Opinion by James Hohmann: Why Biden should deliver a European history lesson during the State of the Union
on Thursday, he declared that friend and foe alike should harbor no doubts that “the United States will defend every inch of NATO territory with the full force of American power.”
That was reassuring, but he needs to explain to the biggest domestic audience he’ll have all year why he’s deploying additional U.S. troops to Germany, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Romania. It’s not enough to use buzzwords such as “territorial integrity.” The greatest threat to European security since World War II calls for more than box-checking.It’s worth describing to Americans who might not remember, or never learned, why we joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949.
Beyond deterring Soviet aggression, Washington hoped NATO would make future wars on the continent less likely by integrating defense networks and discouraging the revival of militaristic nationalism. After the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, welcoming former members of the Warsaw Pact made strategic sense for similar reasons. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine, which isn’t a member, validates the importance of the alliance.
Biden doesn’t need to be exhaustive. He doesn’t need to detour into how a revanchist Russia is violating commitments under the Budapest Memorandum and the Minsk agreements. But he should justify why keeping so many troops in Europe is vital to the cause of human freedom and plainly in our national interest.It’s prudent to be cautious about drawing World War II analogies, but it’s proper to recount the carnage that followed America’s turning inward during the 1930s.
Biden’s ode to NATO ought not sound partisan. This is no occasion for dunking on ex-president Donald Trump, who called the alliance “” in 2017. This is a night when lawmakers should wear blue and yellow to show solidarity with Ukraine. A strong ovation from both sides of the aisle for NATO might show 18- to -29-year-olds that the United States takes her alliances seriously. Young people in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan would also take heart.
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