NATO Expansion and the Basic Laws of Stupidity

Goethe once noted: “There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.” The same can be said for stupidity. If and when history books are written in future about our era, Washington’s post-Cold War decision to expand and continue to expand NATO east after it promised Russia there would be no such expansion will be called the most disastrous and stupid foreign policy decision of the 20^th century. Indeed, the decision demonstrates the characteristic of stupidity, as defined by Carlo M. Cipolla in his 1976 The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity (Bologna: il Mulino, 2011). One of the most stupid kind of actions that can be made. This is true because the result of NATO expansion has greatly harmed both the decisionmaker (NATO) and the object of the decision (Russia). Cipolla defines a stupid person as “a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses” (Cipolla, p. 36). Thus, a stupid decision or action is one that produces losses to others and no gain or a loss to the one having made the decision. If we determine that the fruits of NATO expansion have been detrimental not just to Russia, which was the target of expansion, but to NATO itself (and virtually all in international society), then we can conclude that the decision meets the criteria to be characterized as stupid and that those who have taken the decision were stupid in doing so.