I'm really old - old enough to remember when true conservatives opposed USA participation in NATO (per 'Mr. Republican' Senator Robert Taft in the late 1940s and into the 1950s). Today I read Paul Craig Roberts - once assistant Secretary of Treasury in the Reagan Administration - say this:
"Unless European governments recognize the danger in Washington's aggression and dissolve NATO, planet earth hasn't long to live."
Thinking of this from a populist stand-point, what has NATO done for us lately? Protect us (USA) from Russia? According to wsj.com article (25 March 2014) - "American spending comprised 72% of all NATO defense expenditures in 2013."
We don't really hear on American MSM that we need to fear a Russian invasion of North America. ("The Russians are coming?") We don't even fear a Russian invasion of the UK or Germany - even Germans and Brits do not fear Russian invasion of the UK or of Germany. Even where MisterCharlie lives in a part of the Homeland where cosmopolitans are rarely seen ... even here in the boonies, we are aware that Russia has taken possession of an obscure place called 'Crimea' that relates somehow to NATO... and then there's something about war in Ukraine? (But Ukraine isn't even a member of NATO?) Lately too, some of us news junkies have even heard that what we really need NATO for is because what we need to fear is a Russian invasion of "the Baltics" - and 'the Baltics' really are members of NATO?
Russia resonates still among us old folk as a truly scarey bogeyman - a real potential adversary. But we never worried about Russia even back in the 1950s. We did have, briefly, a contest with Russia over who would be first to land on Mars ... but we won that handily, didn't we? Same with the Cuban thing. But for Americans born after about 1960, is there really any resonance to the "Russian threat"?
Americans are used to not thinking, of course, about subjects like Russia .. and seriously not thinking about stuff like 'Crimea' and 'Ukraine'. What are those? Names of new bands? Something kids are listening to behind the opacity of their earplugs?
Israel? Yeah, sure, they got their problems there, but no one is really worried we can't handle them, as long as we don't get stupid enough to put American boots on the ground.
Iran? Yeah, well, even out here in the boonies, we occasionally spot a turban or one of those well-wrapped ladies ... so, okay, maybe Iran ... but then come tumbling down the same chute, Syria, Palistan, Somalia, Yemen ... none of them members of NATO ... and 'YEMEN'? You gotta be kidding! Enough already!
So yeah, we really need NATO because we are so afraid the Russians are about to invade Lithuania. Yeah we hear that. But how do real Americans here in the Homeland Heartland translate that? I think we translate it "We need NATO like we need a hole in the head!"