Looking Back at 75 Years of NATO
In this panel discussion, three experts discuss how NATO morphed into a global linchpin of instability and a failed vehicle of US power projection.
On April 4, 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was founded in Washington, DC. To commemorate the 75th anniversary of the world’s largest military alliance, the American Committee for US-Russia Accord and The Nation’s publisher, Katrina vanden Heuvel, convened a panel with Kyoto University’s Neutrality Studies featuring three reputable thinkers on international relations: Jack Matlock, the last US ambassador to the Soviet Union; professor John Mearsheimer, one of the world’s preeminent realist thinkers; and Anatol Lieven,renowned journalist and senior fellow of the Quincy Institute.
We cannot back down
We now confront a second Trump presidency.
There’s not a moment to lose. We must harness our fears, our grief, and yes, our anger, to resist the dangerous policies Donald Trump will unleash on our country. We rededicate ourselves to our role as journalists and writers of principle and conscience.
Today, we also steel ourselves for the fight ahead. It will demand a fearless spirit, an informed mind, wise analysis, and humane resistance. We face the enactment of Project 2025, a far-right supreme court, political authoritarianism, increasing inequality and record homelessness, a looming climate crisis, and conflicts abroad. The Nation will expose and propose, nurture investigative reporting, and stand together as a community to keep hope and possibility alive. The Nation’s work will continue—as it has in good and not-so-good times—to develop alternative ideas and visions, to deepen our mission of truth-telling and deep reporting, and to further solidarity in a nation divided.
Armed with a remarkable 160 years of bold, independent journalism, our mandate today remains the same as when abolitionists first founded The Nation—to uphold the principles of democracy and freedom, serve as a beacon through the darkest days of resistance, and to envision and struggle for a brighter future.
The day is dark, the forces arrayed are tenacious, but as the late Nation editorial board member Toni Morrison wrote “No! This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”
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Onwards,
Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editorial Director and Publisher, The Nation
