The chance to save money on the Defense Department is here again.

American membership in NATO, the consortium formed after World War II to fight the Red Empire, has been a dubious expenditure of tax dollars since the 1990s when the empire collapsed.

But now more than ever, we have the opening, and the duty, to say goodbye.

The reason is that seven new nations are invited to become members in May 2004. All are former communist enemies, once members of NATO’s malevolent nemesis, the Warsaw Pact.

The Baltic Republics joined, as did Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. In 1999, Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia joined. They too were members of the Warsaw Pact, whose military forces were arrayed and prepared to conquer western Europe.

Indeed, nearly all of NATO’s former enemies are members, and if the seven invited this week join, the number of member nations will be 26. Only Russia remains out in the cold, and it might not be long before Mr. Putin starts knocking on the door.

NATO has no enemy to fight. If Russia counts as one, then NATO has just one enemy, which it can handle without the United States.

The obvious question? If NATO was a Fortress West against the Warsaw Pact and Soviet Union, but neither exists any more, why should the United States expend its resources on the organization? The question should have been asked when the Soviet Union collapsed more than a decade ago, but it is even more pertinent now.

But that question raises only a strategic reality.

As American taxpayers are concerned, dollars and cents are more pressing. Dumping NATO would save the United States a bundle in manpower and machinery.

More than 70,000 troops, with tanks, planes and the other equipage for war, are stationed in Germany. They have been garrisoned there since the end of World War II, again, as a force to grapple with an expected Soviet juggernaut.

Once prepared for World War III, these soldiers are idle precisely because NATO comprises its former enemies. What are these Americans defending, and from whom are they defending it?

These are not questions anyone wants to answer, least of all anyone in the political establishment. Human Events, the spirited conservative weekly, demonstrated that when it polled our elected representatives with the questions.

Either no one knew the answer or they simply played mute.

You certainly won’t hear it from Republicans, particularly with Bush and Cheney pounding the drums for war.

If the American role in NATO has ended, then the significance of membership, particularly because of its expanding roster, has changed. Because NATO is prepared to meet any threat anywhere in the world, as press reports have it, any conflict NATO enters would involve the United States.

NATO has become tripwire for American involvement in a foreign war that might be none of its business.

To some degree, that has always been true. A Soviet attack 40 years ago would have triggered American involvement in another war for Europe.

But back then, the Soviet Union was a genuine menace to the United States, and NATO membership was vital to American national security. Better to fight the Reds in Europe than here.

Now, as NATO’s old enemies become its new members, the grounds for American membership have evaporated. The Europeans don’t need us.

It’s time to get out.

R. Cort Kirkwood is managing editor of the Daily News-Record in Harrisonburg, Va. His e-mail address is: kirkwood@shentel.net.