A common purpose once united members of the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance. But no longer. Individual members now increasingly capture NATO for their own purposes. As a result, the alliance will find it ever harder to bring nations together even when they share interests.
NATO made sense when it was created more than six decades ago. Allies across the Atlantic were united in their commitment to protect war-ravaged Western Europe from Soviet aggression. When the Warsaw Pact disbanded and the Soviet Union collapsed, NATO had fulfilled its role.
Unfortunately, alliance partisans acted as Public Choice economics would predict: They scrambled to save their jobs and careers. Instead of closing NATO, they looked for new reasons to keep it going.
NATO would expand to the east, adding security burdens that made existing members less safe. And the organization would go “out of area,” intervening where members were not threatened. Observed Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.): “Either NATO goes out of area or goes out of business.” And no self-respecting politician or bureaucrat ever wants to do the second.
