Adios, Poland!

It's popular among conservatives to dismiss President Obama's decision to not place a missile defense system in Poland as a sort of a retreat from Vladimir Putin. Perhaps it is, but, while the President's line of thinking is clearly different from ours, traditionalists never-the-less feel that not putting missiles in Poland is the right decision to make.

Traditional conservatives have never liked military alliances and had always hoped the end of the Cold War would allow the United States to return to a more isolationist foreign policy. The presence of Americans around the world defending everyone from everyone else makes us woozy. No conservative can really like NATO expansion right up to Russia's doorstep. How would Reaganites feel if Canada were to ink a military deal with China or Russia?

In any case, NATO is nothing more than military welfare for Europe. Europe has been reconstructed quite successfully. With a GDP greater than that of the USA, the European Union is perfectly capable of defending itself. It is easier for Europeans to make their socialist dreams come true when Americans pay for their defense. Why make this bill even bigger?

It is challenging world out there, for sure. With those challenges come the compulsion to pick allies. If America must have military allies, it should have allies against today's problems, not yesterdays, and it should have military allies that can fight and frankly join in wars that may not be popular at home or abroad. Geopolitically, Americas largest rivals are China and a rising Islamic world. Against that, the shrewd conservative must ask, which side of the Dnieper is more valuable?

Poland is no great ally. Any observer of Polish affairs should recall that Poles bitterly and nearly unanimously opposed sending even the handful of troops that they did to Iraq and Afghanistan. If the Polish people cannot stomach a small number of casualties aiding the United States in a foreign war, why should the American people be required to stomach potentially hundreds of thousands of casualties an all out war with Russia would to this day entail? Like many other European nations, alliance with Poland means, "Come save us, and we can't even save ourselves." Indeed, why even debate whether or not the Americans should put missiles in Poland when the Polish people do not want them?

Russia has historically been a rather effective ally. Russia fought Germany on Continental Europe by itself during World War II for three long years before we Americans landed along with the British and Canadians at Normandy. No matter how bad Stalin was, we ought to be grateful that the Russians drew the lot of destroying the German 6th Army, not us. If there were no Stalingrad, Normandy would have been a lot worse, if even possible.

In more modern times, our own problems of fighting in Afghanistan treaten to add Jimmy Carter's condemnation of the Russian invasion of Afghanistan into his ever growing pile of mistakes. Coupled with their heavy fighting in Chechnya, clearly the Russians have demonstrated a consistent willingness to actually fight what many conservatives feel is the darkest threat to humanity - Islamic extremism. If Russia had successfully turned Afghanistan into a client state, there would have been no 9/11.

Americans must remember that in wartime the value of an alliance is not a man's government, but, whether or not he fights and how well he fights. Russians fight. Europeans don't. The Polish had their chance. They do not want missiles on their soil. Fine, don't put them there, and get Russia on the horn. And the next time the Russians decide they need to invade an islamic state on their border, let them help them.