Walter Russell Mead Quotes
After more than 30 years of presidents from Bill Clinton through Joe Biden asking Europe nicely to assume more responsibility for the common defense, America has had it. Europe in general, and Germany especially, can no longer count on an eternal snuggle rug of American protection. … For many Europeans and their American allies, Mr. Trump’s presidency is an assault on democracy as well as on trans-Atlantic solidarity. For the president’s supporters, it is the Europeans who have betrayed the West. Foolish national-defense strategies, self-defeating economic policies, censorship, and suicidal cultural and immigration measures have eroded both the strategic and moral commonalities that once united the West. Europeans think Mr. Trump is betraying democracy by punching it in the face; Team Trump argues the Europeans have betrayed it with a kiss.
After the breakup of the Soviet Union, NATO expanded to include some fo the former Soviet Nations thus moving NATO territiry to the East--closer to Russia, whose leaders percieved that the expansion was hostile and dangerous for the indpendence of Russia. What made the situation more complex is that the American Secretary of State, when the Soviet Union was very powerful, had made an agreement with the Soviets that in return for Russian aquiessance of NATO being extended to East Germany, NATO would not expand further West. But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia was quite weak and NATO expanded east despite the earleir comittment. The US and th eother NATO counties took the pozition the previous comitmnts were not binidng as they were never formally signed. The Russians then decided to take a hard line position and flaunt and use military force to which would stop the Western expansion closer to the Russian border.
Walter Russell Mead is an American academic. He is the James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs and Humanities at Bard College and taught American foreign policy at Yale University. He was also the editor-at-large of The American Interest magazine. Mead is a columnist for The Wall Street Journal and a scholar at the Hudson Institute.
