In a message on March 2, I wrote: "Gulf states against which Iran's retaliation has now expanded beyond American military bases to airports and petroleum facilities should be seriously considering the wisdom (or lack thereof) of permitting American military bases on their territory. Objectively, the sole rationale for such bases is to facilitate and support American military action in the region. Accordingly, they do not offer any practical protection to host countries but, rather, effectively declare that the host country views Iran as an enemy and, thereby, makes their countries potential targets in a way that they would not have been in the absence of such bases."
In an article published in February 2025 which I am retransmitting below, I made the argument that entering into an effective vassal-state military alliance with the United States -- and hence, indirectly, with Israel -- has actually diminished the security of other NATO states, involving them in wars in which they would otherwise have had no interest in being involved.
Perhaps, whenever this latest illegal Israeli/American war of aggression comes to an end, at least some NATO states will start to seriously consider the wisdom (or lack thereof) of permitting American military bases on their territory and, indeed, of their continuing membership in the NATO alliance.
Britain's withdrawal from the European Union was a decision of monumental stupidity and self-harm, but withdrawals from the NATO alliance, perhaps led by the singularly courageous government of Spain, which has refused both Donald Trump's ludicrous demand to increase its military spending to 5% of its GNP and Trump's demand to permit the use of American military bases in Spain to pursue his current war against Iran, would constitute decisions of enlightened self-interest.
Trump's furious reaction to the unwillingness of Spain, unlike most other NATO states, to disgrace itself by supporting or being in any way complicit in a blatantly illegal war of aggression, declaring that the United States will "cut off all trade with Spain" and that "We don't want anything to do with Spain," could be viewed as an open invitation to Spain to set a virtuous example by withdrawing from the NATO alliance and, thereby, recovering its full freedom and independence.
Has the World Gone Mad?
John WhitbeckFebruary 27, 2025
Photo by Nsey Benajah
Rational people should share a sense of amazement that virtually all European political “leaders” and Western professional commentators appear to view with shock and horror the possibility that the United States and Russia, the two major nuclear powers with the capacity to destroy human life, might have correct and cooperative, rather than hostile, relations.
One can understand why those financially and/or professionally invested in the for-profit Hate, Fear and War Industry, with its existential need for enemies and threats, would view a world at peace as unthinkable, but why should anyone else do so?
In my youth, the era of “détente” between the United States and the Soviet Union was widely welcomed as an excellent development.
Why should “détente” today be castigated as the ultimate evil of simple minds — “appeasement”?
Another source of rational amazement should be the apparently unanimous belief among European political “leaders” that, if relations between the United States and Russia were no longer to be hostile, so that the United States would no longer see any need for the military support of European “allies” or vassal states, European military spending would need to be significantly increased.
Why? To counter what military threat?
It should be clear that, with the possible exception of the current NATO/Russia proxy war, the wars in which European countries have become directly or indirectly involved in this century — against Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Palestine, none of which posed any conceivable threat to Europe but all of which were perceived as enemies by the United States and/or Israel — involved them because of their relationship as “allies” or vassal states of the United States, a relationship which has dragged them into unnecessary wars rather than protected them from war.
Even the current war in Ukraine was not provoked and perpetuated in defense of any consistent Western principle (https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/02/24/the-territorial-integrity-of-states-vs-the-self-determination-of-peoples) or any genuine European interest but, rather, in furtherance of the decades-long American quest for “full-spectrum dominance” of mankind and the planet.
If European countries were no longer allied with a Russia-hating United States, why would Russia, which in three years of fighting has been unable even to occupy all the territory of the four Russophone-majority oblasts which it formally annexed in September 2022, have any conceivable incentive to attack a NATO country or even a post-NATO European country?
Rationally, if European countries were to achieve independence from American domination and control, whether by their own initiative or by having independence thrust upon them, and, as a result, have no identifiable enemies, real or imagined, they should be able to significantly decrease their military spending and consecrate their freed-up resources to trying to improve the quality of life for their own people.
Has the world gone mad? Or have I?
John V. Whitbeck is a Paris-based international lawyer.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/02/27/has-the-world-gone-mad
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