Montenegro is a country on the eastern side of the Adriatic. It has a population about the size of Tucson and an area about the size of Connecticut. The primary languages of its people are Serbian and Montenegrin, a dialect of Serbian. Serbian is sometimes referred to as “Serbo-Croation”. The primary difference between Serbian and Croatian is orthography—Serbian uses Cyrillic while Croatian uses Roman. Other languages spoken by Montenegrans include Croatian and Bosnian, also dialects of Serbian, and Albanian which isn’t.
Montenegro was formerly a Yugoslav republic which made sense and is now a member of NATO which doesn’t. On its own Montenegro could not defend itself against a concerted attack by Serbia let alone by Russia. Montenegro’s NATO membership increases Montenegro’s security while decreasing that of the other NATO members.
Neither the Soviet Union nor Russia has ever attacked Montenegro or, indeed, Yugoslavia. NATO has and without UN Security Council authorization. Over the period of the last 30 years NATO has attacked two countries without provocation: Yugoslavia and Libya. During the same period Russia has attacked none. The diction used to characterize Montenegro’s admission to NATO is “to deter Russian aggression”. The most effective way to deter whatever Russian aggression there might be would be to discourage another NATO member, Germany, from cozying up to Russia. That is more of a threat to NATO members than Serbia attacking Montenegro or whatever threat Russia poses to Montenegro.
That’s the context of the editors of the New York Times’s full-throated defense of NATO:
The Democratic-led House on Jan. 22 voted 357-22 for a bipartisan bill that would tie Mr. Trump’s hands by refusing him any federal money to pay the costs of leaving the alliance.
The Republican-led Senate should quickly follow, either approving the House measure or a separate bill proposed by a bipartisan group of senators that requires Mr. Trump to obtain approval from two-thirds of the Senate to “suspend, terminate or withdraw U.S. membership in NATO.†If the president refused to abide by a Senate vote preserving NATO membership, the bill would then prohibit the use of federal funds for withdrawal.
It seems obvious that leaving NATO would be a foreign policy debacle, eroding American influence in Europe and emboldening Vladimir Putin, the Russian leader, who wants to weaken NATO so he can expand his political and military sway.
Despite all that, there is no sign that Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, would stop such a move if Mr. Trump were to make it, as he has repeatedly threatened to do.
The actions most necessary to preserving NATO cannot be taken by the United States and will not be promoted by admitting new members to NATO. They would be for France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, and other NATO members to increase their military readiness. I do not know whether that would require 2% of their GDPs, 5% of their GDPs, or 10% of their GDPs. Of them only France remains at the highest level of readiness and that diminishes by the day. If there is a threat, they should act more like there is. If there is no threat, why should we act as though there were?
