Trump Discussed Pulling U.S. From NATO, Aides Say Amid New Concerns Over Russia

[Karpatsky]

This is unacceptable. Withdrawal would lead to the destruction of everything the Western world has fought for since 1918, and even discussing it publicly significantly weakens its coherence.

[Karpatsky]

NATO may protect western 'corporate' interests (whatever that means) by proxy of defending Western interests, but aboveall it is a collective security organization, built to prevent the sort of 'creeping' aggression which caused the Second World War. The fundamental premise is that if powerful countries (like France or the United States) join their own security at the hip to the security of weak nations (like Czechoslovakia or Estonia), then potentially dangerous aggressive nations (such as Germany or Russia) can be effectively deterred from taking even minor aggressive steps. If anyone in this thread thinks for a moment after the examples of Georgia and Ukraine that the people of the Baltic states would be living in relative freedom and prosperity today had NATO been disestablished at the end of the Cold War, they are deluded. Further, if anyone in this thread believes that the cost of stationing barrier troops in Europe to shore up the alliance is not worth the liberty of Europeans or preventing the potential cost of global conflict, they are both deluded and have a seriously misaligned moral sense. The only reasons anyone would have to support U.S. withdrawal from NATO is either a fundamental lack of understanding of the way the international system works or a vested interest in the advancement of Russian autocratic influence in Europe, or both.

[Karpatsky]

Why do any of you think this is a good idea? What benefit does it do to not have allies?

I'll bite. It significantly reduces the possibility of WW3 and/or a nuclear holocaust.

Exactly the opposite, actually. A collapse of NATO would inevitably lead to further Russian aggression in Eastern Europe, which would eventually lead to a point at which world leaders are no longer willing to accept it - whether this is in Warsaw, Berlin, or Paris depends on the leadership in question. At this point, we either return to where we are now (except with a far diminished alliance) or enter global conflict. Deterrence at the margins is the best way to prevent eventual conflict.

[Karpatsky]

Why do any of you think this is a good idea? What benefit does it do to not have allies?

I'll bite. It significantly reduces the possibility of WW3 and/or a nuclear holocaust.

Exactly the opposite, actually. A collapse of NATO would inevitably lead to further Russian aggression in Eastern Europe, which would eventually lead to a point at which world leaders are no longer willing to accept it - whether this is in Warsaw, Berlin, or Paris depends on the leadership in question. At this point, we either return to where we are now (except with a far diminished alliance) or enter global conflict. Deterrence at the margins is the best way to prevent eventual conflict.

Both of Karpatsky's posts (this one and the prior on page 1) are pretty much spot-on.
I think there is a lack of knowledge of International Studies and international relations (including war studies) from some posters in this thread.

I think additionally, many Westerners skeptical of the Western international order are simply ignorant of how good they have it. Both far-rightists who complain about globalism and far-leftists who complain about western-style capitalism rarely understand the fragility and unnaturalness of the status quo and have had any little exposure to the alternatives. I have lived under autocratic governments and in countries where the economic system is much less transparent, rules-based, and internationally mobile than it is in the West.  I have yet to experience a true warzone, though I have been close enough to see crippled men regularly on the streets. The resulting poverty and near-complete inability to obtain even the smallest improvement in one's conditions is simply unimaginable here. (To those dreaming of 'revolution', this is the sort of thing it takes to get 2% of the country's population onto the streets for months at a time in the dead of winter in the hope of obtaining even a slightly less-corrupt and more western-oriented government). Thankfully, I was born with American citizenship, and so had the ability to leave these situations, but many of my family members and my friends were not and are stuck with them.

The Western world has problems both moral and material, this is undeniable, and I am a strong supporter of reforms to improve these. But because we have grown up with it, we take for granted how unusual it is that we live in the level of peace and prosperity that we do, which exists only because of the complexity of the current system which our ancestors built, and which must be constantly maintained to survive. To improve our conditions, we must learn how to make positive changes without sabotaging what progress has already been made. Blaming problems of inequality and violence on one of the largest guarantors of international peace (and via trade, therefore prosperity) is madness, like fixing a leaky roof in a rainstorm by removing the roof.

[Karpatsky]

Yeah I figured people would say it does exatly the opposite.

We could still fight to protect the former Soviet republics without NATO if we wanted to (though I think we shouldn't). But a pact where most of the nuclear superpowers are legally mandated to start fighting because a small nation is attacked is a recipe for world war. It's only safer this way if the deterrence works. It might not.

Deterrence has already failed if we have to make the decision to protect anyone, and the only way to increase the chances of it succeeding are to increase the perceived chance of us making that decision before we have to make it. Russia (or insert literally any other potential aggressor, because it works anyways) does not believe it can win a conventional conflict against the United States. So, it will not attack states it believes the United States will defend (such as Latvia or Turkey), but it will attack states which it does not believe the United States will protect (such as Ukraine and Georgia). Signing treaties increases the chance in Russia's mind that we will choose to defend their victim, and so decreases the probability they will engage in aggression in the first place. The idea of reducing deterrent credibility only works to prevent war in the case that a player will never attack anything you are willing to fight over, even in the absence of your deterrence, which is pretty obviously not the case - Russia does not believe it can defeat us now, but its calculations might be different after you allow it to overrun Estonia, then Turkey, then Western Europe... Failing to deter as early as possible over as small an issue as possible only increases the probability of great power conflict as further aggression is ignored.

I think this gets back to my earlier post about people not understanding how unusual our current level of security is. It's easy to ask now why we should bother defending Estonia, but it wasn't that long ago that essentially hostile forces controlled Cuba. Modern Americans should feel damned lucky that they are able to keep Russian ambitions at bay with so small and distant an instrument as Estonia, rather than having to do so on its own shores.

[Karpatsky]

Russia (or insert literally any other potential aggressor, because it works anyways) does not believe it can win a conventional conflict against the United States.

Now maybe. What if they elect (or "elect") a deranged war monger that thinks s/he can, or doesn't care and wants to expand anyway. It's just too great a risk relative to the potential damage that can be done, including possible extinction.

I think this gets back to my earlier post about people not understanding how unusual our current level of security is. It's easy to ask now why we should bother defending Estonia, but it wasn't that long ago that essentially hostile forces controlled Cuba. Modern Americans should feel damned lucky that they are able to keep Russian ambitions at bay with so small and distant an instrument as Estonia, rather than having to do so on its own shores.

I am very appreciative of the relative peace we have experienced in my lifetime. I'm just trying to think of the  best way of sustaining that for as long as possible. Escalating military alliances is not sustainable because at some point, there's going to be a spark that lights everything up, even if it was a very unlikely spark before it happened.

It is functionally impossible for a group of decision-makers in any country to make the decision to initiate nuclear holocaust because the international community refused to give it land concessions. This would require everyone in the decision-making and implementing line, from the group of people at the top, to the generals acting as intermediaries to the order, to the colonels who might remove the generals by coup, to the security guards in the presidential chamber who could shoot the decision-makers, or any other number of people, to believe that between these two scenarios:

A. Nothing happens.

B. Our country and everyone living in it is annihilated.

B is the preferable option. What is significantly more likely is that an autocratic and ambitious leader would like people to believe that they and everyone else in their line of command is that insane, so the international community will not make the wise decision to prevent their aggression.

You talk about a 'spark' which can light everything up in war - but the archetypal example of this sort of beginning to a global conflict, the First World War, occurred because of a failure of deterrence, not an excess. Austria made the decision to invade Serbia because it believed that Russia would not be willing to defend Serbia were it faced with both Austria and Germany, while Germany made the decision to invade Belgium because it believed that Britain would not intervene to defend Belgium. Were there a strong alliance like NATO between what became the Entente powers, neither of these decisions would have been made and the war would have been prevented or at minimum significantly localized.

This, frankly, is why even saying things like Trump is saying is problematic - weakening the credibility of the deterrent threat makes this sort of mismatch of expectations (and therefore conflict) more likely.

It should have been abolished at the end of the Cold War tbh.

What should have happened with hindsight is that Russia should have been fast-tracked to accession and the alliance should have been reoriented onto containing China. But Western leaders were caught up in the dream of the 'End of History', and by the time they realized it was an illusion, Russia was already back under autocratic, revanchist rule.