How NATO grew fat and Russia took advantage

Western policymakers buck themselves up by saying Russia’s military mostly went into scrapyards at the end of the Cold War. The Russian economy is primitive. It’s a “gas station” that generates as much wealth for its 140 million citizens as the Italian economy generates for 60 million. That’s all true. But what might be a remote threat becomes more urgent if you are overexposed to it.

The problem is, America’s NATO war guarantee is wrapped up in a larger ideological status quo across the West. Trade liberalization, political liberalization, increased migration, sexual and cultural liberation from Christian traditionalism, the further political integration of the E.U., and the expansion of the Western alliance to the borders of Russia are all wrapped together in the minds of policymakers. And so, every reversal for any part of that project is seen by the guardians of the policy consensus as a demoralizing reversal for the Western alliance and, consequently, a gain for revisionist Putinism.

Knowing this, all political discontent in the West becomes of interest to Putin. And so he extends loans to parties like France’s Front Nationale that question the post-Cold War consensus. The Kremlin-funded news network highlights all dissident political movements in the United States.

And consequently, the West frets about every party that comes to power that is wobbly on any one of the planks of the status quo.