It is the largest military alliance on the planet, it is more than 70 years old and, for many within NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation), it is only just getting going.
A Cold War creation, NATO was established in 1949 as a bulwark against the colossal Soviet armies based in Eastern Europe in the wake of the Second World War.
This system of US-led collective security, initially consisting of 10 Western European countries, Canada and the United States, helped avert any thoughts by the Soviet Union (USSR) of expanding further westward, helping maintain an uneasy, tension-fraught peace in Europe for decades.
Secretary of State Dean Acheson signs the Atlantic defence treaty for the United States on April 4, 1949, as Vice President Alben W. Barkley, left, and President Harry Truman watch on [File: AP Photo]But NATO has struggled to redefine its role and relevance since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, despite expanding its domains to include outer space and cyberspac
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Alert Americans know that most of the media is no longer in business to seek honest information. The corporations that own the national press pretty much dictate how the news will be covered.
Studies show that about 90 percent of reportage on President Trump was negative. Approximately 65 percent of the coverage of President Biden has been positive. In fact, most of the national press likes Biden and loathes Trump. So the stats are not a surprise.
In 2008, President Bush the Elder, certainly not a bomb-thrower, wrote me a letter that said this about the national press: “I think there is clear favoritism for the liberals and for the democrats. Of course, I may be biased because some like the N.Y. Times (they are the worst) mercilessly hammer the President all the time .”
Saving Freedom: Truman, the Cold War, and the Fight for Western Civilization, by Joe Scarborough
Saving Freedom by Joe Scarborough is a nice summary of how the United States finally broke out of its traditional isolationism and came to take up the leadership of the Free World. Itâs no scholarly work, but I guess it wasnât meant to be.
Whatever the idea, I was a bit disappointed with this one. Scarborough, a former conservative Republican Congressman from the Florida Panhandle and more recently an early morning television talker-interviewer (and anti-Trump scold) is a competent writer and by and large gets his history straight, but the book is rather superficial and its title overdramatized.