Reconsidering America’s role in NATO isn’t one of them. NATO also became a vehicle for rehabilitating the Axis powers — Germany and Italy — under the victors’ tutelage. During the Vietnam War, America was so free of worry about the Soviet threat that it essentially milked its conventional forces in Europe to support its war in Indochina. In the early 1970s, Senator Mike Mansfield, a Montana Democrat, led an effort to cut the American troop presence in Europe. It lost momentum in part because the Soviet Union conducted an ill-fated military buildup, which contributed to its economic failures in the 1980s.

Source: New York Times March 10, 2019 22:52 UTC