My tone comes off angry, but I'm not actually. Apologies.

"If you're not outraged at the massive proliferation of the military-industrial complex and the end of a 70-year-old bilateral mutual defense pact, you're not paying attention."

- me

Let's be clear: the Iraq War was a human rights catastrophe and a geopolitical clusterfuck. And let's be even clearer: arguing that NATO needed to get its hands bloody over some whackadoo "self-defense" clause is batshit. BUT. The argument is not being judged, the argument is being made.

Personally, I don't feel that the dissolution of NATO pencils out from a costs-benefits analysis. My crude take on the whole policeman/strongman thing is that the United States pays a couple different ways for the privilege of pretty much always getting what it wants, which has benefitted me (and others in our global allies) rather nicely. We're the house and the house always wins but that means you need to buy a casino (said the zinfandel). That's a globalist's argument through and through, though. And we're assed out at the moment.

Thus, the argument against runaway defense spending; the most cogent argument I've seen about how Reagan won the Cold War (which he did) was by coercing the Soviet Union into a downward spiral of defense spending that they couldn't possibly keep up with. It's not the most convincing argument I've seen, but it's the most convincing economic argument I've seen. It makes a cautious, pragmatic geopolitician hew towards isolationism.

It's not the size of our army, but the way. It's our sophistication. We launch Hellfires like they're hand grenades. When you can freely and cheerfully cook off a couple $100k missiles to take out portable solar panels in Pakistan somewhere? Some see wastage. Others see power. That 3% of GDP gives you a lot of leeway as to how you deal with problems: think there's a sniper on a roof? Bring by a $130m Global Hawk to take a peek then launch a sortie of $35m AH-64s to take a peek then fire a couple $100k Hellfires at it... because. You're dealing with a guy who might have an Enfield, might have a Dragunov or some shit and you're literally rolling a Hollywood blockbuster on his ass because you have it at your disposal. From back in my archives I can tell you that the cost to put an AH-64 in the air is $45k an hour... before you start shooting at stuff.

Belgium ain't doing that shit.

And no. There will never again be a large-scale ground war. Tanks are thoroughly obsolete. Massed troops are thoroughly obsolete. I mean, really, if you want to win a war these days, do it Putin-style and stick to Facebook.

Which pretty much makes NATO the Shriners or the Elks or the Eagles or whatever. A great club to be a member of but when you've got an isolationist demagogue running things, these are the discussions we have.

Friedman didn't title his article "NATO is obsolete." However, that's definitely the question he wanted you to examine. I'd much rather roll the world back to yesterday but it ain't up to me. And these are the arguments we'll be hearing, 140 characters at a time.