OPINION:
While I agree with Mr. McKenna’s recommendation not to get involved in the Russia-Ukraine dispute, I disagree with his analysis (“Why are we rushing to defend Ukraine?” Web, Jan. 22).
Mr. McKenna correctly concludes that China is the existential threat, but he fails to recognize that the purpose of the Biden administration’s intense focus on Russia is in fact a crucial prelude to redressing the Chinese threat. The national security strategy, originally authored by neocon Douglas Feith, stated that all elements of our national power will be used to prevent regional hegemony (e.g., by Iran and Russia) and the rise of a peer competitor such as China.
NATO is a key element of our national power. Its first secretary general, Lord Ismay, famously said, “The purpose of NATO is to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” But it nearly died a natural death after our success in taking down the USSR deprived it of its very purpose. Madame Albright resuscitated and repurposed it by ginning up a war in the Balkans. A quarter century later, we find ourselves again repurposing it and expanding its domain to include non-military issues such as the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
Are alliance members now expected to accept the addition of economic and trade issues to the writ? And does this forebode a further broadening of scope, to wit, “keep the Russians and the Chinese out”?
The urgency McKenna bemoans is of course driven by the remarkable rise in China’s economic and military heft. But we cannot take on China without first dismembering Russia and “liberating” its provinces. If we fail to act in time, our elites will have to relinquish their dreams of world hegemony and be limited, sadly, to the domestic domain.
ROBERT MCKAY
Burke, Va.
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