The Washington Post recently published Seton Hall University assistant professor Sara Bjerg Moller’s call for NATO to adopt China as its new enemy. Jacob Hornberger of the Future of Freedom Foundation responded with: “I’ve got a better idea. Let’s just put NATO out of its misery and terminate it.”
While Moller’s suggestion would make war virtually inevitable, we can hope that it will not receive favorable attention in Washington. On the other hand, Hornberger’s conclusion is very appealing. But his claim that the 1949 rationale for NATO’s creation was to impede further advance westward by the USSR misses the far more harmful reason for NATO’s existence. That reason was stated in a speech delivered to the U.S. Senate on March 19, 1949 by Secretary of State Dean Acheson, one of NATO’s primary architects. Drumming up support for the creation of NATO, Acheson told the senators: “The United States Government and the governments with which we are associated in this treaty are convinced that it is an essential measure for strengthening the United Nations.” Moller doesn’t seem to know that NATO has always been a UN subsidiary
Acheson gleefully told the senators that all of the provisions of the NATO pact “are subject to the overriding provisions of the United Nations Charter.” In fact, NATO derived its very existence from Articles 52-54 of the UN Charter where UN member nations are encouraged to form “regional alliances” with other UN member states. And a key requirement for action by any UN-created regional alliance appears in the Charter’s Article 54. It states: “The Security Council shall at all times be kept fully informed of activities taken or in contemplation by regional arrangements.” (Emphasis added.)
Clearly, any action undertaken by NATO would have to be reported to the UN Security Council before it occurs. And the UN Security Council formed to deal with the use of armed forces was led for decades, including 1949, by a succession of Soviet appointees. This arrangement, never openly admitted by U.S. officials, gave the Kremlin power to oversee any use of NATO military activity.
In June 1950, the forces of communist North Korea invaded South Korea intending to expand Red control over the entire Korean peninsula. President Truman acted speedily in sending U.S. forces into the war zone. Asked at a press conference where he derived power to send American forces into combat without having the Constitution’s requirement for a declaration of war honored, he stated that he had already sent forces to Europe and, if he could do that, he could send troops to Korea without the formal declaration of war.
Most Americans are aware that open war in Korea lasted three full years and cost the United States the lives of more than 30,000. But that state of war has never been terminated and the pause in actual combat could be ended at any time. As for the conduct of that war, several U.S. generals told a congressional panel that the enemy knew its plans before they were carried out. For instance, General James Van Fleet insisted this was the case when he informed a Senate panel: “My own conviction is that there must have been information to the enemy from high diplomatic authorities that we would not attack his home bases across the Yalu.” He was referring to the Yalu River where huge numbers of Chinese Communist forces entered the conflict from their own country to aid North Korea’s forces.
Years later, General Douglas MacArthur, who served as the commander of U.S. forces in Korea during the war’s early years, wrote in his 1964 book Reminiscenses that Chinese General Lin Piao had explained knowing beforehand what the American forces were planning. Without naming NATO and the UN as his source of military intelligence, the Chinese general stated: “I would never have made the attack and risked my men and military reputation if I had not been assured that Washington would restrain General MacArthur from taking adequate retaliatory measures against my lines of supply and communication.”
In short, U.S. troops were sent to Korea without a declaration of war but under presidential power claimed by U.S. membership in NATO; their plans for conducting the war were transmitted to the enemy via NATO requirements; and the still-existing state of war in Korea will be terminated or rekindled by the United Nations and its NATO subsidiary at their pleasure.
Years later, NATO’s successful takeover of U.S. military activity encouraged UN partisans in our nation’s government to send forces into combat with North Vietnam’s communists. “Success” achieved via NATO encouraged pro-UN politicians to create a duplicate of NATO called the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, SEATO. Our nation’s forces faced the same kind of “Don’t win” rules created ultimately by the UN Security Council. And 47,000 Americans paid the ultimate price in another war they were not permitted to win. Few Americans have ever learned that the UN and its SEATO subsidiary were overseeing the Vietnam conflict. Having performed well for the UN and world communism, SEATO has been deemed no longer needed so it was abolished.
But NATO still exists and, for much of the ongoing war in Afghanistan, NATO (meaning the UN) became the overseer of that struggle. Now in its 20th year, the war in Afghanistan has claimed 2,400 U.S. lives. The rules have been the same for 20 years: Don’t win and don’t realize that enemy forces will know of your plans before you carry them out. NATO is no longer directing activity in Afghanistan but little has changed and former president Trump’s decision to bring the United States home from Afghanistan have been cancelled by his successor.
Where American forces will be sent next remains to be seen. Seton Hall’s Professor Moller would happily send them against Chinese forces in what would surely be another betrayal of the U.S. troops. And while he correctly calls for the United States to quit NATO, Jacob Hornberger seems not to understand that our nation should quit the UN, which would also mean quitting its traitorous NATO stepchild. If that could happen, our leaders in Washington would once again be honoring the oath they took to adhere to the U.S. Constitution regarding when our nation goes to war. That would surely be wonderful.
