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October 23, 2008

Thomas Buchstein

NATO should be a defense organization to protect its members in case a threat as big as the Soviet Union materializes.

The Taliban in Afghanistan are not such a threat. Therefore, NATO should not be involved in Afghanistan.

The German people are against a stronger involvement in Afghanistan, because the threat to German security is not big enough. In consequence, Germany unfortunately is not practicizing solidarity with its NATO allies. That is a problem. But: the German people are not to blame for it. Rather: The NATO mission in Afghanistan has been ill-conceived and should be abandoned.

It is simple: Without a big threat, the public in Germany and elsewhere in Europe are not willing to risk the lives of their soldiers. That means NATO does not get the necessary resources to win the war in Afghanistan. Since it is impossible to increase the "political will" as Gen Craddock demands, it is better to abandon the mission in Afghanistan.

October 24, 2008

Victor Kaminin

NATO’s desire to survive and stay relevant brought a lot of problems. Its expansion policies made Russia nervous and gave more credibility to nationalist. NATO is supposed to keep us safe but it creates more enemies, which is inexcusable.

One of the options could be to build a new security architecture of Europe with NATO as part of it.

October 25, 2008

Donald Stadler, Self-employed, Platinum Contributor (837)

"NATO should be a defense organization to protect its members in case a threat as big as the Soviet Union materializes."

This strikes me as a very German attitude. NATO is an insurance policy for Germany *in case* Russia comes back. But Germany is not contributing anything like the resources it once did to that insurance policy. With the vast 'peace dividend' Germany and most of Europe took during past 20 years, the NATO underwiters have shrunk to a handful of countries - the US, UK, and Canada. Central Europe no longer pays any significant share of the costs for it's own defense - that is left to the US.

There is very little positive benefit for the US to accepting that role; Central Europe has broken the 'contract' in the sense that you refuse to contribute anything like a proportionate share to your own defense. And of course you refuse to contribute much to Afghanistan, Iraq, and presumably other challenges which my face the US in future - such as in Asia.

I think Central Europe relies FAR too trustingly in the US 'guarantee'. The US no longer bases many forces in Europe and is unlikely to do so ever again unless NATO converts itelf into an alliance which materially contributes to US security. One such effort was 'built' during the 90's and failed utterly in Afghanistan; so the US no longer regards the bulk of NATO as at all reliable. Given that Germany has proven itself an almost completely unreliable ally for the US why do Germans rely upon the US for their own defense should worse come to worse?

NATO should dissolve itself. Should Russia emerge as a threat, that will be time to create a response. Not before, not if you don't wish to pay a proper premium for your defense!

October 26, 2008

Florian Broschk, University of Bonn, Gold Contributor (135)

While the problems shining through in the first comments (NATO seen as overly interventionist for many Europeans vs. not reliable enough for many in the US vs. still a threat for many Russians) have their point, Europeans and Americans would find it much harder to agree on and to jointly advance common security-interests without a formal framework. International relations are quite prominently influenced by perceptions, so NATO sliding into irrelevance or being formaly dissolved in a time of crisis would send a powerful signal of weakness. The same can be said on the mission in Afghanistan: regardless of whether NATO should have been involved in the mission at all; the fact is, that NATO now is associated with Afghanistan. It cannot easily retreat without grave consequences for the member countries standing towards another as well as their standing in the world.

Thus said, just muddling on is not a good option either. Currently, NATO is hampered by several factors from adapting to the current challenges. But the inherent tendency of a large military structure to focus on what it did best in the past seems in this case to be further increased by european fears of becoming trapped in a global expeditionary corps. Separating the questions, what NATO should do in the future and how NATO could best operate now might help to tackle some of the urgent problems Gen. Craddock mentioned.

With regard to the questions raised in the editorial, I for the most part agree with Gen. Craddock: Financial Burden Sharing - once a mission has been agreed on - makes sense to me. Decision-making on the political level should be simiplified and national caveats be a rare exception. Once the member states agree, that NATO is in charge of a mission, it would be highly desirable that they live up to their decision instead of constantly meddling in strategical and tactical issues. On the other hand - NATO has not yet proven that it really adapted to the challenges of today's missions. While NATO can to a large extent only act in the borders defined by it's member states, the rather reluctant transformation from a cold war-entity to something new is yet to show it's results. Still, transferring more freedom of action on the tactical and operational level to NATO would serve member states' interests best.

November 6, 2008

Nigel Codrington, EU, (2)

I found a very interesting couple of articles on this subject on Europe's World -

http://www.europesworld.org/EWSettings/Article/tabid/191/ArticleTyp...

http://www.europesworld.org/EWSettings/Article/tabid/191/ArticleTyp...

Nigel

November 6, 2008

Donald Stadler, Self-employed, Platinum Contributor (837)

Two excellent links, Nigel, the first about the future of NATO, or rather the managed change of NATO into a different model, the second on how to create a productive public dialog within European countries about how to go forward in Afghanistan.

In the Afghanistan piece, Fabrice Pothier advocates european countries empower public review commissions to depoliticise the national debates about Afghanistan. Canada created such a commission in 2007 and it seemed to work well in communicating to the Canadian public what the issues are and the choices facing the Canadian citizens and it's government.