NATO Country Complaints against the US

Open Email to:
Rep. Ed Royce, Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. 
Sen. Robert Menendez, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.

Dear Rep. Royce and Sen. Menendez,
The Washington Times says, "NATO allies criticize U.S. for being caught off guard by Russia’s military buildup."
Before we take up the question of whether that criticism is justified, we probably should take a look at history.
The idea of a Soviet bloc, which means a combination of countries involving Russia leading various other members of the group, originated in the Russian Revolution of 1917. In the 1920s, Joseph Stalin took power, with strong reinforcement of that idea.
With the surrender of Germany in May 1945, Europe was completely devastated. The only existing military force in Europe was the Soviet Union, and it rapidly added Eastern Europe and North Asian countries to its Union.
To limit the Russian aggression, the US established the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), soliciting members from as far north as the Baltic through Spain on the south, and as far east as the Russians had not already grabbed. There were a few ancillary countries, such as Turkey, which is primarily Asian, and Canada. The present NATO list consists of 28 countries. The US selling point was that each NATO country would have the responsibility to militarily come to the aid of any other NATO country which was being militarily threatened. This was actually a sham, because none of the NATO countries with the possible exception of Turkey, had any military capability. The essence was that the US, as part of NATO, would have the full responsibility of protecting all NATO countries against occupation by the Soviet bloc. This was the essence of the Cold War.
It is now 49 years since the German surrender and the complete devastation of Europe. During that time, all of the European countries have essentially recovered from the war devastation with the help of the US Marshall plan. During that time each of these countries would have normally had an opportunity to develop its own military might to protect itself against any Soviet invasion, but was not allowed to do so by previous limitations imposed by the US. In effect, the US had two worries; it did not want to allow a resurgence of military might within one country, such as Germany, which would presumably require US participation in another third world war, and it did not want to allow aggression by the Soviet Union. Accordingly, it did nothing by sticking with the NATO program.
The US program was completely effective during the Cold War years of 1947 to 1991, at which time the Soviet Union collapsed. The collapse was brought about by Ronald Reagan through enforced military expenditures, which the Russians could not afford.
It has now been 23 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union, but the basic idea of a country group, with Russia as the leader, has not dissipated. It is now being revised by Putin. In the 23 years wherein Russia was inactive, the only motivating force for the continuation of NATO and use of continued US armies of occupation was the fear of a revitalized military Germany. However with many years of sociological change, that fear seems to be unjustified, and it would have been logical to have the US start withdrawing its armies of occupation at least 10 to 20 years ago and simultaneously begin shutting down NATO, to eliminate the US as the predominant military force. In other words, the US should have previously foreseen it has no responsibility to protect European countries in perpetuity one from the other, nor even protect those countries from Soviet aggression. The NATO countries have the economic wherewithal and the capability for cooperation, so that they could have established their own union to protect against the Soviets and against each other.
So, we can now answer the question of whether the NATO allies are justified in complaining that the US was caught off guard by the Russian military buildup. The first answer is "yes", because the whole objective of NATO was that the US would be responsible for militarily protecting any NATO countries, and a Russian military buildup military is a potential threat to NATO countries, the most obvious of which is Poland. On the other hand, the answer is "no", because while the US has given assurance of protection, it should also be self-evident that each of the NATO countries has an obligation to protect itself from member countries and from outsiders, such as the Soviet Union.