As we ponder how our day’s Dr. Strangeloves want Ukraine to join NATO so that we’ll be obligated to go to war against Russia if it attacks its western, kleptocratic neighbor, we should consider a certain point. It isn’t just, as some have pointed out, that the Cold War relic NATO has outlived its usefulness. It’s not just that Russia, no longer being the Soviet Union, has no intention of invading Western Europe and couldn’t pull off a Julius-Caesar-in-Gaul even if it did. It’s also this:
Troubling over such a thing is a bit like fearing that Bill Gates’s bucks will invade your bank account.
NATO was created in 1949 to defend Europe against the Soviet Union, an expansionist, evil empire that devoted time and treasure to spreading the malevolent ideology of Marxism worldwide. Fear of this was entirely rational as such a conquest would have meant a descent into hell on Earth, so we rightly drew a bombs-and-bullets line in the sand. But at issue today isn’t your grandfather’s Bear. It’s more like your great-grandfather’s — and relatively bearable.
Consider: Ex-German Chancellor Angela Merkel opened the floodgates of Muslim migration, illustrating why late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi once said that jihadist terrorists were unnecessary because 50 million-plus Muslims in Europe would turn it into an Islamic continent in two generations.
Many European leaders sing Merkel’s song, too. Swedish politician Mona Sahlin unabashedly stated in 2001 that “the Swedes must be integrated into the new Sweden; the old Sweden is never coming back.” French president Emmanuel Macron actually advocated the idea of creating “Eurafrica,” a scheme requiring the flooding of his continent with 150 to 200 million Africans during the next few decades.
Not to be outdone in vindicating the Gallic surrender stereotype, French “intellectual” Christian de Moliner suggested in 2017 that France should essentially be divided — via the creation of a semi-autonomous, quasi-Sharia state within the country — to avoid civil war with its Muslims. Note that such sentiments place these politicians to the left of the Dalai Lama, who told the BBC in 2019 that “Europe is for Europeans” and that most migrants should ultimately be returned to their native lands.
And quite Lama-like, Russia boasts a healthy nationalism. Its president, Vladimir Putin, has touted his civilization’s glories and has said, regarding immigration, “Russia doesn't need minorities; minorities need Russia.” And while Western Europe is awash in multicult mush, Moscow issued a 2014 document stating that Russia rejects “such principles as multiculturalism and tolerance” and “projects imposing alien values on society.”
Speaking of alien values, so-called same-sex “marriage” is rubber-stamped in Western Europe, the continent’s social activists often encourage confused children to embrace a Made-up-Sexual Status (MUSS or “transgender”) “identity,” and its authorities may punish critics of such via “hate speech” laws.
In Russia, though, it’s not just that homosexual unions of any kind are verboten and that true (i.e., man-woman) marriage was enshrined in the nation’s constitution last year. Moscow also has outlawed pro-homosexual propaganda, and Putin has sung the nuclear family’s praises. More recently, he has inveighed against the elimination of the terms “mother,” “father” and “family”; has criticized the denial of “the distinction between sexes” and of the categories “of men and women”; and has said that advocating youth MUSS activity borders on “a crime against humanity.”
(See now why our Left wants to “cancel” Russia?)
But that’s not all. In October, Putin criticized Westerners for “the aggressive deletion of whole pages of their own history” and their “reverse discrimination against the majority in the interests of minorities.” He also correctly proclaimed, in 2019, that liberalism had become “obsolete.”
But now, obsolescence is the West’s essence. Back when Russia was the USSR and our Left loved it, we called the Soviets godless and they called us decadent; now we’re godless and decadent.
We hear incessant talk about the “separation of church and state” even though it’s not in our Constitution (but it is in the 1936 Soviet Constitution), and radical applications of it are foisted upon us. In many European nations, more than 50 percent of young people identify as having “no religion” (70 percent in Britain). What’s more, some European authorities are even labeling the Bible “hate speech.” This is the handiwork, too, do note, of devout adherents of moral relativism — the West’s characteristic philosophical affliction — of the “Whatever works for you” crew.
But it doesn’t work in Russia. In a 2013 State of the Nation speech, Putin lamented that many “Euro-Atlantic countries have moved away from their roots, including Christian values. ...Policies are being pursued that place on the same level a multi-child family and a same-sex partnership, a faith in God and a belief in Satan. This is the path to degradation.”
None of this is to say I trust Putin or take for granted that his pronouncements aren’t just self-interest-driven posturing. I don’t trust him any more than I do Biden or Pelosi or Kamala Harris, though I do trust him to be one thing they’re not: smart.
Putin ought to know, too, that the political correctness he condemns will destroy a nation. After all and as Soviet defector Yuri Bezmenov pointed out, the KGB Putin used to work for encouraged such ideas in the West for this very reason.
But whatever the reason, G.K. Chesterton’s 1926 prediction that the “madness of tomorrow” would lie “not in Moscow, but much more in Manhattan” has come to pass. So explain to me not only why NATO is still necessary but also, very slowly, so I can understand it, this:
If Vladimir Putin or some near-future Russian leader completely lost his marbles, had a Napoleon moment, and decided to invade Western Europe, why should America’s sons shed blood over it (let alone over Ukraine)?
If under such a fanciful scenario the modern-day tsar were successful and imposed Russia’s social norms on the vanquished, what would be the loss to humanity? “Pride” events with men marching mostly naked? Puberty blockers for 12-year-olds? The arresting of pastors for preaching the Bible? The ignoring of the Muslim rape-gang abuse of 1,400 UK girls for 16 years for fear of being called “racist”? It’s a tempting cause, really, but I think I’ll pass.
Should our Dr. Strangelove chicken hawks succeed in getting Ukraine into NATO, we can only hope that an ex-high-ranking Polish officer spoke the truth when he told me years ago that the acronym stands for “No Action; Talk Only.” For if the West ever fights Russia, it’s possible that maybe, just perhaps, the Bear will now have God on its side.
