While it was contrary to our Founders’ warning to avoid entangling alliances and European wars, we certainly can understand why NATO was created in 1949. The USSR, which President Ronald Reagan would later rightly call an “evil empire,” appeared a burgeoning force. Ensuring his post-WWII domination of Eastern Europe, Soviet despot Joseph Stalin saw to it that communist governments rose to power, by hook or by crook, in seven nations west of his own between 1945 and ’48. And Stalin’s armies became this domination’s guarantor.

The USSR was also attempting to spread its dark creed worldwide. In fact, Soviet defector Yuri Bezmenov estimated that 85 percent of the KGB’s resources were devoted not to espionage, but subversion. So stopping this aggressive leftism was a priority.

In contrast, Western Europe still shared much with the U.S. back then. Though its faith was waning, it was still Christendom, as opposed to the “atheistic communist” persecutors of the Church. It was, to use our provisional political terminology, a classic right-left dichotomy.

(Note: The right-left model is a poor way of defining reality; it reflects the relativism pervading our time. Yet if I speak of being orthodox vs. heterodox, few will know what I’m talking about. So our common political lexicon must suffice for the moment.)

But that time is long past. Approximately a generation and a half ago now, the Berlin Wall fell. The USSR is Russia again and, whatever its faults, the Bear is not spreading communism or any brand of leftism. In fact, the “union” now thus guilty is the EU. This brings us to certain questions:

With NATO’s raison d'être, the Soviets, gone, why does it still exist?

And given that our treaty obligations could draw into a (ultimately nuclear) war with the Kremlin, should we really be risking American blood defending left-wing Europe from right-wing Russia?

It’s not as if others haven’t noted Western Europe’s left-wing (read: tyrannical) shift. In February at the Munich Security Conference, Vice President J.D. Vance castigated the woke Europeans for trampling free speech. He said the greatest threat to the continent wasn’t China or Russia, but “from within.”

Then, just this Friday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned the Europeans that mass migration was threatening their culture’s “erasure”—and the NATO alliance.

“You go to these NATO meetings, what they will tell you is — ‘our shared history, our shared legacy, our shared values, our shared priorities.’ That's what they talk about as the reason for this alliance,” Rubio told the Washington Examiner. Erase what’s shared, however, “then you just have a straight-up defense agreement,” Rubio explained. “That’s all you have.”

Really, though, how much is still shared? Is a defense agreement already all we have? Let’s examine our East-West ideological pole shift:

• European pseudo-elites have flooded their continent with millions of unassimilable foreigners, many Muslim, to the point that “no-go zones” now exist in their cities. When this is criticized, too, authorities may arrest people for anti-immigration/immigrant “hate speech.” Epitomizing this mentality, Swedish multiculturalist Mona Sahlin, commenting on her land’s Islamization in 2001, actually said that “the Swedes must be integrated into the new Sweden; the old Sweden is never coming back.” Russia, however, explicitly denounced this agenda in a 2014 document titled “Foundations of the State Cultural Policy.” It rejects “such principles as multiculturalism and tolerance,” the Kremlin stated, and those “imposing alien values on society.”

• Along with many other Europeans, Finnish politician Päivi Räsänen and Lutheran Bishop Juhana Pohjola have been charged with “hate speech” for espousing the biblical/authentically Christian view of homosexuality. Meanwhile, Russia has outlawed homosexual propaganda in media, films, books, advertising, online content, and public spaces.

• In this vein, the EU has decreed that faux (“same-sex”) “marriages” performed in any member state must be recognized by every member state. In contrast, a recent-years Russian constitutional amendment explicitly defines marriage as a man-woman union.

• While the West is now thoroughly permeated by moral relativism/nihilism—and derivatives such as cultural and religious relativism—the Kremlin has rejected it. For example, while criticizing the West in a 2013 keynote speech, Russian president Vladimir Putin said, “Policies are being pursued that place on the same level a multi-child family and a same-sex partnership, a faith in God and a belief in Satan. This is the path to degradation.”

• In Europe, Christian street preachers have been arrested and deference is shown to Islam. In Russia, though, a law acknowledges Orthodoxy’s (Christianity’s) “special role” in the country’s history and culture. And Putin himself has warned about dispensing with “Christian values.” The 180-degree turn is so profound that The Washington Times asked on this matter in a 2014 headline, “Who’s ‘godless’ now?”

• France became in 2024 the world’s first country to make prenatal infanticide a constitutional right (New York State followed suit, too). Russia, though far from perfect on this issue, has moved to tighten abortion restrictions. Moreover, the Kremlin also encourages fecundity by paying women who have babies.

• It once made news when Russia imprisoned 54 people in 2015 for “hate speech.” In the EU today, perhaps tens of thousands are persecuted for hate speech every year. Britain leads the pack, with 12,000 arrests annually under its “Communications Act.”

So just as the Soviets did during the Cold War, today’s Russian patriots might call the West “decadent”—only, now they have a point.

Of course, some (paging Bill O’Reilly) will scoff here, saying Putin is a thuggish demagogue who takes positions of convenience, not conviction. He’s a bad man, fair enough. But I also consider UK prime minister Keir Starmer a bad man. In fact, few leaders have morals rising above those of a disbarred lawyer-turned used car salesman.

It’s also true that Putin’s lofty words may be mere convenient posturing. Yet how many European leaders believe all the woke drivel they disgorge? And, frankly, I’d rather have a politician supporting the right things for the wrong reasons than the wrong things for the wrong reasons.

All this said, however, the bottom line is that today’s Russia is far more traditional than post-Christian Western Europe. So while Western officials will sometimes warn, most fancifully (ginning up support for Ukraine), that the Kremlin may soon invade the West, a question should be asked:

So what?

What would be lost if, by some miracle, Russia ended up realizing Napoleon’s dream and ruled Europe?

Europeans wouldn’t be able to have their “Pride” parades (illegal in Russia) with men marching mostly naked?

The Sexual Devolution would be deep-sixed?

The Russian flag would replace the rainbow one?

Third World migration would be ended?

Borders would matter again?

Fecundity would be favored?

Christianity would be elevated?

Abortion would increasingly be anathema?

Children wouldn’t be told they could switch sexes at will?

There’s a reason UK paper The Telegraph boldly wrote Wednesday that “[p]atriots should not fight for the British state.” And given this, should Americans even think about fighting for the British state—and the rest of Europe? Should we shed American blood for a fallen continent, let alone risk nuclear war?

The prophetic G.K. Chesterton wrote in 1926 that the “madness of tomorrow is not in Moscow, but much more in Manhattan”—and now, we can add, in Brussels. Chesterton also noted that the “true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.” But this raises a final question:

Can we even hate what is in front of us now—forget loving what is behind us—without, possibly, turning around?

If the illegal migrants, sexual devolutionaries and Christophobic ne’er-do-wells want to fight to save decadent Europe, they can knock themselves out. As for yours truly, call me up when there’s a proper Crusade intent on doing what Crusades do.

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