On the contrary: NATO is what has stopped another world war. For decades. Non-agression pacts with mutual defense clauses are a pretty stiff deterrent.
The Germans are not oblivious to this fact, so it didn't really come as a surprise when it happened. That's not to say they didn't care of course, as you point out.
The only ones surprised were the ones that actually believe alliances are friendships.
The UN will never solve anything because it requires unanimous support from russia and china on the security council. nato is a defensive alliance that only really comes into effect when a member is attacked. I'm not even sure what pretext allowed nato to get involved here, but Europe basically twiddled their thumbs while genocide happened on the european continent. This only really changed when the US got involved to keep things from spiraling out of control like 1914.
NATO is one-sided alliance in favor of US. It literally makes so that American weapons manufacturers are preferenced over domestic military industry, which now is more or less dead. Europe used to have lots of successful weapons manufacturers. Now NATO is standardized against American industry.
NATO was made for this kind of mutual defense. Unfortunately, NATO is a massive political force that can also be abused for political ends, and no country wants to commit their armed forces to be used as pawns in someone else's war.
Huh? There were Napoleon's Grande Armee composed of allied/subjected Germans, Italians, Spanish, and assorted nationalities invading Moscow in 1812. The Iron Pact was also an alliance. And NATO was founded to compete with the Warsaw Pact, it's their raison d'etre.
Why? It's an open secret that NATO allies spy on each other. Back in the '90s, I used to repeatedly hear that the two biggest foreign intelligence adversaries we had were France and Israel.
NATO is supposed to be an alliance, not a protection agreement. And what is the point of an alliance if your country doesn't have a worthwhile army? Why can't you be asked to hold up your end? Asking you to hold up your end is not "demanding tribute."
It's utterly dishonest to argue that NATO is a defensive alliance in the face of the fact that NATO has been regularly invading countries for many decades. Yugoslavia, Libya, Afghanistan, and Syria are just a few examples.
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