Ron Paul Liberty Report - Weekly Update --- It All Comes Back to NATO
Aired: 2022-03-04
Duration: 04:27


=== NATO's Purpose Explored (04:24) ===

[00:00:03]  Hello everybody and thank you for tuning in to the weekly report.
[00:00:07]  When the Bush administration announced in 2008 that Ukraine and Georgia would be eligible for NATO membership, I knew it was a terrible idea.
[00:00:18]  Nearly two decades after the end of both the Warsaw Pact and the Cold War, expanding NATO made no sense.
[00:00:27]  NATO itself made no sense.
[00:00:30]  Explaining my no vote on a bill to endorse the expansion, I said at the time, NATO is an organization whose purpose ended with the end of the Warsaw Pact.
[00:00:40]  This current round of NATO expansion is a political reward to governments in Georgia and Ukraine that came to power as a result of U.S.-supported revolutions, the so-called Orange Revolution and the Rose Revolution.
[00:00:57]  Providing U.S. military guarantees to Ukraine and Georgia can only further strain our military.
[00:01:04]  This NATO expansion may well involve the U.S. military in conflicts unrelated to our national interests.
[00:01:12]  Unfortunately, as we have seen this past week, my fears have come true.
[00:01:18]  One does not need to approve of Russia's military actions to analyze its stated motivation.
[00:01:24]  NATO membership for Ukraine was a red line it was not willing to cross.
[00:01:30]  As we find ourselves at risk of a terrible escalation, we should remind ourselves that it didn't have to happen this way.
[00:01:38]  There was no advantage to the United States to expand and threaten to expand NATO to Russia's doorstep.
[00:01:46]  There is no way to argue that we are any way safer for it.
[00:01:51]  NATO itself was a huge mistake.
[00:01:54]  When in 1949 the Senate initially voted on the NATO treaty, Senator Robert Taft, known as Mr. Republican, gave an excellent speech on why he voted against creating NATO.
[00:02:11]  Explaining his no vote, Taft said, quote, the treaty is a part of a much larger program by which we arm all these nations against Russia.
[00:02:22]  A joint military program has already been made.
[00:02:26]  It thus becomes an offensive and defensive military alliance against Russia.
[00:02:32]  I believe our foreign policy should be aimed primarily at security and peace, and I believe such an alliance is more likely to produce war than peace.
[00:02:45]  Taft continued, if we undertake to arm all the nations around Russia and Russia sees itself ringed about gradually by so-called defensive arms from Norway and Denmark to Turkey and Greece, it may form a different opinion.
[00:03:04]  It may decide that the arming of Western Europe, regardless of its present purpose, looks to an attack upon Russia.
[00:03:12]  Its view may be unreasonable, and I think it is, but from the Russian standpoint, it may not seem unreasonable.
[00:03:21]  They may well decide that if war is the certain result, that war might better occur now rather than the arming of Europe is completed.
[00:03:33]  How right he was.
[00:03:35]  NATO went off the rails long before 2008, however.
[00:03:39]  The North Atlantic Treaty was signed on April 4th, 1949.
[00:03:44]  And by the start of the Korean War, just over a year later, NATO was very much involved in the military operation of the war in Asia, not Europe.
[00:03:56]  NATO's purpose was stated to be guarantee the safety and freedom of its members by political and military means.
[00:04:05]  It is a job not well done.
[00:04:08]  I believe as strongly today as I did back in my 2008 House Floor speech, NATO should be disbanded, not expanded.
[00:04:19]  In the meantime, expansion should be off the table.
[00:04:23]  The risks do now outweigh the rewards.