divWhy does NATO exist? Certainly not to defend America. After all, the North Atlantic alliance’s latest policy move is to invite Montenegro to join.

Montenegro‘s military employs 2,080—1500 in the army, 350 in the navy, and 230 in the air force. Wow!

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg opined that “Montenegro has come a long way on its path to join the Euro-Atlantic family.” Extending the invitation was “a historic decision. It would signal our continued commitment to the Western Balkans,” he added.

Montenegro is a nice country. But what does it have to do with American security?

What was once an alliance expected to defend wrecked and impoverished Western Europeans nations from mass murderer Joseph Stalin and his Red Army has turned into the geopolitical equivalent of a Gentleman’s Club. Everyone wants to be a member simply because it’s the thing to do. So Podgorica is being invited to enter the “North Atlantic” Treaty Organization.” v:shapes=“Picture_x0020_3”>

It’s hard to blame Montenegro’s government and people for wanting to join. But what is in the deal for America? The U.S. collects allies like most people accumulate Facebook friends.

America nominally is a superpower, but Washington officials crave attention and affection from other states. So presidents and legislators continually write guarantees on the money and lives of the American people for foreign countries, even when, like Montenegro, they are utterly irrelevant to U.S. security.

At least Montenegro doesn’t matter. Expansion to the Baltic States turns out to have been a huge mistake, bringing in helpless nations which the rest of Europe has no interest in defending, countries of no geopolitical importance to America but involved in bitter disputes with Russia. If anything bad happens, America will be expected to confront, with minimal support from its European “allies,” nuclear-armed Russia over a controversy of far greater interest in Moscow than Washington.

Bringing in Georgia and Ukraine would be far worse. Both countries are unlucky and exist in bad neighborhoods viewed as critical security concerns by Moscow.

Neither matters much for American security. Moscow’s role may not be fair or just, but not everything is worth going to war over.

Particularly strange are proposals to treat Georgia and Ukraine like formal allies even if they aren’t. Commentators have advocated flying air patrols and introducing troops in Ukraine. During the short-lived Russo-Georgia war the Bush administration reportedly considered bombing the tunnels through which Russia was moving its forces. 

After getting through the entire Cold War without a shooting war with Moscow, why would Washington take action which essentially would force Russia to strike back militarily? NATO originally was created to act as a firebreak to war. Current policy threatens to turn it into a transmission belt of war.

American disengagement would not leave Europe defenseless. Withdrawing would simply change who does the defending. 

Robert Scales, retired commandant of the Army War College, complained that “At 30,000, there are fewer American soldiers protecting Western Europe” than cops in New York City. Actually, he should ask, why are there even 30,000 U.S. soldiers protecting Western Europe?

As I point out in Forbes online: “After all, 70 years have passed since World War II. The European Union has a larger GDP and population than America, and dramatically larger than Russia. Isn’t it time for Washington’s rich friends and allies to defend themselves? Or will Americans have to wait another 70 years before their government stops subsidizing Europe’s generous welfare states?”

Montenegro. A nice place to visit. It doesn’t threaten anyone. It isn’t threatened by anyone. And it doesn’t matter to America.

Why is it being brought into NATO?

It’s time for a serious debate in Washington about turning alliances into welfare for the well-to-do overseas. The Europeans. The South Koreans. The Japanese. The Saudis.

It truly is time for a change.

Events on both sides of the Atlantic yesterday made for an interesting contrast in the way Western democracies go to war. In the United Kingdom, they decided to actually have a vote before letting the bombs fly—with PM David Cameron winning approval in the House of Commons by a wider-than-expected 174-vote margin.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports that the Obama administration is sending a new Special Operations task force of some 200 soldiers to Iraq, to “enable the U.S. military to launch additional commando-style operations and increase intelligence collection, both in Iraq and in neighboring Syria.” Thus, while our cousins across the pond have secured legislative approval for war against ISIS, the “world’s oldest constitutional democracy” slips further toward a ground combat role in a war that the president ordered up some 16 months ago without a shred of legal authority. 

American’s fundamental law vests the decision to go to war in Congress. Under British law, however, the decision to use military force is a “prerogative power”—a decision taken by the Prime Minister “on behalf of the Crown.” “In constitutional terms Parliament has no legally established role and the Government is under no legal obligation with respect to its conduct.” And yet, in practice, as F.H. Buckley points out in The Once and Future King: The Rise of Crown Government in America, the British system has lately done a better job than the American one at forcing public deliberation over war: “the government’s day-to-day accountability before the House of Commons make[s] it far more difficult for a prime minister to disregard Parliament’s wishes.” Indeed, the last time Cameron contemplated airstrikes on Syria—over the use of chemical weapons in 2013—he had to abandon the idea after losing the vote in the House of Commons: “Parliament has spoken,” as Foreign Secretary William Hague summed up.

The U.S. Congress hasn’t spoken, in any formal sense, on our latest war in the Middle East, and it’s in no particular hurry to do so. The Obama administration continues to insist that, under the use-of-force resolution Congress passed over 14 years ago, it has all the legal authority it needs to wage war against ISIS, a group that’s also at war with Al Qaeda, the target of the original resolution. That pretext, offered mainly in unsigned “talking points” by anonymous administration officials, is too thin to hide the sweeping claim of executive war power on which the president’s war rests. Oddly enough, today royal prerogative thrives in the country that fought a revolution to overthrow it. 

NATO partisans often act as though the date on the calendar reads 1950 instead of 2015. Not only do they see Russia, a regional actor with limited means, as identical to the Soviet Union at the zenith of its military power and ideological influence, but they regard democratic Europe as a helpless protectorate. That point became clear again this week with an op-ed by Retired Major General Robert H. Scales in the Wall Street Journal. lamenting “the precarious position of the U.S. military presence in Europe.” Scales subsequently highlighted his arguments in a December 1 interview on Fox News, contending that there were fewer American soldiers protecting Europe than there are police employed in New York City.

A striking feature of his analysis, and the assessments of others who echo former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s contention that the United States is the “indispensable nation,” is the bland assumption that America must take primary (and often exclusive) responsibility for the defense of other regions. Scales, for example, wants to preposition large quantities of sophisticated weaponry in the Baltic republics and along other points on Russia’s western frontier so that the American military can ride to the rescue if Moscow engages in any threatening behavior.

The notion of the United States as the indispensable nation is nothing short of national narcissism. That attitude is especially obsolete and corrosive with regard to Europe. Scales and others in his ideological camp ought to be asked why the European Union countries can’t defend themselves and deal with security issues in their neighborhood. It’s not 1950 any longer. The European nations are not impoverished, demoralized countries still recovering from the devastation of World War II. The European Union now has both a population and an economy larger than that of the United States. Equally pertinent, the EU has three times the population and a gross domestic product more than 10 times that of Russia.

Clearly, the EU should be able to build whatever defenses might be necessary to deter Russian aggression—even granting the questionable assumption that Vladimir Putin harbors large-scale expansionist ambitions. The European nations have not done so to this point because they have been able to free-ride on America’s security efforts. That is why most of the NATO allies spend far less than two percent of GDP on the military while the United States spends over four percent. 

Influential people like General Scales are enablers for such cynical free riding, and patriotic Americans should spurn their woefully obsolete arguments. It is well past time for Americans to reject the paradigm of national narcissism, which is based on the flawed assumption that only the United States can deal with possible aggression. Europe is the place to commence a new, more realistic policy. We should make it clear to the Europeans that they are now big boys and girls who need to take responsibility for the defense of their own region. 

U.S. military personnel are heading to Iraq and Syria. The administration continues its slow progression to renewed ground combat.

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter informed Congress that a “specialized expeditionary targeting force” would be sent to Iraq on top of the 3,500 personnel already there. They were sent with the authority to operate in Syria too. Where greater opportunities appear to work with local forces, he added, “We are prepared to expand it.”

Unfortunately, no matter how combat-effective these forces, they won’t turn around a 16-month deadlock. The more men and materiel the president commits to “win”–whatever that means–the more he will have to introduce after the failure of every successive escalation. The president’s promise not to commit “boots on the ground” was trampled underfoot in October, when a Delta Force soldier was killed while accompanying Kurdish forces on a raid in Iraq.

Presidential wannabe Sen. Lindsey Graham and Sen. John McCain also proposed a 100,000 man “regional army to go into Syria.” Of this force, the United States would provide perhaps 10,000. Alas, waiting for Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, and other Sunni states to contribute the rest would be akin to waiting for the Easter Bunny or Great Pumpkin to appear.

The lessons of the Iraq War have been forgotten–or, perhaps, never learned. Yet retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, U.S. Special Forces Commander in both Afghanistan and Iraq and director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, recently observed that the invasion and overthrow of Saddam Hussein unleashed the Islamic State and was “a huge error.”

The Obama administration is attempting to do everything, which means it likely will achieve nothing. Washington hopes to simultaneously defeat ISIL and defenestrate Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the single strongest force opposing the Islamist radicals. The administration wants to re-establish Baghdad’s authority nationwide while convincing Iraqi leaders to grant more authority to the Sunnis, with whom they have effectively been at war since the U.S. invasion.

American officials are trying to persuade Sunni allies such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey to focus their efforts on ISIL, a Sunni group which is the strongest force deployed against Assad, their top priority. Washington is working closely with Kurdish forces, which Ankara views as an existential threat dedicated to breaking up Turkey.

The United States has devoted a lot of money and effort to bolstering the weak and decreasingly effective “moderate” insurgents in the hopes that they can defeat both Assad and the Islamic State. Now Washington is caught in between Turkey and Russia as they confront each other over Assad’s survival.

Nor is ISIL easy to defeat. How long is America prepared to occupy yet another Arab country or two in order to establish order, remake the state, impose liberal institutions, and ensure the preservation of the foregoing?

A better policy would be for the United States to back away. In fact, ISIL never threatened the United States directly because it was focused on creating a caliphate, or quasi-nation state.

Having a return address made the group susceptible to retaliation. Only recently has it begun to employ terrorist attacks—against Russia, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, France, and probably Turkey’s Kurds—as retaliation for their active operations against the Islamic State.

Indeed, the Islamic State prospers only because of the weakness of its adversaries. Without America’s presence, they would have to confront a much more serious ISIL threat.

As I point out in Forbes online: “Powers which Washington cannot force into a coherent coalition might more informally reach a complicated, regionalized modus vivendi. At the same time, the United States could concentrate its resources on incapacitating or killing those dedicated to striking America even after Washington’s disengagement.”

There is still time for the president to reverse course, pulling the United States out of yet another extended ground war in the Middle East. For more than a decade, Washington has been engaged in what historian Barbara Tuchman referred to in another time and circumstance as “the march of folly.” It is time to call a halt.

Relations between the U.S. and China have grown tenser as the latter has developed economically and advanced internationally. Few Americans want to cede their dominant position while most Chinese are determined to regain what they believe to be Beijing’s rightful influence.

The two nations are waging a bitter but so far nonviolent struggle in Burma, or Myanmar. And the U.S. appears to be winning.

For decades Burma’s military ruled ruthlessly. The West responded by isolating and sanctioning the generals, who renamed their nation Myanmar over popular opposition.

The junta turned to China for military cooperation and economic support. Beijing, which desired Burma’s natural resources, including minerals, timber, and water, was happy to oblige. The embrace from Burma’s northern neighbor grew ever tighter—too tight, in the view of many Burmese.

In 2008 the military began a gradual process of carefully limited political reform, which culminated in legislative elections in November. The junta’s members had not undergone a miraculous conversion to liberalism. Rather, an important, though largely unarticulated, objective was to reduce reliance on the People’s Republic of China.

For years Burma was a pariah state almost akin to North Korea. There was only limited interaction with both the U.S. and Europe, the most obvious sources of aid, investment, and trade. While Asian tigers roared, Burma slumbered.

While Burma benefited economically from its ties with the PRC, the costs were high and resentment was palpable. In fact, Burma is not alone in this regard. High-handed Chinese behavior in Africa sparked public protests and turned Beijing’s role into an election issue. North Korea remains tied to the PRC but continues to look for new friends, most recently in Moscow.

For Burma opening to the West was the answer. Sanctions were eased, Western leaders rushed to visit, and business investment flowed in.

Unfortunately, reforms have slowed. Nevertheless, the country has moved dramatically from “the bad ole’ days.” It would be very difficult for the military to reverse democratization even if it wanted to. Which means China no longer is the essential investor.

The PRC has noticed. Policy analysts and university students alike have complained to me that the U.S. was undermining Beijing’s relationship with Burma. Merely being willing to engage Burma has allowed the West to shift the geopolitical balance.

At the same time bilateral problems between China and Burma have multiplied. Four years ago the latter suspended the Chinese-financed Myitsone Dam, whose power was destined for the PRC. Earlier this year 155 Chinese loggers were arrested and prosecuted for illegal activity, before being deported.

Insurgents in Burma’s Kokang area are ethnic Chinese and some 30,000 refugees have crossed into the PRC. In March while targeting Kokang rebels Burmese airstrikes killed five and injured eight Chinese citizens. In May several Chinese were injured by artillery fire. The PRC responded with a live fire exercise along the border. Burma later accused Beijing of discouraging the Kachin and Wa ethnic groups, long engaged in the illicit gem and timber trade, from signing a national ceasefire.

Concerned over relations, Beijing hosted Nobel Laureate Anng San Suu Kyi in June, an extraordinary step by a regime which fears elections and opposes meddling in other nations’ affairs. Although Suu Kyi expressed her desire for better relations, her government is unlikely to be as close to China as was the junta.

India and Japan offer friendship at lower cost. Moreover, she obviously prizes access to the large, sophisticated Western economies, and knows that she would still be under house arrest if China had continued to dominate Burmese affairs.

Burma’s shift demonstrates fistfuls of cash, whether yuan or dollars, are not enough. As I wrote for China-US Focus: “No one likes to be treated as a client state. In Burma the U.S. only had to offer the junta a way to join the global economy. Without deploying a ship or threatening a shot, Washington found an effective balance to the PRC.”

Senators Benjamin L. Cardin and John McCain will soon get their wish for a U.S. arms sale to Taiwan. Last Wednesday, Josh Rogin of Bloomberg View reported that the Obama administration will formally announce a $1 billion arms sale in December. Congress has not been notified of a new arms sale to Taiwan in four years.

The changing balance of power in the Taiwan Strait warrants a serious examination of the existing U.S.-Taiwan security relationship, which is held up by two pillars: a U.S. commitment to sell “defensive” arms to Taiwan; and the pledge to take “appropriate action” in response to any “threat to the security…of the people on Taiwan.”

The arms sales and vague security pledge have contributed to peace in the Taiwan Strait, but the status quo may not last much longer. A recent RAND report concluded that China is catching up to the United States’ military capabilities to defend Taiwan. America could absorb the rising cost of defending Taiwan, but the reunification of Taiwan and mainland China is a core interest of the Chinese government. Since China has more at stake, it has an incentive to keep raising the costs of confrontation until the United States is no longer willing to absorb them. 

This argues for dropping Washington’s pledge to come to Taiwan’s aid. Supporters of the pledge worry about the message that a reduced commitment would send to allies in East Asia. But there is a significant difference between a formal security commitment defined in a treaty, and an informal one like America’s to Taiwan.

Washington’s formal treaty commitments in East Asia (Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines) are more clearly stated and some are supported by forward-deployed U.S. forces. Failing to come to the aid of a formal treaty ally would be a significant blow to U.S. credibility, but Taiwan does not enjoy such status.

However, arms sales to Taiwan should continue for several reasons. First, the arms sales have not significantly damaged U.S.-China relations. Second, ending both arms sales and the pledge would be unnecessarily disruptive. Third, the United States still has a legitimate interest in a peaceful resolution of the cross-strait dispute, but defending Taiwan’s quasi independent status through military intervention against a nuclear-armed and conventionally powerful China would have high costs for limited benefits. Moreover, the costs of intervention would likely increase over time, while the benefits would remain flat. 

Future arms sales should emphasize weapons systems that allow Taiwan to mount an effective asymmetric challenge to Chinese forces. The United States should also make future arms sales contingent on Taiwan’s investment in indigenously-produced capabilities and increased military spending independent of spending on U.S. arms. Ending the already vague pledge to come to Taiwan’s defense while continuing arms sales is a low-cost policy that reduces the probability of a U.S.-China war over Taiwan while preserving Taiwan’s ability to defend itself.

Former president Kim Young-sam was laid to rest in Seoul. Kim long battled against military rule. In 1992 he was elected president.

His reputation suffered when the Republic of Korea was engulfed by the Asian economic crisis. But Kim may have prevented the Second Korean War.

Early during Kim’s tenure the first nuclear crisis exploded. The so-called Democratic People’s Republic of Korea had embarked on a nuclear program, centered at Yongbyon.

President Bill Clinton, Secretary of Defense William Perry, and Assistant Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, the current Pentagon chief, decided to strike. War was a truly mad idea.

Carter and Perry later explained that they had “readied plans for striking at North Korea’s nuclear facilities and for mobilizing hundreds of thousands of American troops for the war that probably would have followed.” Nevertheless, they expected to limit deaths to “thousands of U.S. troops and tens of thousands of South Korean troops” due to the allies’ overwhelming military superiority.

However, the two underplayed likely civilian casualties. With mass artillery dug in along the Demilitarized Zone, abundant Scud missiles available for attack, and mass armor poised only a few miles north of Seoul, the casualties and destruction could be enormous. Nuclear radiation also would threaten.

Perhaps most extraordinary, the Clinton administration planned for war without involving Seoul. When informed, Kim argued with Clinton, causing the latter to relent, but only temporarily. Former President Jimmy Carter then visited the North, transmitting Kim Il-sung’s offer to negotiate.

Ashton Carter continued to propose war against the DPRK. In 2002 Carter and Perry coauthored an article for the Washington Post: “Today, just as in 1994, a conventional war would be incredibly dangerous, but not as dangerous as allowing North Korea to proceed with this new [uranium] program,” they wrote. Thus, “North Korea now needs to proceed with the understanding that the United States would not tolerate a North Korean program to build nuclear weapons.”

In 2006 the two were at it again. This time they were worried about the North’s planned missile test. They wrote: “the United States should immediately make clear its intention to strike and destroy the North Korean Taepodong missile before it can be launched.” If the DPRK retaliated, no worries: the U.S. could bolster its forces.

Obviously, it is undesirable for Pyongyang to possess nuclear weapons or missiles. However, while the North’s Kim dynasty gives no evidence of being suicidal. Preserving the peace should be the number one objective on the peninsula given the costs of a Korean War rerun.

Which Kim well understood.

One problem with well-reasoned military proposals counting on the North’s rational restraint is that Pyongyang would be extremely foolish to rely on any assurances. After all, the U.S. has routinely imposed regime change.

Those who know best doubt Pyongyang’s forbearance. A North Korean defector said the military was determined to take the initiative in any war. Gen. Gary Luck, former U.S. commander in Korea, opined: “If we pull an Osirak, they will be coming south.”

The second problem is that the DPRK may well choose a limited military option commensurate with the U.S. attack. An hour long bombardment of Seoul, for instance, accompanied by the demand to expel U.S. forces. What then? It isn’t clear whether the South Korean public would be angrier with North Korea or the U.S.

U.S. war proposals are especially foolish since North Korean threats against the South as well as Japan are not threats against America. Indeed, Washington is of interest to the DPRK mostly because the former has unnecessarily intruded in a struggle between the two Koreas. Given the South’s extraordinary advantages—40 times the GDP, twice the population—there’s no reason for Washington to stay, let alone plot new wars.

As I wrote in Forbes: “Kim was political hero, but his most important legacy probably was preserving peace. Thousands, at least, and perhaps many more South Koreans and Americans have him to thank for their lives. Kim Young-sam, rest in peace.”