Is it unreasonable to expect simple logic?

Honestly, my dear readers, I’ve been trying to pivot away from deconstructing Mitt Romney’s foreign policy musings.  After a half-year of watching GOP presidential debates and then reading Romney’s blinkered musings on various hot spots, I think this horse has pretty much been beaten to death. 

Except that, with Romney’s NATO Chicago Tribune op-ed this past weekend, I fear he and his campaign have crossed the line from really stupid foreign policy pronouncements to logically contradictory ones. 

Here’s how Romney’s op-ed opens and closes:

NATO has kept the peace in Europe for more than six decades. But today, the alliance is at a crossroads. It is time to speak candidly about the challenges facing the United States and our allies and how to rise to them.

In a post-Cold War world, territorial defense of Europe is no longer NATO’s one overriding mission. Instead, the alliance has evolved to uphold security interests in distant theaters, as in Afghanistan and Libya. Yet through all the changes to the global landscape, two things have remained constant about the alliance. For it to succeed, it requires strong American leadership. And it also requires that member states carry their own weight….

At this moment of both opportunities and perils — an Iranian regime with nuclear ambitions, an unpredictable North Korea, a revanchist Russia, a China spending furiously on its own military, to name but a few of the major challenges looming before us — the NATO alliance must retain the capacity to act.

As president, I will work closely with our partners to bolster the alliance. In that effort, words are not enough.

I will reverse Obama-era military cuts. I will not allow runaway entitlement spending to swallow the defense budget as has happened in Europe and as President Obama is now allowing here.

I really like his first paragraph… and then we run into a whole mess of problems.  In ascending order of importance:

1)  What the f**k does NATO have to do with either North Korea or China?  Seriously, I get that NATO has expanded to out-of-theater operations, but does anyone seriously think that German forces are going to be deployed along the Pacific Rim?  I didn’t think so.   

2)  In what way is Russia "revanchist"?  Oh, sure, the Russians are chatty, but does anyone seriously believe that, right now, Moscow poses any kind of security threat to the rest of Europe?  One semi-competent victory over a former Soviet repiblic does not constitute revanchism, and swelling domestic discontent and the Mother of All Demographic Crunches suggests that Vladimir Putin will be way to preoccupied with the problems within his own borders to be much of a problem in Europe. 

3)  There’s an oldie but a goodie of an article on NATO by Mancur Olson and Richard Zeckhauser entitled "An Economic Theory of Alliances." Romney’s advisors should take a gander.  The basic point is that in an alliance containing a single superpower, the rest of the alliance members will tend to free-ride off of the hegemonic actor.  In essence, Romney’s op-ed doubles down on that free-rider logic.  If Romney commits to boosting U.S. defense spending, exactly what incentive does this give our NATO allies to boost theirs? 

4)  So Romney wants to "speak candidly about the challenges facing the United States and our allies and how to rise to them"?  OK…  and apparently the way for NATO to face these challenges is to "work closely with our partners to bolster the alliance."  That, and reverse Obama’s defense cuts. 

To which I have to say:  that’s it?!  Really?!  If this is Romney speaking candidly, then this SNL skit is more true-to-life than I realized. 

Am I missing anything?  Seriously, am I?  I don’t like it when a guy with a 50/50 chance of being president in January 2013 has abandoned the Logic Train.