{"id":8367,"date":"2026-07-20T06:29:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-20T06:29:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/8367\/"},"modified":"2026-07-20T06:29:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-20T06:29:12","slug":"may-nato-survive-long-enough-for-us-to-return-to-its-senses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/8367\/","title":{"rendered":"May NATO survive long enough for US to return to its senses"},"content":{"rendered":"

The editorial \u201cCan NATO be saved from presidential petulance?\u201d<\/a> (July 7) did a thorough job of highlighting the harm to our NATO allies that has been posed by the current administration\u2019s erratic conduct (one hesitates to call it a \u201cpolicy\u201d). What wasn\u2019t emphasized was the serious threat to America\u2019s national security and interests resulting from \u201cpresidential petulance.\u201d <\/p>\n

The administration\u2019s obsession with global \u201cspheres of influence\u201d 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. <\/p>\n

Such a reversion is not only absurd in today\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n

Get The Gavel<\/p>\n

A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr.<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

William Hewig<\/p>\n

Marblehead <\/p>\n

The writer is a retired lieutenant commander in the US Navy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The editorial \u201cCan NATO be saved from presidential petulance?\u201d (July 7) did a thorough job of highlighting the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8368,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[4129,178,62,47,248,7,3110,4731,281,4732,466,49],"class_list":["post-8367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-air-force-one","tag-alliance","tag-diplomacy","tag-europe","tag-foreign-policy","tag-nato","tag-north-america","tag-secret-service","tag-security","tag-swap","tag-turkey","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8367\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}