The New NATO
5th April 2026
When is an alliance not an alliance? When it’s NATO. I propose a new acronym: NATOH, for Not About To Offer Help. The help being asked right now is the bare minimum, and against an enemy that threatens most of the countries of NATO, too – if not as obviously in the verbal sense as it threatens the US, then even more in the geographic sense.
The nations of NATO other than the US have long been lacking in terms of financial support for the organization. In addition, in the shadow of America’s protective umbrella they mostly decided that they don’t need a robust defensive military capability of their own. They also decided to let in enough Muslims from foreign countries to make a difference in their internal politics. But I think even without the latter pressure, many of them would still be balking at helping – and by “helping” I mean something as simple as letting us use their airspace.
They really do think the crocodile will eat them last. And several of them really hate Donald Trump. Do they not even see Iran as dangerous? They probably consider their own Muslim populations and their own Jew-haters more immediately dangerous – and may also think that, if push ever came to shove with Iran, the US would help them anyway as it did big-time in the days before there even was a NATO.