This longtime critic of NATO came away from a rubber-chicken banquet last weekend feeling all warm and fuzzy about the alliance and our allies. And the food wasn't all that bad, actually.
If you're thinking that attending a dinner with a bunch of NATO and international air force attachés — uniformed diplomats, if you'll allow me for a moment to unfairly summarize these fine folks — would be the most boring thing in the world, I'd like to set the record straight about that. And about a couple of other things, too.
Friday night, my wife Melissa and I were lucky enough to attend just such a dinner down in Colorado Springs, which, as I'm sure you know, is home to multiple Air Force and Space Force facilities. Melissa's best friend from high school — they attended a Department of Defense school at RAF Lakenheath for two years — is the wife of an Air Force major general. He's what my father-in-law, himself a retired fighter pilot, calls a "no-s***t guy," a real warfighter. Jules flew F-16s during multiple tours around the world, sometimes dropping bombs on bad guys. These days he serves in a somewhat more diplomatic role.
(I'm being oblique with names because I'd rather not get anyone in trouble.)
He hosted a weeklong series of conferences with attachés from all over NATO and South Korea, and I might have missed a country or two. The series started in Florida and ended in Colorado on Friday. When all the business was taken care of, they held a small banquet at a local hotel — and invited Melissa and me to join them.
What a night!
Military alliances start with pieces of paper signed by politicians. The wars are fought by guys much lower down the chain. But it's the men and women in uniform in between — the attachés — who form the bonds and grease the wheels so that different countries with different militaries can fight as a team.
These are the men and women whose company Melissa and I enjoyed Friday night.
I got to speak at length with representatives from Spain, from Norway, from Slovakia, from the U.S., and more.
If I had to distill the mood of NATO air forces into just three words, it would be these: concerned, serious, confident.
Yes, there are troubles, mostly political. Lord only knows if the excrement hit the rotating blades tomorrow, how our politicians might fold or what stupid orders they might issue. The Germans spend too little and demand too much. Canada is an unfunny joke. The French are difficult... just so very, very French. But the Poles are arming themselves like there's tomorrow because they know there might not be. Britain is steadfast.
I cannot begin to tell you how impressed I came away with some of NATO's smallest members.
They mean business. The biggest concern I heard wasn't the threat from Russia — although everyone did mention the bear in the living room — but, "Is [my little country] contributing enough?" I was almost embarrassed that anyone should feel that way because even America is falling short of our commitments. There's a major land war in Europe and Communist China getting frisky in the Pacific, yet our defense spending, as a portion of GDP, has fallen to post-World War II lows.
And an Air Force attaché from Norway wants me to know that he wishes his country were doing more? His embarrassment made me embarrassed all over again by the doddering octogenarian in the White House who would rather build near-worthless wind farms than root out the rot in our military and give them the ships and planes they need to fight.
But it isn't all about the hardware. "Wars may be fought with weapons," Gen. George Patton said, "but they are won by men." I got to meet some of the men and women who help make NATO a fighting force, and I came away impressed and relieved.
In the end, we aren't allies with our NATO partners in Europe because of some treaty signed in Washington 74 years ago. We're allies because we share common interests, face common threats, and enjoy working relationships that transcend our petty and shortsighted politicians.
