trump has been proven right about NATO, all of it.
but the problem is we cant just leave and hope it all works out without us. i saw a “frontline documentary” several years back that demonstrates the problem of why we are always the ones leading the way and picking up the tab. they were interviewing some one from the clinton administration. he said he had been sent to europe for a conference in the 90’s. he had gone to the bathroom and bumped into another attendee from one of the european nations who stopped and asked him what the americans were planning to do about the whole bosnia genocide mess. it wasnt OUR mess, it wasnt OUR problem, but he pointed to it as just one example he had seen of european nations refusing to lead on anything and their willingness to sit by and wait for the US to clean up the mess( that they later complain about )
so ukraine offers us a unique once in a life time opportunity to reshape NATO and re examine OUR role.
every time russia flexes its muscle in europe, nations like poland and germany and the rest run screaming for the US to deploy troops and weapons and save them. but ukraine has shown that a smaller, weaker, NON NATO nation CAN stand up to russia if supplied with the proper weapons because they have the determination to do so.
if we step back and re-access our position and who we really want to work with IN NATO, we can stop with the costly deployments, and reduce our military foot print in europe.
if we tell putin that he either pulls out of ukraine, or we will give ukraine full rein to use all their weapons ate their own discretion, on targets of their choosing, AND we will implement FULL sanctions to crush their economy, we can force them out.
we then make an agreement with ukraine to allow US law enforcement to HELP them ferret out governmental corruption and help them get to the required benchmarks to join NATO .
once they have joined NATO, we create a list of strategic partners , 5-6 NATO countries that have proven they are willing to do their part, as ukraine has, and we work with them on training and arms sales, with the agreement that when russia is just flexing its muscles, THEY will step in deploy troops if necessary so we dont have to waste the money and time doing so, and they can act as an early bulwark against repeats of regional conflicts in their own back yard.
we can still lead, but we would be able to rely on partners like ukraine to do the heavy lifting much of the time.
we would also use this as a chance to remove some of our bases from europe. with willing partners like ukraine there to help us, we wouldn’t need so many bases covering what SHOULD be friendly nations.
this would ALSO allow us to shift forces to deal with RUSSIAS allies: iran and china.
ukraine has shown that they have bigger balls than ANY EU and NATO country , that should be grounds to fully support their entry into nato.