The editorial “Can NATO be saved from presidential petulance?” (July 7) did a thorough job of highlighting the harm to our NATO allies that has been posed by the current administration’s erratic conduct (one hesitates to call it a “policy”). What wasn’t emphasized was the serious threat to America’s national security and interests resulting from “presidential petulance.”

The administration’s obsession with global “spheres of influence” politics is a reversion to long-discredited 19th-century imperialism, which, by the way, led to two world wars and the slaughter of more than 100 million people around the world, and to the squandering of American lives and wealth.

Such a reversion is not only absurd in today’s world; it is also an abdication of more than 80 years of highly successful bipartisan US-led foreign policy, which has prevented a repeat of such slaughters. Such a reversion is also an affront to values dearly held, then and now, by the majority of Americans.

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When I was a naval officer, my ship was assigned to the NATO squadron on two separate occasions in the late 1960s and the 1970s. The squadron was made up of destroyers from various members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and it conducted joint operations and visits to ports in NATO countries. Our relationships with other participating navies was both highly productive and collegial, and our visits to NATO ports were universally received with widespread expressions of the warmest friendship and gratitude.

We, along with our NATO allies, had learned the lesson the hard way that strength and national security were a product of alliances, not greedy misguided imperialism. I have no doubt that our present military leaders of all services, as well as most of the American public, still hold strongly to that belief. My hope and prayer is that NATO can survive long enough for the United States to return to its senses and elect wise and responsible leadership.

William Hewig

Marblehead

The writer is a retired lieutenant commander in the US Navy.