The Great NATO Debate: Allied or Alone?

"Is NATO protecting us, or provoking conflict?"

by Geoff Young

Event bio above for panelist and CPI member Geoff Young

In Dayton, Ohio, on May 1, 2025, I participated in a debate title “Allied or Alone? The Great NATO Debate.” With three NATO supporters and three of us opposing, I thought this would be an excellent opportunity to confront common pro-NATO falsehoods with the truth. The main organizers were David Esrati, an Ohio Democrat who ran for the US House of Representatives in 2022 and Michael Harbaugh, who ran for the same seat, Ohio District 10, in 2024 as an Independent.

The panel consisted of three pro-NATO people - David Esrati, Dr. Verb Washington, a retired colonel in the US Army, and Dr. Grant Neeley, the director of of the Center for Cybersecurity and Data Intelligence - and three anti-NATO people: Michael Harbaugh, Dr. Jonathan Maffay, a long-time peace activist, and me (Geoff Young). David Esrati was the captain of the pro-NATO team and Michael Harbaugh was the captain of the anti-NATO team. The moderator was Dr. Nicholas Ostrum, the director of the Lyman L. Lemnitzer Center for NATO and European Union Studies at Kent State University.

You can watch the 85-minute debate here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vbCLkFVZw0

We anti-NATO people knew pretty much what the pro-NATO people would say: that NATO is a defensive alliance against Soviet aggressiveness in Europe after World War 2, that it kept adding member countries because they were afraid of being attacked by the USSR and later Russia, and that NATO is obviously a good deal because it protects our friends and allies against Russian aggression for a small fraction of the US Defense Department budget. We prepared 2-minute opening statements, 2-minute closing statements, and one question each to ask the pro-NATO team.

Here's my opening statement:

"Socialism was developed in the early 1800s and fascism was developed about a hundred years later. Socialism has always been very popular with working-class people, and fascism has always been dedicated to the destruction of all socialist countries, especially the USSR, and the extermination of all socialists everywhere in the world.

In 1917, the Bolshevik Revolution overthrew the Russian monarchy and formed the Union of Soviet SOCIALIST Republics. The United States, Britain and many other capitalist countries immediately sent troops into the USSR in an attempt to destroy the new government by force. Many American capitalists supported fascism in Italy and Germany in order to create an anti-socialist force against the USSR.

In World War 2, the United States allied with the USSR for 4 years, from the end of 1941 to the end of 1945. When World War 2 ended in 1945 with the victory of the USSR, the USA, Britain, China and many other Allies, the US had a fateful decision to make - Continue cooperating with the USSR or return to its habitual anti-Soviet policies? The ruling class in Britain and the USA decided to make the USSR the enemy without ever asking the American people what we wanted.

NATO formed in 1949 as part of Washington's desire to destroy the USSR forever. It was never a defensive alliance. Basically, the USA took over where Nazi Germany left off. The United States became the Fourth Reich, started the Cold War, and it is still a fascist country today."

Mike Harbaugh focused on the vast amount of money Washington has spent on weapons and war from 1949, the year NATO was founded, to today, where many cities and towns are unable to maintain basic services for our citizens. Jonathan Maffay said NATO is the centerpiece of the entire US worldwide military Empire, and it has become way overextended today.

The pro-NATO team gave the conventional arguments that we were expecting.

My question to the other team was this:

"Since the United Nations was founded in 1945 at the initiative of the Franklin Roosevelt Administration, the United States and Israel have violated the most important provisions of the UN Charter more than any other country. The most important provision of the UN Charter is the absolute prohibition against aggression - invading or bombing other countries. In view of these facts, do you all agree that the United States and Israel should be expelled from the UN pursuant to Article 6 of the UN Charter?"

They responded by saying that we're here to talk about NATO, and Israel has never been a member of NATO.

And here's my closing statement:

"Today, The United States and Israel are the two most hated, despised and feared countries in the world, and NATO is a big part of the reason why. No one likes to be told what they have to do by a superpower and how they have to do it. No one likes to be threatened with economic sanctions, bombings, missile attacks, economic depressions, starvation, international terrorism, and genocide committed by the United States if they don't do exactly what America's ruling class tells them to do.

Fortunately, peace-loving, law-abiding countries like Russia, China, Iran and North Korea have grown strong enough, militarily and economically, to be able to tell Washington to go to hell. The owners and controllers of global financialized capital have already decided to get out of the USA and shift their investments toward the Global South, which is rising as fast as the European Union and the USA are declining. Another Great Depression in America, longer-lasting and worse than the Great Depression in the 1930s, is probably inevitable.

NATO was founded on April 4, 1949. It just had its 76th anniversary a few weeks ago. May 24, 2025 would be the perfect day to declare that NATO has ceased to exist. The Russian people just destroyed NATO's military power by uniting behind Vladimir Putin and defeating NATO's illegal, proxy war against Russia in Eastern Europe from February 2022 to today. The best thing NATO could do for humanity would be to recognize that it has been decisively beaten and disband forever."

I think the pro-NATO panelists weren't expecting what we hit them with. David Esrati spent about a third of his time saying things that made it sound like he was on the anti-NATO side. Verb Washington came the closest to losing his civility when he said a few of my statements were "counterfactual." Several of the people in the audience, most of whom were anti-NATO, told me afterwards that they found my comments very interesting and new to them.

We anti-imperialists should try to set up more debates where we can make arguments that don't ever appear in the mainstream media. We didn't convince the pro-NATO panelists to advocate the permanent end of NATO, but we gave the in-person and virtual audience some ideas they can use when debating Establishment people.

Yours in Peace,
Geoff Young