A club worth joining Kay Bailey Hutchison President Bush has formally asked the U.S. Senate to ratify NATO's addition of seven Eastern European nations. But before we add new members, we must first ask whether NATO is still a club worth joining. That Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia are candidates is both a miracle and a testament to the effectiveness of the NATO alliance. They survived brutal totalitarian regimes during the Cold War. Now they are free to become members of NATO. They are jubilant! Rightly so. But, what is the state of the alliance they seek to join? The world has seen three NATO members refuse to support disarming Iraq. In the view of the United States, this is the same as a failure to come to the aid of a member country that has been attacked, a renunciation of our mutual agreement. Now is the time to ask: What is the mission of NATO today? Is NATO going to protect the future or defend the past? For NATO to remain relevant, we must agree on the fundamental mission. Our alliance should recognize that the common threats of terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction have replaced the common threat of Soviet imperialism. After this break in our bonds, it is essential to establish a new mission to counter a new threat. NATO has always been unified around a common purpose, but if it becomes nothing more than a patchwork quilt, we will be wasting our money and endangering our own national security by continuing to pay its bills and diverting our attention. Fifty-four years ago this month, the United States pledged to protect Europe from the Warsaw Pact. We were steadfast in our commitment. We based 300,000 troops in Europe continuously throughout the Cold War and keep 119,000 troops there now. We have paid a quarter of NATO's costs, even though we are only one of 19 nations that belong to the alliance. Clearly, our commitment played a vital role in NATO's victory in the Cold War. After the Cold War ended, we turned our attention to areas of the world that cried out for stability. We went to Somalia, Haiti and the Balkans, with varying degrees of success. We became central to peace negotiations in the Middle East. Perversely, we focused more on our commitments abroad and less on our own national defense closer to home. All that changed on September 11, 2001, when terrorists and the countries that support them tried to destroy the icons of democracy, capitalism and American power. Those attacks on our homeland marked the end of our policy of containment alone. The global war we are fighting against terrorism and our forceful disarming of Iraq have forged new alliances unthinkable before September 11. Our relationship with Pakistan in the war on terrorism and Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan is one example of this dynamic shift. However, it has strained other longstanding alliances. Many of our friends in Europe do not comprehend the impact September 11 had on America. They viewed what happened within our borders from arm's length, not acknowledging it as an attack on our country that required a firm response. This disconnect has caused a rift among NATO allies that would have been unthinkable before September 11. The split was manifested in the refusal to help disarm Iraq. As we prepared for Operation Iraqi Freedom, our longtime allies, France, Germany and Belgium, countries we have been committed to defend from attack for over half a century, opposed us at every turn. Even today, they are thwarting the rebuilding of Iraq by refusing to lift the U.N.-imposed sanctions that would allow oil to be sold to pay for new infrastructure. A strong alliance cannot maintain its strength under such strain. It is imperative that NATO establish a new, common mission or risk withering into irrelevance. If our purpose is a common defense, then we must form a consensus in defining our common threats. And those who agree should reconstitute NATO. During Operation Iraqi Freedom, we created a valuable template for how the world community can bond in this era of reckoning. We now should lead the effort to reconfirm a coalition of the willing to stand together against the common threat of terrorism to our democracies. All member countries that agree — new and old — should form the new NATO . . . a club worth joining for the 21st century. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas is vice chairman of the Senate Republican Conference. http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20030506-31490112.htm Personally, I agree with her sentiments. I think it is time to create a new defense system with Europe (and other regions) - one that does not revolve around Cold War requirements that are no longer relevant. I am personally partial to ad hoc alliances of the type that we saw in Iraq, where a group of nations with a common interest temporarily bands together to accomplish a mission, instead of being locked into a semipermanent and inflexible alliance system that would restrain them when they need to act. I think that Iraq (and to a lesser extent Kosovo and Bosnia) showed that any system that requires the approval of nations who have no interest in the issue - or whose interests clash with ours - is not a system that we can afford to be constrained by, especially when our interests are clearly threatened. I would offer no alliance system to France. Ever.
I would offer no alliance system to France. Ever. So much for deep thinking. Let's add Russia to Nato. Dubya/ Rumsfeld , Kay Bailey and Treeman just want to add a few insignificant countries to Nato so that the US can bully them or bribe them into voting against the major Euro countries like France and Germany. As we saw with the Iraq thing, this doesn't always assure that the US gets its way, and they will refuse to play or ignore votes, but they do prefer the fig leaf of phoney multialterlaism. Nothing matters to these folks but America Uber Alles. It is a variant of extreme nationalism that is dangerous for international stability.
It is a testament to your total inability to understand current realities that you think that France could still be an ally. As is your wont, you again totally and completely miss the point. The point is that NATO is A) no longer necessary (the threat it was designed to counter no longer exists), B) it is no longer relevant (it serves no purpose that any number of other alliance systems, including ad hoc ones, could not fulfill), and C) it is now generally nothing more than a hindrance to our security aims (witness Iraq, and remember Kosovo). I don't want to add anybody to NATO. I want to withdraw from it and form a new alliance that is tailored for today's (and tomorrow's) realities, not yesterday's nightmares. Russia would be a key ally on a number of fronts in such a new system, particularly the War on Terror. When are you moving to France, BTW? Is it extreme nationalism to put our interests before those of France? Is it? Then call me an extreme friggen nationalist. America over France. America over Germany. America over Belgium. You're damn right about that. Am I supposed to be ashamed because I would put our interests before those of the Frogs? Whatever. You really should move to France, since you appear to think that nation so much more important and entitled to power than our own.
