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| Europe |
| If Nato won't fight, what's it for? |
| 2008-08-19 |
| NATO is meeting in summit at Brussels. Sixty years after the alliance was signed, can anyone tell me what it's for? The revival of Russian revanchism might seem to answer that question. Except that NATO has been conspicuous by its absence from the Georgian conflict. Let's conjecture that Russia tried something similar in a NATO state. Say it moved troops into Latvia following inter-communal rioting. (It wouldn't declare war, of course. No one ever declares war these days.) Say that, as in Georgia, it agreed to remove its forces but somehow didn't quite get round to pulling them out. Does anyone really believe that this would trigger an all-out NATO counter-offensive? That Turkish troops would surge up through Georgia to harry Russia's south? That the Norwegian and Icelandic navies would blockade Archangel? That American and Canadian and British and Belgian forces would be dispatched to relieve the Baltic States? It seems likely that that a Soviet attack on West Germany during the Cold War would indeed have triggered a military response. Certainly the possibility was strong enough that the USSR never took the risk. In that sense, NATO was a triumphant success. But is it still the best possible vehicle for the advancement of its members' collective interests? I ask the question with genuine regret. In the days when NATO had an obvious purpose, I was one of its biggest supporters. As a teenager, I was a member of an organisation called Peace Through NATO, which used to hold debates against CND supporters. Our side would always begin by smugly reminding the CNDers that it was thanks to the nuclear deterrent that we were free to hold such debates at all. How tiresome they must have found us. The end of the Cold War removed NATO's foundational rationale. In order to find itself a new role, the alliance took to expanding rapidly. But, in doing so, there is a danger that it has made a fiction of Article V: the clause that treats an attack on one member as an attack on all. I hope I'm wrong. I'd certainly be in favour of fighting for the freedom of the Baltics. Britain did so once before. The only direct clash between our Armed Services and the Red Army was in Estonia in 1918. We lost a number of sailors, who were buried locally. When the Soviets annexed Estonia, they dynamited every monument that dated from the independence period. But the graves of the British sailors were kept hidden and tended by local patriots. They are still there. I hope the British would fight again. But would the rest? |
| Posted by:john frum |
| #8 Of course it does, liberalhawk. That's why Germany's veto, preventing Georgia and Ukraine from even starting the process of applying to be considered for membership, was such a green flag for Russian aggression. |
| Posted by: lotp 2008-08-19 20:49 |
| #7 its obvious that it MATTERS whether one is a member state or not. Thats why Georgia so much wanted to be IN NATO, and why Russia so much didnt want them to be. Ditto the Ukraine. I dont know how people, in that context, jump from NATOs failure to go to war for a NON-MEMBER to the notion that they wouldnt go to war for a member. |
| Posted by: liberalhawk 2008-08-19 20:41 |
| #6 See WAFF.com Thread > EUROPE [Year]2025. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2008-08-19 20:03 |
| #5 Lucky Georgia wasn't a member, huh? That could have been rather embarrassing. You're absolutely correct. |
| Posted by: .5MT 2008-08-19 19:34 |
| #4 Krauthammer tonight on Brit's Special Report (minus Brit), "We all owe Former Sec of Def an apology for the problems he encountered for his Old Europe, New Europe remark, because we are now seeing Old Europe and New Europe's response to this. Old Europe willing to do nothing, and New Europe standing beside Georgia." (some paraphrasing there, but that was his message.) |
| Posted by: Sherry 2008-08-19 19:19 |
| #3 Gas Factory. Lucky Georgia wasn't a member, huh? That could have been rather embarrassing. |
| Posted by: mojo 2008-08-19 17:35 |
| #2 This guy thinks like an Englishman. Lots of bad blood in the old republics, I bet Poland and Czechs would fight, Baltics too. |
| Posted by: bigjim-ky 2008-08-19 17:23 |
| #1 Sixty years after the alliance was signed, can anyone tell me what it's for? Getting America to foot their military welfare system they devised when they figured out that the American politicians were gullible enough to allow them to. They were/are prepared to die to the last American [and in a massive exchange that included the citizenry back in North America]. In exchange they'd spend their budgets and future income on massive socialist welfare programs to remain in power back home. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2008-08-19 17:21 |