An End To Nato, “Mike DiBaggio” from The Paleolibertarian Digest
There was once a time when the US hated piracy so much they went to war over
it, but that time has obviously come to an end. Israel’s attack on the
Turkish aid ship has generated little obvious outrage in the US, but then
again neither did the assault on the USS Liberty. Meanwhile the rest of the
world is pretty upset, and Turkey especially. Supposedly, the Turks have
vowed to send naval escorts with their ships in the future. The problem for
Israel then is that Turkey is a member of NATO. If their ships are attacked
again, they it stands to reason that they will try to invoke Article V and
call for military retaliation against Israel.
I agree in principle. However it appears that NATO is a parallel political organization that allows more stable relationships and stronger intelligence gathering and processing than do democratic societies and their fleeting party fashions. NATO functions as a weak imitation of monarchic relationships (which were military alliances) and NATO is providing the material value that was traditionally provided by monarchic relationships. There is no NATO, other than the US military. There really hasn’t every been a NATO other than the US military. The europeans are not capable of projecting power outside of their coastlines. The only material value nato has is to allow the US power in trade negotiations and to increase US debt capacity because of the demand that trade power places upon the dollar.
So, while Mike’s logic is accurate given the NAME of NATO, it’s not quite right given the FUNCTION of NATO.
The monarchic militaristic social order and social class still exists in the west. It is just nearly invisible because of the predominance of popular representative democracy. Just as the upper class is invisible to society, the military is in visible, and it’s very crucial, very useful, very capitalist relationships and culture are invisible. This is one of the benefits and dangers of democratic systems. They make the real problem of maintaining trade routes and enforcing contracts, and preventing shifts in power by military means, into the art, artifice and entertainment of redistributive government. This distracting entertainment makes the population entirely incognizant of what every poorer country’s citizens understand very clearly : that the purpose of the government, if there is any purpose at all, is to establish and pool investment within a geography so that citizens can compete in, or even participate in, the market. And that this is possibly the only legitimate purpose of government other than territorial defense, and the resolution of differences over property.
And the demonization of the military is propaganda for taking political control from the monarchy and transferring it to the middle class under the system of classical liberal republican government. (Just as political control moves to the masses under the system of democratic socialist secular humanism.)
Schumpeter didn’t go far enough. Socialism isn’t the only problem we must guard against. Its losing the entire reason why people coordinate in groups: to compete in the market. Or to fail to and return to poverty. Schumpeterian processes might not end in a slowly declining socialism, but a catastrophic end of a society, by ending its comprehension of the market.
