NATO: The Case To Get Out Now, by David Stockman

There’s all sorts of great reasons for the U.S. to get out of NATO. In fact, the arguments for staying in are weak. Inertia is a big one: we’ve been in for a long time; we should stay in, just because. From David Stockman at zerohedge.com:

The case for getting out of NATO encompasses four fundamental propositions:

  • First, the Federal budget has become a self-fueling fiscal doomsday machine, even as the Fed has run out of capacity to monetize the skyrocketing public debt.
  • Second, the only viable starting point for fiscal salvation is slashing the nation’s elephantine Warfare State by at least $500 billion per year.
  • Third, the route to that end is a return to the “no entangling alliance” wisdom of the Founders, which means bringing the Empire Home, closing the 750 US bases abroad, scuttling much of the US Navy and Army and withdrawing from NATO and similar lesser commitments elsewhere.
  • Fourthly, jettisoning NATO requires debunking its Origins Story and the false claim that it brought peace and security to post-war America when what it actually did was transform Washington into the War Capital of the World, dominated by a panoptic complex of arms merchants, neocon warmongers and a vast Warfare State nomenklatura. 

Part 1

As to the impending fiscal calamity, just recall this sequence. When Ronald Reagan attacked the soaring Federal deficits in 1980 the public debt was less than $1 trillion and about 30% of GDP. But it had erupted to $20 trillion by Donald Trump’s first election, now stands at $36 trillion and will be hitting $62 trillion and 163% of GDP by the mid-2030s.

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