NATO’s Future is Churchillian, Not Wilsonian

An uncertain future threatens to overshadow celebrations of this April’s 75th anniversary of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s founding. NATO has, without question, been one of the most successful military alliances in human history. Now, however, many on both the Right and the Left are questioning NATO’s value and America’s role in it.

To be sure, NATO leaders have made serious strategic mistakes in recent decades. Experiments with “nation-building” in the Middle East have proven to be mixed successes at best while distracting America from longer-term threats from Putin and the CCP. NATO works better when it focuses on its military goals than when it attempts to spread the gospel of “liberal democracy.”

It would be senseless, however, to abandon NATO because of a few misguided policies or diplomatic frustrations. Instead, we should take inspiration from the alliance’s successes to set it back on the right path. To ensure the alliance lasts another 75 years, it would be better for NATO’s leaders to take their cues from conservative statesmen such as Winston Churchill rather than liberal ideologues like Woodrow Wilson.

In the wake of World War II, leaders in the West wanted to secure their victory over fascism and contain the spread of communism. They knew the crisis was not over. Totalitarianism threatened civilization itself, and that the West needed to meet this danger with strength.

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