‘Tis so, I’m afraid. Terrorism aside, I really can’t think of an external threat to its members. Russia’s not likely to antagonize Europe if it wants to get its economy going. Even if that were not the case, they have their own “internal” problems they can’t seem to squash. I think the US needs to pull its forces out for good. Right now, the stationing troops in Europe is basically a money pit, similar to having too many bases here in the states. At worst, the extra muscle can be better piled on where we need it.

On another note, NATO has always been a squabbling bunch. Witness the problems with Greece and Turkey. Nowadays, the spotlight is on it, but I don't think that the "international intrigue" is really anything new.

FH, There certainly is a lot of intrigue in NATO right now and anytime you have an organization that involves a unanimity requirement among a lot of headstrong, wealthy countries, you can't expect a whole lot. However, this is a case where it may not be the organization itself, but our expectations, that have changed. We deliberately devised it so that it wouldn't be *expected* to do much, hence the unanimity requirement. The question really isn't "is there a lot of scheming going on" but "how delicate is NATO in the first place?" People bicker. The Senate bickers. The House bickers. Parliament bickers (heck, they shout at one another). The Elysee, Bundestag, Knesset, etc. all bicker. The UN bickers and bickers and bickers. Democratic institutions are built and expected to withstand a certain amount of it. I think NATO as we knew it in the days of the Cold War will be no more; as with biological organisms, when there is a fundamental change in the environment, the only options are adaptation or extinction. However, as long as people believe that the concept itself is sound and that there is more uniting than dividing us, or as long as people see functional interests in keeping the alliance together, it will still be there. I think there is going to be a lot of pressure to change, particularly following the induction of the new members from Eastern Europe, but NATO remains a status symbol as the power trust of the West. That alone carries a lot of political weight. Also, history moves in circles more often than in straight lines. What looks like an inevitable decline in NATO's relevance now may well look like simply an ebb with the advantage of hindsight in 2010. When Ch-iraq is out of France (not impossible in the near future) and Schroeder is out of Germany (increasingly likely in the next election), we may see a dampening in the polarization of NATO. Time will tell. But if it really took only two years of internal conflict to rupture an alliance, NATO would have disintegrated a long time ago. --Phoenix Rising

In it's current state, it hink NATO is limited, as it was always designed to protect western Europe fromthe threat of the Soviets. However, when it was finally called upon, it was to help the USA not Europe. In the future though, they really shoudl consider a reshuffle, and place more emphasis on it's actions ( such as in the former yugoslavia),and protecting the long term peace, rather than France and Germany. Clearly they were content to be protected and others to work for them, however, when they were required to pulltheir fingers out they did so gingerly. I think their actions over turkey were unaceptable, whatever their feelings over Iraq. Lets cut out the dead wood.

NO. For very basic reasons: The USA is primarely a naval power, and naval powers need control of both shores. The only concieveable threat is Russia, maybe not today, but at some point. Nato is needed by Europe and the USA to keep them from getting ideas.

My take on NATO is that when there was the massive threat of the Warsaw Pact there was the incentive to manage competing national interests.With the removal of that threat competing national interests will lead to a bureaucratic money pit that serves no one very well.The US should pull out,and put in its place well defined mutual defense agreements that do not, because they are multi-national alliances, commit the US to the defense of polarizing competitors.Even if the EU was able to get its act together there still would be the oppurtunity, in theory, for a good Bilateral defense agreement.

In my opinion, NATO should have been dismantled on December 26, 1991, one day after the USSR formally dissolved. Don't get me wrong, NATO is probably the most successful politico-military alliance in history. It served its function brilliantly; there was never a USSR/Warsaw Pact invasion of Central and Western Europe from NATO's inception to the splintering of the USSR. However, I think that US planners should take lessons from British and ancient Greek history. First, maritime Great Britain was a master of forming ad hoc, TEMPORARY alliances with European continental powers to deal with European hegemonic threats. These partnerships were never intended by Great Britain to be permanent relationships. The temporary nature of these alliances enabled the British to work with less-than-savory associates (such as the USSR in WWII), and not have to deal with the moral/political implications of providing long-term support to illegitimate regimes. Also, Great Britain did not have to waste a lot of its resources and energy working with and bolstering allies that have already served their purposes and are no longer needed. The second lesson involves the Delian League. Formed to defend Greece from Persia, it succeeded. After the war, many city-states wanted to dissolve it. Athens, the leader of the League, demanded its maintenance after the war as a means of keeping some level of control over the lesser city-states. All this did was create a lot of hatred and distrust of Athens within Greece and set the stage for the weakening of Greece. With the Cold War over, and with the divergence in international agendas of the NATO nations, there is no major unifiying threat or mission to warrant such strong politico-military cooperation. In this sense, Rumsfeld is wise to pull assets out of Germany and relocate them eastward, to be closer geographically to the more important Middle East region. In my opinion, the principle foreign threat to Central and Western Europe is from North Africa; the huge migration patterns of North African Arabs to Europe will be quite destabilizing to the European nations. This will be Europe's problem to handle, though; it will require a political consensus to be reached on the continent, and the US can only play an advisory role. It will be hard for the US, and especially Europe, to accept quickly, but the world's "center of gravity" is definitely in the Pacific Rim. It is on this region that the US should (and is) concentrate. Stability in the Pacific Rim is truly more of a US strategic imperative than continued protection of Europe from Russia.

Perhaps the military aspect of NATO should be allowed to expire. In it's place the US and EU should create a new politico-economic entity. This new entity would have the task of maximizing economic power and stability by minimizing harmful trade wars and tariffs. A sort of trans-Atlantic NAFTA.

I am in agreement with greytraveller. Frankly, I don't see much of a benefit to a continued military role for NATO, with the possible exception of providing the US with a veto over any future unwanted European military interventions (NATO's existence allows the Europeans to continue relying on the US to provide for their defense). There are now so many political and economic disputes across the Atlantic; if something bilateral isn't done fairly soon to address these disagreements, then all the military cooperation in the world is not going to keep NATO nations on any sort of common track. The threats to the West are not military, but are demographic and economic in nature. There really isn't much the US can do to affect the demographic realities in Europe, but there is a lot it can do to increase transatlantic economic understanding and cooperation. As time progresses, the non-Western world (especially East Asia) is becoming increasingly powerful and populous relative to the West. If the West continues to work against itself on economic issues, then there are going to be some problems for the Western world in the future.

Thomas, "The USA is primarely a naval power, and naval powers need control of both shores." Boy did my head just spin around! No argument that the US will have control of the sea anywhere a CVBG goes and we can push that most anywhere in the world. But the USAF has global reach, from the continental US, to about 85% of the world. And I agree the US would need a port to offload the Army. But a USMC MEB can take just about any port needed then the Army comes ashore, builds up combat power then fights and wins the campaign. Having said that it makes it easier to have NATO but I don't think the US has to worry about cross channel attacks or fighting through the Skagerak (sp?) Western Europe has become an expensive place to store gear. That is why Hungary, Poland, Slovakia are looking better than Germany and the BENELUX. The US military has become increasingly about power projection. As long as European countries afford the US that ability, we will stay. We may stay in NATO but not forever.