass) when Trump was in North Korea and he was asked how he would handle NK and its nukes and the pressure that China is exerting in the region…..he stated that he would set up a Pacific NATO to deal with the problem……
A Pacific NATO?
Really?
I got to checking if he was just spouting crap or if there was such a creature……
While Europe’s importance to the United States is declining, Asia figures to continue to grow in importance to the security and stability of the US. The primary reason for this increasing focus on Asia is the incredible rise of Chinese power in recent decades. Should China decide to pursue its ambitions in the region aggressively, it will force the US and its regional allies to react in concert with one another. In fact, China poses a much greater threat to the US’ position in Asia than the Soviet Union ever did in Europe, given the fact that China’s potential economic and military power is much greater than the Soviet Union’s ever was. Moreover, Asia is now the world’s leading economic center, so its stability has an influence on the rest of the world, much as Europe’s stability did a century ago. With arms spending in Asia soaring, and with a number of dangerous flashpoints across the region, this stability is in serious jeopardy.
https://www.isa-world.com/news/
https://isnblog.ethz.ch/uncategorized/pacific-nato
Is a NATO like organization possible for the Pacific region?
John Mearsheimer argues: “There is already substantial evidence that countries like India, Japan, and Russia, as well as smaller powers like Singapore, South Korea, and Vietnam, are worried about China’s ascendancy and are looking for ways to contain it. In the end, they will join an American-led balancing coalition to check China’s rise, much the way Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and eventually China, joined forces with the United States during the Cold War to contain the Soviet Union.”
This is at odds with most analyses which postulate that Asia is not ripe for a NATO style containment block against China. For instance, in summing up the conventional wisdom on the subject, the Council on Foreign Relations’ Stewart Patrick opined last summer that: “Despite its strategic ‘rebalancing’ toward Asia, the United States is unlikely to sponsor a collective defense organization for the Asia-Pacific, for at least three reasons: insufficient solidarity among diverse regional partners, fear of alienating China, and the perceived advantages of bilateral and ad-hoc security arrangements.”
https://thediplomat.com/2014/04/is-an-asian-nato-possible/
Let me add my two cents……
We already have an empire building organization with NATO….do we truly need another for the rest of the world to worry about?
Just another organization that can help the M-IC expand and grow even richer than they are now….and that would make the possibility of further conflicts more possible.
So NO! There is no need for another NATO!