NATO and the changing alliances or Russia part of NATO???

NATO, or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, was formed the year I was born, 1949. I was once a part of it — a very small part — serving in Germany as a soldier, part of the U.S.’s NATO contingent (well, actually as far as I was concerned I was just an American GI and that is it).

I thought I understood it, it was an alliance formed by the U.S. and its European allies to fight the advance of our old ally but Cold War foe, The Soviet Union.

Now we have invited Russia, a main part of the former Soviet Union, to all but join the alliance. Many former Eastern European Soviet Block nations and new nations, all of which were part of the old Soviet Block, are members of NATO.

Get this — we want Russia to join with us in a missile defense shield against possible attacks from the Middle East, most notably Iran, and from North Korea, the same North Korea that the Soviet Union and the Communist Chinese helped attack our ally South Korea.

We rebuilt our former enemies in World War II, Japan and Germany, only to watch them rival us economically on the world stage, while in the case of Germany (or formerly West Germany) , especially, protecting them militarily, saving them one heck of a big defense bill over the years (the same goes for the rest of Europe and other nations).

Meanwhile, we (the U.S.) have become wholly dependent upon our former ally in World War II — China — the one we saved from Japan, for our whole economy — they supply much of our manufactured and consumer goods and we use them (China) as a credit card in order to print money for which we really have nothing to back up with.

It’s hard in this world to know who are your friends and who are your adversaries — they seem to be both at different times or all at once.

With the BP oil mess and Katrina and 9/11 as a guide, one wonders just how much security our government provides…

If you stop and really think how unprepared our government and industry (at least BP) was for the Gulf of Mexico oil blowout, you almost have to think about how unprepared we are for most any dire contingency, such as a nuclear strike or a dirty bomb.

The weather or a natural disaster offers a special challenge, because there is nothing you can do to prevent it. But a prepared and willing government can come to the aid of its own people or it can act woefully incompetent, as in the case of Katrina.

The right hand can not know what the left hand is doing or rival government agencies — the CIA and FBI — can allow a situation that results in disaster, such as ignoring terrorists on a watch list, thus allowing them to board and hijack airplanes and fly them into buildings, ala 9/11.

Watchdog agencies can be starved for funds and/or filled with incompetent bureaucrats who take bribes for looking the other way and not making waves, the exact thing they are supposed to do (make waves), resulting in tainted food and oil well blow outs a mile-deep in the ocean, with proper procedures and safeguards ignored, and dangerous and fraudulent financial transactions that endanger our whole economic system.

We all thought for so long that there could never really be another event like the Great Depression because we had safeguards. We shed some of those safeguards in the name of unhindered capitalism and greed some time ago, and the remaining safeguards were useless because regulators looked the other way and watched porn while drawing government paychecks and because in the end nothing really trumps greed.

A lack of confidence that our government is there for us in matters of security is enough to bring the whole system down.