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Saving NATO II

ruxted

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Saving NATO II

A deeply divided NATO held ministerial level meetings recently with a Canadian threat to withdraw from Afghanistan hanging over its head. Prime Minister Harper has, correctly in The Ruxted Group’s estimation, suggested that "NATO's own reputation and future will be in jeopardy"1 if it cannot get its act together and figure out a way to win in Afghanistan.

In an effort to forestall a NATO failure a panel of distinguished retired military commanders2 have reviewed the current situation and have proposed a new grand strategy for a much-reformed NATO and, indeed, the West in a recent paper prepared for the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) (hereafter “the paper” or “Paper”).

The Ruxted Group accepts the paper’s broad analyses of the challenges ahead and of the grand strategy proposed, but we dispute the paper’s main finding that an enlarged and reformed NATO can or should be the key actor when complex military operations need to be planned, coordinated, mounted and managed on behalf of the United Nations (UN).

The paper’s distinguished authors begin by enumerating six challenges the whole world will face:

1. Demography - population growth and change across the globe will swiftly change the world we knew;

2. Climate change - is leading to a new type of politics;

3. Energy security – the supply and demand of individual nations and the weakening of the international market infrastructure for energy distribution make the situation more precarious than ever;

4. The rise of the irrational and/or the discounting of the rational - though seemingly abstract, this problem is demonstrated in deeply practical ways. There are soft examples, such as the cult of celebrity, and there are the harder examples, such as the decline of respect for logical argument and evidence, and a drift away from science. The ultimate example is the rise of religious fundamentalism;

5. The weakening of the nation state - that coincides with the weakening of world institutions, including the UN and regional organisations such as NATO; and

6. The dark side of globalisation - interconnectedness has its drawbacks. These include internationalised terrorism, organised crime, the rapid spread of disease, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and asymmetric threats from proxy actors or the abuse of financial and energy leverage. Migration continues to provide challenges across the world; globalised threats are wide in scale and unprecedented in complexity.

Source: Paper, pps. 14/15

Taken together, the paper’s authors conclude, and we agree, these challenges mean decades, even generations of conflict which we, the US-led, law-abiding, secular Western democracies, cannot escape. They conclude that there is: a new form of warfare that abuses leverage in finance, energy and information technology. War could be waged without a single bullet being fired, and the implications of this need to become part of strategic and operational thinking. The threats today are a combination of violent terrorism against civilians and institutions, wars fought by proxy by states that sponsor terrorism, the behaviour of rogue states, the actions of organised international crime, and the coordination of hostile action through abuse of non-military means. These dangerous and complex challenges cannot be dealt with by military means alone. The West needs to agree on a new concerted strategy that would include the use of all available instruments, and to prepare for those global and regional challenges that we can predict, as well as those we cannot. Source: Paper, pps. 44/45

The Ruxted Group agrees with most of the analysis but we part company on the “threat” posed by the rise of Asia. We do not believe that it is a zero sum game of Asia vs. the traditional West (which includes e.g. Australia and Japan); rather, we prefer to take a free market perspective and assume that the rising economic, social and political tides in Asia will lift our boats, too. Further, since the challenges we face are global it stands to reason that we need a global response – one that must include friends and traditional allies from the Asia Pacific region.

The Paper moves on to address existing international security capabilities, from a wholly Eurocentric or, at best, North Atlantic perspective, concluding that:

1. The United Nations remains a vital tool and should play a decisive role, but it is not capable of doing so;

2. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) is useful in many respects, especially because both Russia and the USA are members. It has a mechanism for the peaceful settlement of disputes among its members, but it lacks a broad vision and a common strategy;

3. The European Union (EU) is a unique international organisation, partly supranational and partly a confederation. It has brought prosperity to its citizens and has succeeded in maintaining peace and eliminating war among its members. The EU also has political weaknesses, and it lacks unity. In areas of security and geopolitics, there are many internal differences concerning the status of the transatlantic alliance including the relationship with Russia and issues surrounding the Mediterranean and the Middle East; and

4. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has been the most successful political organisation and military alliance in recent history, having managed to settle the Cold War peacefully and on its own terms. Despite its success, NATO faces serious challenges in Afghanistan and has lost the momentum required for transformation of its forces. NATO is, therefore, in danger of losing its credibility. In addition, the organisation seems to need an adequate vision for the future, including an effective strategy. It lacks capabilities, and its constituent nations are showing a marked lack of will for it to prevail. Unreformed, NATO will not be able to meet the challenges it faces now or in the future. NATO’s effectiveness is further constrained by the differences of opinion between the US and Europe, as well as by differences within Europe about the role and use of war, about hard and soft power, and about the legality of armed intervention. European NATO members are also divided among themselves about the size, role and scope of NATO. One important difference among Europeans concerns the range of NATO’s involvement: one view holds that NATO should be focused on Western security and should not extend its competence or its membership worldwide. In this vein, certain members are also opposed to extending NATO membership to non-North Atlantic nations, such as some of the democracies of the Pacific.

Source: Paper, pps. 71/75

The currently vexing problems of national caveats and sharing of intelligence are well-presented in the paper; it is hard to form a team-approach when each player, for national political reasons, applies different caveats to its forces and relies upon different intelligence estimates. Part of this problem is created by the very size of NATO which, later, the authors propose to enlarge. NATO, like the EU, is, simply, too big, too divided and too political to bring forward a tight, cohesive plan for the sorts of complex military operations that will confront us in the future.

The paper concludes that there is a serious shortfall between the threats facing the world, not just the West, and the existing capabilities of e.g. the UN and NATO.

The authors posit (p. 85) that all is not lost because, and here we agree: “What we do have, however, are common aims, values and interests, and these alone provide a sufficient basis on which to design a new global strategy – one that appreciates the complexity and unpredictability, and that links all the instruments and capabilities together. Looking at the scale of trends, challenges and threats, we cannot see a solution in America, Europe, or any individual nation acting alone. What we need is a transatlantic alliance capable of implementing a comprehensive grand strategy that is integrated, both nationally and among allies.”

Ruxted takes great issue with one word of this assessment. The authors should have said and the leaders of the secular, law abiding democracies must insist that “what we need to is a global alliance capable of implementing a comprehensive grand strategy,” etc.

The central issue, the one the paper’s authors got right, is that the problems and challenges are global – they are not, in the main, in and around Europe and the North Atlantic. The ‘cockpit’ is, now, as it has been so often in history, in West and Central Asia and it is likely to shift towards Africa sooner rather than later. It is highly unlikely that Eurocentric or, at best, North Atlantic solutions are going to work all that well.

The Ruxted Group agrees with the paper’s broad thrust. The proposed new grand-strategy aims to preserve peace, values, free trade and stability. It seeks as much certainty as possible for the member nations, the resolution of crises by peaceful means and the prevention of armed conflict. In doing so, it aims to reduce the reasons for conflict and – should all attempts to find peaceful solutions fail – to defend the member states’ territorial integrity and protect their citizens’ way of life, including their values and convictions. Source: p. 92

The authors propose (Paper, p. 106) a clear, simple and, in our view, workable grand-strategy. But, despite the paper’s many, many excellent analyses and deductions the authors end up making the wrong conclusion because about implementing that strategy because, we think, of their highly Eurocentric views. NATO, even an expanded alliance,3 cannot meet the objectives the UN will set because NATO will still be centred on the divided and divisive Europe.

The paper correctly points out that the problems facing us are global in nature but the paper then proposes only a ‘North Atlantic’ solution. Ruxted repeats: that is not going to be good enough. NATO should be maintained, enlarged and reformed but it needs to be steered, in the purely military sphere, by a small, nimble, global alignment (rather than a formal alliance) of internationally respected (hopefully trusted), secular, law abiding democracies that have similar (even shared) intelligence systems and military standards. The Ruxted Group has proposed in the past and continues to suggest that this alignment must include the USA (for credibility) and should also include trusted members from the Americas (Canada), Europe (the United Kingdom) and the Asia-Pacific region (Australia, New Zealand and Singapore). Other qualified nations will be associated with the group; countries like Chile, Denmark, India, Japan, the Netherlands and Norway might be amongst them.

The world, connected or not, is dangerous and is growing more so. Existing international institutions (the UN, NATO, etc) are ill-suited to protect the world from itself. All can and should be reformed but a new global alignment of traditionally law biding, secular democracies is required to lead reformed regional groups, like NATO, in creating and managing the five-point strategy outlined above to serve our own and the UN’s interests – such leadership is especially necessary when ‘enforcement’ is the order of the day.

Canada needs to have its voice heard in the world. Canadians want to contribute, actively, to the quest for world peace and security and they want their ‘values’ to animate any grand strategy which might involve Canada. Therefore, Canada should whine less and work assiduously, albeit quietly, to save NATO from itself and, more importantly, to create a new ‘alignment’ of like-minded, respected democracies which we can join with confidence and pride.


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1. See: http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=290006
2. General (ret.) Dr. Klaus Naumann, KBE Former Chief of the Defence Staff, Germany and Former Chairman of NATO’s  Military Committee; General (ret.) John Shalikashvili Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States of America and Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander in Europe; Field Marshal The Lord Inge, KG, GCB, PC Former Chief of the Defence Staff of the United Kingdom; Admiral (ret.) Jacques Lanxade Former Chief of the Defence Staff of France and Former Ambassador; and General (ret.) Henk van den Breemen Former Chief of the Defence Staff of the Netherlands
3. See ‘Enlargement and the three circles’ pps. 132/136 of the paper

 
Does NATO need to be saved?  Is it necessary or desirable to be chaining our foreign and defence policy to the 4 jets that Belgium may provide?
 
See Ruxted of about 14 months ago where in the question was posed: Is NATO still the cornerstone of our foreign policy or has it morphed into a stumbling block?

But, see also, this thread. There are still real and potential security problems facing Europe and we, Canada, have a vital interest in having a free, prosperous Europe as, at least, a trade partner.

I believe we, Canada, should work, as Ruxted suggested, to help NATO save itself, from itself so that it can meet Europe’s legitimate security needs.

I do not believe NATO is capable of leading and managing ISAF and I doubt it can reform itself in any meaningful way in the near future so as to be able to lead and manage the sorts of tasks (in Africa and Asia) that I believe will face the UN (and that the UN will need to contract out) in that same near future. Therefore we need, urgently, a new top level alignment of interoperable military powers that can plan, coordinate, mount, lead and manage ‘coalitions of the willing’ in a wide range of complex (three block way type) military operations anywhere in the world.

So: Yes, NATO is worth saving but not because it can or should conduct out of area operations.

One key to reforming NATO, in my opinion is that the US must withdraw NATO assigned/earmarked troops from Europe so that the security of Europe becomes a European responsibility, backed by the USA’s strategic power. Canada and the USA should remain fully committed to the defence of the North Atlantic and the sea lines of communication which are essential for Europe’s security. 
 
Roger - I read the articles and then re-read your post.  So, NATO is not worth saving.  It should be dramatically altered to be a Euro-Defence organization (which the EU probably has covered off anyways) with some outside imput. 

Foreign "Cabinet Wars" are not what NATO was designed for or has the political will or structure to prosecute and we in Canada need a new organization (your alignment of interoperable military powers - which I see as ABCA + some extras) to fill this gap.  Canada's overseas commitments will not be met when we plan policies around Dutch domestic politics.  Sounds like we should let NATO die and have the new group draw something up with the EU....
 
No, I don’t think we should let NATO wither and die. I think there is till some life in its old, original and only valid role: deterring the Russians.

There are some, notably in France, who do want an exclusively European alliance, with no American leadership, or direct participation (although even the French admit they need the US strategic deterrent because without it they are military eunuchs, fir only to guard the harem). That is not in our best interests.

We want Europe to succeed as a free, prosperous market for our goods and services and as a bulwark against Russia – which, over the next few decades, I doubt will become anything like the ”partner in the quest for peace and prosperity” Bill Clinton though he glimpsed in 1994. But: I do think we should require the Europeans to bear the entire land/air burden of the defence of their own homelands – as we should bear that burden for ourselves. The US should offer its strategic deterrent to all nations that are pledged to peace, democracy and the rule of law – including Europe.

I am convinced that NATO, even if it is thoroughly reformed, cannot be the military `sub-contractor` the UN so desperately needs. NATO`s fundamental flaw is that it is a North Atlantic or, worse, European alliance, and the world, the UN, needs a global body – ABCA+ fits the bill.

I`m repeating myself, but: the new alignment ought not to be a formal alliance – some of NATO’s weakness results from the fact that it is a formal political alliance with all the political issues that obtain from that status. (I don’t have the book at hand (I’m away from home) but in Present at the Creation Dean Acheson railed against Mike Pearson for trying to inject too much politics into the North Atlantic Treaty. I think the experience of 60 years shows that Acheson was wise and Pearson was (idealistically) foolish.) Although I say ABCA+ works I think we must eschew any suggestion of either the Anglosphere or an ‘all white’ club – neither will be acceptable to the rest of the world. The alignment needs members of its core group like India and Singapore, maybe Malaysia (a formally Islamic state), too. That being said, the group must be small or else it will fall into NATO’s other weakness: size. As the authors of the paper cited in the Ruxted article pointed out (when they recommended that a reformed NATO have a core group) 25+ countries cannot plan and control anything.

We need to do two things at once:

• Protect NATO from itself so that it can, over time, reform itself and get back to the only legitimate task it can have; and

• Start leading the way in creating the new alliance – just as Louis St Laurent was amongst the leaders in creating NATO sixty years ago.
 
Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s Globe and Mail is an article that illustrates NATO’s dilemma:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080210.wafghangates0210/BNStory/Afghanistan/home
Gates urges NATO allies to do more in Afghanistan

ANDREW GRAY

Reuters

February 10, 2008 at 8:18 AM EST

MUNICH, Germany — U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates made a direct appeal to Europeans on Sunday to support the war in Afghanistan, warning that violence and terrorism could surge worldwide if NATO was defeated there.

While admitting U.S. policy mistakes – and his own role in one of them – Gates urged the allies to come together in the fight against Islamist militants in Afghanistan and said the credibility of NATO itself was at stake.

"The threat posed by violent Islamic extremism is real – and it is not going to go away," Mr. Gates told an annual gathering of security and military experts in Munich, Germany.

"I am concerned that many people on this continent may not comprehend the magnitude of the direct threat to European security," said Mr. Gates, admitting public support for the war in Afghanistan was weak in Europe.

His speech was the latest move in a campaign he has undertaken – sometimes quietly, sometimes through blunt public statements – to persuade NATO allies to supply more troops and resources for the mission.

Although France has indicated a willingness to send more troops, Germany has been adamant that it cannot do more.

Mr. Gates said NATO could not afford "the luxury" of letting some nations conduct less dangerous missions while others did more fighting and dying – a remark which appeared aimed at Germany, which confines its forces to the safer north of Afghanistan.

After his speech, several German politicians criticized Mr. Gates, with one accusing him of public "finger pointing", but the Pentagon chief said he had not meant to single out specific countries and called Germany "a little overly sensitive."

"This is a problem that the alliance has, not that any individual country has," Mr. Gates said. "The finger was never pointed in Germany's direction."

Mr. Gates branded Islamist militancy a movement built on false success, saying "about the only thing they have accomplished recently is the deaths of thousands of innocent Muslims while trying to create discord across the Middle East."

"What would happen if the false success they proclaim became real success – if they triumphed in Iraq or Afghanistan, or managed to topple the government of Pakistan? Or a major Middle Eastern government?" he asked.

"With safe havens in the Middle East, and new tactics honed on the battlefield and transmitted via the Internet, violence and terrorism worldwide could surge," he said.

Mr. Gates cited more than a dozen attacks or plots against European targets, including bombings in London and Madrid, and recalled the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

"Imagine if Islamic terrorists had managed to strike your capitals on the same scale as they struck in New York," he said.

"For the United States, the lessons we have learned these past six years – and in many cases re-learned – have not been easy ones," Mr. Gates said. "We have stumbled along the way, and we are still learning."

Mr. Gates said the Sept. 11 attacks were especially poignant as the United States had been heavily involved in Afghanistan in the 1980s only to turn its back on the country after Soviet troops withdrew and it become a safe haven for al-Qaeda.

He described the decision to abandon Afghanistan as "a grievous error, for which I was at least partly responsible."

Mr. Gates was a senior official in the CIA when it helped mujahideen guerrillas fight the Soviets and later served as U.S. deputy national security adviser and then CIA director.

We, the NATO nations and people in them, are deeply divided. Some of us, ( Infidel-6, Secretary Gates and I, for example) do indeed see that “the threat posed by violent Islamic extremism is real – and it is not going to go away” and we see it as “the pinnacle issue of our generation”. Others, many others, perhaps most people, especially in Europe and maybe Canada, too, do not agree. They see the entire Afghanistan entanglement as an American strategic blunder dating, as Gates himself suggests, back to the 1980s and 90s. They cannot reconcile the fight against the Taliban with any real terrorist threats to Berlin, Madrid, Paris and Rome. It is not to say that Berlin, Madrid, Paris and Rome fell immune to terrorist attacks – but they blame them on the USA, because it is more convenient to pass the buck than to face the facts. I suspect most people in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver share that view.

It seems pretty clear to me that, left to Europe, we will lose Kandahar because they (NATO) lack the will to win. I believe, and I think most analysts agree, that if we lose Kandahar then the entire Afghanistan project (Bonn agreement, etc, etc) fails, too. If the Arab/Persian/Islamist extremists and religious fundamentalists ‘win’ in Afghanistan – no matter how false the victory may be – then we, the mighty, rich, US led, secular, liberal-democratic West lose. That ought to be an unthinkable proposition – but it’s not.



 
I would not discount the opposition to the Iraq war in the US among a sizeable number of people, including the two contenders for the Democrat presidential nomination, being easily transferable to the Afghanistan mission. It is very troubling that election year politics trumps the greater interests of the secular western democracies, and this attitude is all too prevelant internationally. One perhaps could excuse this in Canada and the minor European states, who tend to avoid thinking about the big picture because of self-preceived powerlessness or wilful ignorance or delusional moral superiority or whatever, but it is troubling when the big and almost big powers waver. 

The excuse that both are George Bush's wars provides an easy way out, and temporarily avoids facing the issues.
 
I truly believe that an effective alliance needs a rather credible and immediate threat to function with any union and harmony.  The Soviet Union graciously provided this threat during the Cold War.  Take that threat away and unique national interests will crop up.  I tend to agree with Edward that many do not see a threat.  It is hard to convince people because the threat is a second or third order issue before it affects them and they can fall back on blaming the mission in the first place. 

NATO has turned into something else and perhaps we are hoping for too much.  Please forgive the following rhetorical questions.  Were there calls for NATO involvement in Vietnam?  Did that crisis bring down NATO?  How involved was NATO in the Falklands or Malaya?  How many NATO troops were in Algeria? 

Pushing a rope is a rather frustrating venture, and fighting in alliances can also be frustrating.  While these references are from another time and place, both the Soviets and the British 8th Army liked to pick on weak German allies when they could.  I would rather fight alone than with indifferent allies on my flanks.  At least when I'm alone I know that I have to watch my flanks...
 
More NATO bashing... grrrrrr

Winning the battles, losing the war
Without a greater resolve, US and European forces in Afghanistan risk putting the future of the Nato alliance, and our lives, in danger

February 27, 2008 2:30 PM |
"The Americans are winning everything - except the war." Amazingly, this is not the sceptical comment of a European on current US activities in Iraq. In fact, it is the assessment made by Israeli general Moshe Dayan, following a visit to Vietnam - in 1966, which was an impressively early point in which to have this understanding. And sadly, it could apply not only to Iraq today, but also to the Nato efforts in Afghanistan.

Like the Americans in 1966, Nato forces, known as Isaf, win most - if not all - engagements with the Taliban. The problem is that the victories are not backed up when there is a need to escalate or build upon them, and so in sum they add up to loss and defeat. In other words, the core issues are lack of political will - and lack of purpose.

Worse still, the Taliban is quite aware of these issues, and can live quite easily with the local defeats. In its own terms, it is winning: it picks the fights that Nato forces then respond to, and these are more often than not located within civilian populations. Nato's firepower against the Taliban defeats it, but also causes disproportionate damage to civilian infrastructure, and in some cases also kills innocent civilians. The end result is awful: a military engagement won, a population lost.

If Nato has any strategic purpose in Afghanistan, it is winning over the people, the population: the Afghans have to become convinced that the alternative posed by the international community is better, more viable, and more dependable than that offered by the Taliban. Since there is a residual hatred of the latter, the international option should be a no-brainer - but it is not: despite tens of thousands of soldiers and billions of dollars, Isaf is ultimately seen as weak, obsessed with itself rather than the population, constantly searching for an exit strategy and therefore not dependable for the long term.

Above all, Isaf is ultimately perceived to be losing - and that is of course the greatest and most important asset of the Taliban: not only is it still seen as a potential winner despite local losses, it has exposed Nato as being weak and lacking in political will. As such, it has actually uncovered a far greater reality: that Nato has lost its power of deterrence. And this is no minor loss: Nato won the cold war on the power of deterrence alone, since not a single shot was ever fired between the sides. Losing this power, and to an unruly bunch of hooligans such as the Taliban at that, is therefore a colossal loss.

The roots of this reality go far deeper than the current conflict in Afghanistan. Together with General Sir Rupert Smith, former deputy commander of Nato, I have analysed them more widely in an article in National Interest - where we argue that the alliance has not been restructured, politically as much as functionally, to undertake the kind and scale of operations for which it is now committed.

Most significantly, there is a deep disconnect between the US and its European allies: the former still assumes it can maintain absolute leadership over, and hence obedience of the Europeans, as had been the case during the cold war - ignoring the fact that there is now no longer an overwhelming threat such as that posed by the Warsaw pact and the Soviet nuclear capability. Moreover, it can no longer ignore the chasm that opened between itself and the UK and many of the other allies over the Iraq war, and the resulting discrediting of the far more consensual operation in Afghanistan, especially in the eyes of the European electorates.

The European allies, in turn, must make the clear distinction between Iraq, as a folly, and Afghanistan, which poses sincere security issues to us all: defeat there is not simply a question of victory to the Taliban and al-Qaida, but also of a vast state left in their hands, with masses of refugees fleeing in all directions, further increasing our burdens of insecurity.

In addition, Europeans must confront the harsh fact of having lost any ability to use force, in any context: there is a willingness to deploy forces, but an absolute reluctance to employ them in conflict. This is partly due to most Europeans taking the so called "peace dividend" at the end of the cold war, and partly due to a seemingly blind equation between any use of military force and a US-style display of shock and awe with its entailing massive destruction.

This is ultimately unacceptable: an unwillingness to use excessive force is a value to be admired; a blanket unwillingness to use force is irresponsible. There are situations in which a short sharp display of force can make a massive difference - and be of great moral as well as political value. A classic example where such a show may have made a big difference is of course in Srebrenica, where the Dutch withdrew their forces rather than fire a single shot, leaving 8,000 Bosniaks to be massacred. Conversely, when the UK made a short display of force in Sierra Leone, the rebels fled, leaving the war-torn country to finally attempt to restore itself.

Nato appears remarkably unaware of its endemic problems: as delegation after delegation of alliance diplomats and senior commanders visits Afghanistan, all comments seem to focus upon troop commitments and force levels. Across the Atlantic, and the Channel, the talk is only of removing or replacing caveats, as if this would be the panacea for all. And while it would be extremely useful to have greater commitment from the member states, and a more just spread of the burden, this would not resolve the core issues. For unless the US and the Europeans find a new way to communicate and agree, there can be no coherent future for Isaf - or Nato. And such an outcome could be a disaster for us all.

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/ilana_betel/2008/02/winning_the_battles_losing_the_war.html

 
E.R. Campbell said:
No, I don’t think we should let NATO wither and die. I think there is till some life in its old, original and only valid role: deterring the Russians.

There are some, notably in France, who do want an exclusively European alliance, with no American leadership, or direct participation (although even the French admit they need the US strategic deterrent because without it they are military eunuchs, fir only to guard the harem). That is not in our best interests.

Russia as the raison d'etre for NATO simply won't work anymore. The Europeans prefer to approach Russia through the Stategic Partnership and the ENP set up a couple of years ago. Russia itself is behaving more in its own microcosm as it wants to define itself as an autonomous actor in the international system, and although many of its policies have certain nationalist rethoric, the Europeans could feel less that threaten as they know the Duma  cannot look further than its own backyard. The development of the ESDP and other security arrangements within the auspices of the EU come from the fact that many of Europe's security interests cannot be fully satisfied by NATO. Regions such as Western Africa are better approached through European defence policy making, instead of a Euro-Atlantic approach that won't have much interest from the North American counterparts. Also it is in the interests of the 27 members of the EU to become militarily more self-sufficient, as it is in their interest to protect the Union. Not all countries in the EU are members of NATO and vice-versa, and thus it becomes easier to seek again a Euro-approach. The best call for NATO is to keep working in issues that share a common ground for all partners.  Also NATO has to remind its members the  significance of the strategic outcome of Afghanistan. Instead of seeing it as part of the "War of Terror" it should be seen as an stabilization mission in a region adjacent to Western interests. Indeed, I strongly beleive that was brought this huge rift within NATO is the fact that the Americans started using the whole "war on terror" rethoric. The idea of terrorism or more precisely radical islam is not as coherent as it may sound. There are always different social, political, cultural and economic factors that cannot be ignore when dealing with a topic such as this. Hopefully, certain European states will take a more leading role in Afgh. as they will realize what really is at stake here.
 
I am torn on this one.  I grew up militarily in NATO but I have to admit that it has come to a crossroads.  We have some very good allies in the newer NATO nations but it seems that some of the older NATO Europeans prefer slaughter on their own continent to slaughter in eslewhere.  Maybe we should move the whole Afghan war to ....Saxony?  Seriously, I think we should be expanding a North American Alliance with the US and Mexico and consider 50% of the Atlantic North American territory.  Stay in NATO but have no troop committments in Europe until after an aggression is declared. 

From fish to seals, climate change to native affairs, the Europeans have shoved their noses into our affairs as a reward for our committment to save them from the Soviets.  They are not the business market they once were and they have become very ungrateful and un-cooperate.  It may just be time to move on.
 
daftandbarmy said:
This is ultimately unacceptable: an unwillingness to use excessive force is a value to be admired; a blanket unwillingness to use force is irresponsible. There are situations in which a short sharp display of force can make a massive difference - and be of great moral as well as political value. A classic example where such a show may have made a big difference is of course in Srebrenica, where the Dutch withdrew their forces rather than fire a single shot, leaving 8,000 Bosniaks to be massacred. Conversely, when the UK made a short display of force in Sierra Leone, the rebels fled, leaving the war-torn country to finally attempt to restore itself.

Though I aggree virtually completely with the article this part irritates me as a Dutch national. IF you make an example atleast make sure it is factually correct. True, I will be the last that there was real hard fighting in Srebrenica, but to say that there were no shots fired is an absolute lie. There were blocking positions and there definitely was shooting. Also it fails to mention the call for airstrikes on Bosnian Serb positions for almost a week, all been blocked except one when just two Dutch F-16s were allowed to bomb a small Bosnian Serb column. It fails to mention that the position of that valley was not in anyway defendable (THAT was our collossal mistake, putting our troops in such an unholdable position with no major country placing some of it's troops there aswell). There were less then 450 troops there of which only just 150 were combat troops, mostly placed in dozens of small OP's that conform to UN rules had to be highly visible (combat value: 0). The troops had been blockaded by the Bosnian Serbs for months with the nearest supplycentre beying more then 40km away in Tuzla in mountainous terrain. Fuel was almost non-existant, of the ammo almost a 1/3 was considered unreliable because the means to maintain them properly couldnt be brought in and then there were the Bosnian government forces that actually shot at the Dutch troops and used them as cover in multiple occassions.

Hardly a comparable situation with Sierra Leone with armed forces that were opposing the British were not comparable in training, information, doctrine, logistics, positioning, etc, etc. and that was a situation in which the UK had the means to send in extra forces. Again, ridiculous comparison, but hey, I guess the author is British too and why not make some propaganda for your own nation at the expense of another, right?

Again, aggreed with the rest of the article, but this just blew it for me.

Regards,

Mourning  8)
 
Will the addition of further NATO members rejuvenate the alliance, especially if these new members send MORE troops to Afghanistan?

Interesting. Although the entry of a number of former East Bloc states into NATO has been going on for quite a while now, the US and its NATO allies are further strengthening their membership especially with the Russian Bear being resurrected by Putin -especially with all this recent increased Russian military activity such as those Russian bombers "buzzing" that USN carrier recently, IIRC.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23894165/

Bush: U.S. backs Ukraine to join NATO
In Kiev, he declares Russia won’t have a say at alliance meeting next week

The Associated Press
updated 2:27 a.m. PT, Tues., April. 1, 2008
KIEV, Ukraine - President Bush said Tuesday he will work "as hard as I can" to help Ukraine join NATO and declared that Russia will not be able to veto former Soviet states joining the transatlantic military alliance.

"Your nation has made a bold decision and the United States strongly supports your request," Bush told Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko after talks at the Presidential Secretariat here.

Bush praised Ukraine's democratic and military reforms, and noted that Ukraine "is the only non-NATO nation supporting every NATO mission."

Ukraine has sent troops to Afghanistan, Kosovo and Iraq. He also portrayed the decision as one that is "in the interests of our organization."

The president's brief visit to Kiev was meant to be a show of support for the country's NATO ambitions ahead of the alliance's summit later this week in Bucharest, Romania.

Ukraine is hoping NATO members will vote to give it a so-called membership action plan, which outlines what a country needs to do to join and is a precursor to a membership invitation. Georgia also wants the same treatment.


"In Bucharest this week, I will continue to make America's position clear: We support MAP for Ukraine and Georgia," Bush said. "My stop here should be a clear signal to everybody that I mean what I say: It's in our interest for Ukraine to join."

Said Yushchenko: "I am sure that we will receive a positive signal in Bucharest and that's the spirit that we are going there with."

Bush and Yushchenko met with reporters in a narrow room with a high ceiling decorated with ornate molding. The two leaders sat at a low credenza behind a wide arrangement of yellow and red roses and other flowers spread along the floor.

Ukraine had long flirted with joining NATO, but it started taking real steps toward meeting the alliance’s military and political standards only after Yushchenko became president in the wake of the 2004 street protests, called the Orange Revolution.

Since then, Ukraine has gained a vibrant opposition, a robust media and has held a series of clean elections. It has also set out to modernize its Soviet-style military, including creating an all-volunteer army and changing troop deployment and training to meet NATO standards. Kiev abandoned customs and practices that date to Soviet and even Czarist Russia times, such as using soldiers for kitchen duty and outfitting them in cumbersome footwear. It also sought to prove itself by deploying troops to Iraq in 2003-2005 and sending peacekeepers to Kosovo and Lebanon.

Remaining problems, however, range from rampant corruption to constant political turmoil, which has caused a stream of government shake-ups and early elections over the past years.

Moscow's opposition
But among the biggest obstacles in Ukraine's path to NATO membership is Russia. With nine former Soviet bloc countries already members, NATO countries abut some of Russia's borders and Moscow fiercely opposes further eastward expansion of the alliance that it denounces as a Cold War relic.

As a result, Germany and France have spoken out against putting Ukraine on the list just yet. They fear upsetting already strained ties with Russia, which is a major supplier of energy to Europe.

But Bush said Moscow should not — and would not — have the last word.

"Every nation has told me Russia will not have a veto over what happens in Bucharest. I take their word for it," he said. "I wouldn't prejudge the outcome just yet, the vote will be taken in Bucharest."


Tensions over U.S. missile defense plans
Still, for all Moscow’s irritation over NATO expansion, it is small compared with how Russia feels about Bush’s proposal for placing missile defenses in Europe.

Bush’s national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, said no deal over the bitter missile defense dispute was in hand yet, though he thought Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin could could reach one when they meet Sunday in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. That is to be the last stop on Bush’s weeklong trip to the region, which is to be anchored by his attendance at the NATO summit.

“I think we’re moving in a direction where ... Russia and the United States could have missile defense as an area of strategic cooperation,” Hadley told reporters as the president flew to Ukraine.

For months, Putin has stepped up his anti-American rhetoric, demanding that the United States abandon the plan to base missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic, two former Soviet satellites. He has complained it would upset the balance of power and was aimed at weakening Russia, charges the United States has denied repeatedly.

In recent days, there have been signs of progress toward resolving the dispute. Bush sent Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Moscow with concessions to ease Russia’s concerns. Bush also sent a personal letter to Putin, and a Russian delegation spent several days in Washington last week working on the problem.



© 2008 The Associated Press.
 
Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s Globe and Mail is an article – the “lead” for its weekly Focus section – about NATO at 60:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090327.wfocuscover28/BNStory/International/home
NATO turns 60

DOUG SAUNDERS

From Saturday's Globe and Mail
March 28, 2009 at 12:00 AM EDT

BRUSSELS — Sixty years ago this week, as much of Europe still lay in rubble and a third world war seemed imminent, Canada's foreign minister Lester B. Pearson sat down in Washington with his counterparts from the 11 other Western countries that weren't dictatorships or occupied territories, and signed a blood pact worthy of the Three Musketeers.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was, from its beginning, a military "one for all and all for one" between its member states, backed with United States arms and money and tied together by Article V of its 1949 treaty, which declares that "an armed attack against one ¡K shall be considered an attack against all" and that each is obligated to fight in defence of the other.

Canadians and Europeans are only now fully appreciating the true implications of the words in Article V, and their self-destructive potential, as the 26 current members prepare to gather this week to mark NATO's birthday. The mood as leaders head to Strasbourg, France, for the event is decidedly dour, and over the past several months a number of senior NATO officials, diplomats from member countries and military officers have admitted privately they believe the alliance is doomed.
In their view, NATO's existential impossibility has been masked for most of this decade by its greatest and most expensive commitment, the first and only time that Article V has been invoked — the Afghanistan war.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has had to adapt throughout its 60-year history to ever-changing security threats

Afghanistan has become the graveyard of NATO. Though the alliance will continue to exist, for a while at least, after most of its members have withdrawn, it will never be the same; no longer will it be able to regain its old role as defender of Europe from Eastern attack, and never again will it be able to conduct a war like Afghanistan.

Its actual role, beyond Kabul, is a matter of intense and possibly fruitless debate taking place just beneath public view in Europe's capitals, in Washington, and in Ottawa. The conflict has shattered all its self-assumptions; Afghanistan has done for the world's major military alliance what the subprime-debt crisis has done for the postwar economic order.

The nature of the bailout plan has become the central topic of military officials around the world.

The sotto voce campaign by defence minister Peter McKay to become the alliance's next secretary-general (a decision that will effectively be made this week, although the appointment is not until July) was built around his frank admission that the alliance may be doomed, and his promise to unite it in a new purpose, however vague.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the Danish prime minister and Mr. McKay's leading contender for the job, has also aimed himself at the inky void that is the alliance's postwar future.

There will be long, expensive and noisy efforts to save it, but perhaps it will be better to allow NATO to collapse. If Afghanistan has taught us anything, it is that the world no longer works the way it did 60 years ago.

"The glue of this alliance is gone — the Soviet threat united us and brought us together, and without it, the most effective military alliance in history is at risk of atrophy," Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, the foreign-relations scholar who was appointed Barack Obama's special adviser on NATO, told me before she took the position, expressing a stark judgment she made in a much-discussed report for the Council on Foreign Relations.

"Policy makers will need to notice this atrophy before it's too late. Its engine is running on empty — it lacks the political commitments it needs to sustain its operations. There is a growing disconnect between what the United States is asking it to do and what its European allies are willing or able to do. And we cannot keep on going forward with this growing disconnect."

By traditional measures, this should be a great moment for NATO.

For the first time since 1966, France has agreed to become part of the alliance's command structure, ending a division among European militaries that has often split the continent. There is a new rapprochement with Russia, which appears more interested in co-operating with NATO on their many shared goals rather than in antagonizing the alliance.

The U.S. is weaker financially and militarily, making it more reliant on NATO and allowing the alliance to become less American-dominated. And this is a time of regime change, not just in the U.S. and France, but probably in Germany, Britain and Canada within two years, so a new generation of leaders could renew the alliance.

And President Obama is likely to come to Strasbourg this week with a new plan for Afghanistan, a new commitment of thousands more troops to boost the deteriorating war, and matching pledges of several thousand soldiers from other countries including Britain (but not Canada, which has vowed to withdraw in 2011).

BIRTH OF A NEW NATO

But all of these opportunities may go to waste, because nobody can agree just what NATO is supposed to be in the 21st century.

"We have lost our way," says a former White House military adviser. "There is a growing crisis over what the alliance stands for. We can't have a multiple-personality NATO."

Nobody could have imagined, in that Washington room six decades ago, that Article V, designed to keep further European countries from being taken over by the Soviet Union, wouldn't end up being used until a dozen years after the Cold War had ended and the Soviet Union ceased to exist.

Nor would it be conceivable that it would finally be invoked, in 2001, by the United States, in response to an attack on its people launched by a state-supported organization located far beyond Brussels or Moscow in the caves of southeast Afghanistan, or that they would entail a lengthy, possibly endless, imperial-style battle in the dust of Central Asia.

It marked the birth, with surprisingly little public debate, of a whole new kind of NATO, one whose interests extended far beyond Europe. And it marked a return to a core NATO function that had always alarmed and divided Europeans: The alliance as an extension of U.S. foreign policy.

In the years right after the Cold War ended, NATO had widely been described as pointless and obsolete. Then, exactly 10 years ago this week, the bombs began dropping on Belgrade. European countries, increasingly horrified by the deadly campaigns of Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic, had reawakened the alliance to launch a new sort of war.

Kosovo seemed to be the face of the new NATO: a very European coalition, using European soldiers to deal with the continent's atrocities (without legal authorization, in this case), but one with strong U.S. support, as well as thousands of bombs dropped and hundreds of millions spent on the war by Canada. It was a quick, effective little war, one that led to a successful regime change.

For two years, the Kosovo campaign seemed to have defined the new NATO. Then Sept. 11 happened.

Many believe that the wrenching switch from its newfound European role to an Afghan coalition may have mortally wounded NATO. A high-level American official who was directly involved with NATO during the George W. Bush years says that, in his view, the arm-twisting needed to build an Afghanistan alliance may have crippled the member states for a generation.

"We've spent all these years persuading NATO members to give up their domestic defence capabilities — which, in hindsight, may not have been so wise — and to spend their limited defence budgets sending tiny numbers of troops to Afghanistan at enormous expense. Now they're regretting it, and we'll pay the price."

And while that arm-twist was going on, the United States, backed aggressively by Stephen Harper's government, was pushing to expand NATO far eastward, by inviting the former Soviet colonies of Georgia and Ukraine to be members — a move that antagonized Russia and deeply divided Europe.

"Beneath the surface, there are really five NATOs," a Canadian official patiently explains after emerging from months of meetings.

"There's the expeditionary NATO. Afghanistan epitomizes that, and some would like to see more of that. Then there's the Article V NATO; for many member countries, especially the six Eastern European countries that joined after 1989, that's the big one, and of course it's all about Russia."

"Third, there's NATO as an instrument of European integration, a vision that is very important to the French. Fourth, it's a way of engaging U.S. foreign policy, a way for Europeans to feel that they are throwing the ropes over Gulliver. And fifth, there's NATO as a defender of the West, of the ideals of democracy, and so on."

DREAMS OF EXPANSION

And within NATO's bureaucracy in Brussels, there are vast and unlikely plans to expand the alliance into combating cyber-attacks, promoting democracy and building a "civilian NATO" that would construct infrastructure and create government agencies in failed states.

That's on top of the many things NATO is already doing: keeping Bosnia and Kosovo together; policing sea lanes in the Mediterranean; delivering disaster relief; supporting the African Union; training armies in eastern Europe — all with an international staff of only 300.

Remember: As a voluntary alliance, NATO can do nothing without the consent of all its members. Those competing ideas, in a world of limited financial resources, cannot exist at the same time, and they are pulling the alliance apart as it searches for something it can unanimously agree upon. An expansionist, expeditionary "global NATO" designed to work as an idealistic global cop and democracy-enforcer is not compatible with the harshly realist Chapter V NATO designed to defend Europe's western flank.

NATO's newest members, Poland, Hungary and the Baltic states, argue forcefully for a European-defence role for the alliance; for them, Russia remains the biggest threat. This is ridiculed by all the West European countries, who point out, in private, that none of their armies even has the capacity to cross a major river, so unlikely do they consider the need to march to the aid of an eastern ally.

The idealist vision of a NATO able to go to Sudan, to Mexico and to Burma to solve crises and restore democracy tends to collide with the reality of non-U.S. militaries: They are too small and limited to be used that way. The Afghanistan war has exhausted Canada's entire military capacity for a decade. We are far from alone.

At Kosovo a decade ago, the Europeans realized how dependent they are on U.S. military, especially airpower. Many countries believe they have large armies, but in fact most of Europe's armies exist only to provide social assistance to teenagers through mandatory service programs. Of the two million soldiers in Europe today, only 3 per cent are deployable beyond their own national borders. There are 10,000 tanks and 2,000 fighter planes that are technologically useless in an international conflict.

On top of this, France has rejoined NATO as part of its larger plan to build a European defence force, effectively the European Union's army, which would effectively be a major competitor to NATO (though French officials say the two alliances would co-operate and could share troops). Nobody knows what this force would be used for, how it would differ from NATO, or how it would resolve an identity crisis similar to that plaguing NATO.

BAD TIME TO INVEST

Worst of all, this identity crisis, as well as the Afghan surge and expensive withdrawal plans, is occurring in the midst of a terrible economic downturn. A new NATO, of whichever sort, would cost a lot of money for each member country, and few are spending heavily on defence at the moment, beyond Afghanistan.

So it could very well turn out that countries like Canada will return from Afghanistan to find themselves part of an expensive military alliance that is still entirely geared for a Cold War conflict that has not existed for 20 years, and without enough deployable troops to respond to an actual threat.

A former NATO leader asks a set of pointed questions: "If there's a Palestinian-Israeli accommodation, would NATO be able to provide enough troops? If the Mahgreb explodes, it is very likely that the United States will not come in and do what they did in Kosovo, so could NATO step up? It would be another Yugoslavia, but in some ways worse, and Europe would be alone."

Never before in history has there been a military alliance without a specific enemy. NATO, for a decade after the Cold War's end, was a rare, dysfunctional exception. Then, for another decade, it managed to find enemies to justify itself.

This week, at its edgy birthday gathering in France, its leaders will contemplate the terrible and crushing prospect of a future without an enemy.

Doug Saunders is a London-based member of The Globe and Mail's European bureau.


I will quibble with one point Saunders makes when he switches from fair comment to the institutionalized anti-Harper bias that is so deeply ingrained in most of the mainstream Canadian media that the majority of journalists cannot bring themselves to believe that Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party of Canada actually won a free and fair election and really, really are the legitimate governing party. Saunders says: ” … the United States, backed aggressively by Stephen Harper's government, was pushing to expand NATO far eastward, by inviting the former Soviet colonies of Georgia and Ukraine to be members — a move that antagonized Russia and deeply divided Europe.” The American led Drang nach Osten began while George HW Bush and its was supported, with about the same level of “aggression,” by Liberal and Conservative governments alike, led by Jean Chrétien, Paul Martin and Stephen Harper.

The central point, however, that NATO is a worthless hulk, is worth considering.

Caveat lector: I opposed the expansion of NATO - beginning with the decision to admit the Baltic states and the former Warsaw Pact members. My rationale was that, with the demise of the USSR, per se, NATO needed to be contracted rather than expanded and the best role for the former Russian satellites was to serve as a buffer zone between Western Europe and Russia.

NATO is a tightly structured, formal alliance. It was a good, even great idea sixty years ago. Canada played useful, even important roles in its creation and implementation – until 1969 when, 20 years too early, we decided there was no Soviet threat. NATO provided the essential security umbrella beneath which Western Europe sheltered, in relative safety, able to devote its resources to reconstruction rather than defence. NATO, by its very existence, obliged the USSR (Russia in particular) to make difficult and, ultimately, wrong choices. A combination of pride and second rate strategic thinking led the USSR into an arms race a resurgent West. We (the American led West) won - decisively.

Fifteen years ago, in 1994, NATO did find a useful role – as Europe’s military agent in the Balkans. But NATO was ill suited for the task because it was, as it still is, an Atlantic alliance and so Europe failed because the Balkans was/is a European problem which Europe ought to be able to solve by itself, without American and Canadian help and because it is now perceived, by the world, including Europe, that Europe is unable to clean up messes in its own back yard. Do you think the US will welcome or even allow Spain, a NATO members, to engage in Mexico? Not bloody likely.

The French were right – even France has to right once a century, or so, and they were desperately wrong, time after time after time, throughout the first 90 years of the 20th century – Europe need its own military alliance, not NATO, to do Europe’s bidding in Europe and the adjacent regions.

So, in 1994 we made the wrong decision. We preserved and then expanded NATO rather than having a huge victory bash on its 45th anniversary and then folding our tents and disbanding the alliance.

Saunders is right, I think: Afghanistan will destroy NATO. It has exposed too many deep divisions – cracks that will not be papered over. “Why the hell,” Canadians might ask, “do we need so-called ‘allies’ who are too gutless to send their well equipped soldiers to help us when our men and women are fighting and dying?” (No knock on the individual Germany or Italian soldier, I’m guessing they aren’t “gutless” but Merkel and Berlusconi are certainly not the ‘allies’ we need in a fight, are they?)

But the whole world now knows that the UN cannot run Chapter 7 peacekeeping operations on its own. No one (at least no one who matters) trusts it to do so and the UN, itself, has admitted that it cannot manage its own operations as well as it must. This, to be the UN’s trusted “hard power” sub-contractor, is the role upon which NATO seized to perpetuate its existence. It’s a valid role – for some body.

I will not go an, yet again, about why we need a loose, informal alliance coalition of like-minded and militarily interoperable nations that can organize and manage complex, “hard power” operations for the UN – but we do need just that. The problem with NATO is that the members are anything but “like-minded.”

HMCS Winnipeg is off to a NATO mission in the Indian Ocean. That’s commendable – for NATO and Canada, because there’s lots of good naval “work” to be done in Indian Ocean region – but SNMG1 should have ships from e.g. Australia, China, India, Malaysia, New Zealand and Singapore, too. In other words it should be a coalition force rather than just a North Atlantic Treaty force operating “out of area.”

It is time to rethink NATO; maybe it’s time to bury it. We would not have to wait long for a replacement to appear. Perhaps it can morph into a European Security Alliance able to make contributions to “hard power” operations led by a coalition.

 
It is time to rethink NATO; maybe it's time to bury it. We would not have to wait long for a replacement to appear. Perhaps it can morph into a European Security Alliance able to make contributions to “hard power” operations led by a coalition.

And not be dominated by the International focus/agenda of the US.
 
There is a 15 minute discussion of NATO’s future here, on CTV News’ Power Play.

Obama urged the Europeans to support his new strategy and they agreed to provide all possible support, short of real help. This is not a “new Europe” vs. “old Europe” thing; it is an “insular Europe” vs. a “globalist” conflict.

Bill Graham notes that, from 1990 on, NATO has been in a constant process of “redefining itself.” He thinks NATO will be kept together because we (everyone) really need a strong, effective multilateral organization to do the “hard power” work for the UN.

Lew Mackenzie notes that the ‘breakdown’ is likely to come over the Ukraine/Georgia issue. Despite Canada’s support for this US proposal, Mackenzie disagrees with further NATO expansion – as do I. Bill Graham agrees, in part, but believes the challenge is how to engage Russia rather than how to stand against it over e.g. Georgia and Ukraine. Unfortunately, NATO got too large in the 1990s and it cannot, now, be trimmed down to a useful size.

Stephen Harper, very correctly, says that the long, deep global recession will produce new and greater security threats. For now, NATO is about the only tool in the UNSC’s kit so it needs to be sharpened and made ready for use.

The current “burden sharing” in Afghanistan demonstrates that the “globalists” (Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, UK, USA and a few others) are doing the “heavy lifting” while the “insular Europeans” – neo-isolationists – are making a mockery of the idea of NATO. 

 
With reference to the critisizing of NATO's exansion...

It seems to me that it is the newer and smaller NATO countries that are more then willing to participate in operations, whereas the older, larger European members are the ones who refuse to lift a finger.  In light of this, is it far to say that NATO has gotten too big and is therefore no longer effective?  My assessment is that NATO is no longer effective because France, Germany et all no longer want it to be effective.  The new members of the alliance seem more then willing to pitch in.  I dont think its expansion thats hurting the alliance.  Its Western Europe that is.  Lets not forget, this alliance was formed to protect Western Europe from Sovient attack.  Those same European countries are no longer interested because the tables have turned and NATO to have taken a tone of protecting the United States rather then Europe.
 
ltmaverick25 said:
With reference to the critisizing of NATO's exansion...

It seems to me that it is the newer and smaller NATO countries that are more then willing to participate in operations, whereas the older, larger European members are the ones who refuse to lift a finger.  In light of this, is it far to say that NATO has gotten too big and is therefore no longer effective?  My assessment is that NATO is no longer effective because France, Germany et all no longer want it to be effective.  The new members of the alliance seem more then willing to pitch in.  I dont think its expansion thats hurting the alliance.  Its Western Europe that is.  Lets not forget, this alliance was formed to protect Western Europe from Sovient attack.  Those same European countries are no longer interested because the tables have turned and NATO to have taken a tone of protecting the United States rather then Europe.

Cheese eating surrender monkeys ;D
 
I think it is much more complicated than that. “New Europe” vs. “old Europe” was claptrap when it was postulated and it remains so today.

The reason, the only reason “New Europe” shows any enthusiasm for American led enterprises like Iraq is that it is sucking up to its new paymaster. “New Europe” is not getting quite the same sweetheart deal that Greece, Portugal and Spain got from the EU so they are more reliant upon the US for a leg up – and they are looking for US bases and the medium term economic “boomlettes” they provide.

Not all of “Old Europe” is isolationist – Denmark, Netherlands and Norway, for example, are in the globalist camp with Australia, Canada, the UK and the US.

If I read the papers and polls correctly, I conclude that Continental Europe, West and East is, largely, of a single mind – the exceptions being found around the North Sea.

I remain opposed to NATO expansion – hell’s bells, I never understood why we wanted Spain “in” – it contributes/contributed nothing, about the same as Estonia et al.

 
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