BROWN/SZEKERES: Trans-Atlantic renewal

I have an idea to change NATO. Let's require the rest of NATO, to actually HAVE a Military. You know, a NAVY, and an AIR FORCE, ARMIES that actually FIGHT, and Marines who don't SURRENDER at the first sight of a bunch of rag tag Iranians in bad suits. Think of it; A military Allience with Countries that have MILITARIES. Fascinating.

Change NATO!! At the moment NATO functions as it was originally drawn up - a country can contribute or not depending on the matter. The US has been the major player for NATO providing the security umbrella while the other countries involved spend their national budgets on jobs, health care, etc. Each country has to pay for its own soldiers to be stationed in a foreign land and if not involved pay nothing. Why should an excellent system be changed? I just think we should get the Americans and Canadians out so we can handle affairs without soldiers, airplanes, ships, tanks or guns. Then it becomes a EU style NATO.

While the thrust of the article seems constructive, one wonders how "helicopters" can be used in the same sentence as "strategic airlift." At best, helicopters provide intra-theater (tactical) lift for personnel and very light weaponry. And while the authors do call for Europeans to do a bit more (perhaps even delpoying to actually fight in the combat theaters of Afghanistan?) two points must be made: 1. Europeans have chosen to spend their tax revenue on social safety nets to the near-exclusion of any ability to project military force; absent American defense (taxpayer) dollars, NATO simply would not exist in any useful military form. As implied, all strategic and intra-theater lift come from the US. 2. Should America choose Sen Obama and a more-Democrat Congress, it is very likely that we, too, will have chosen social welfare over defense expenditures, making it extremely unlikely we would be able to continue to pay for the defense needs of the NATO countries. Should NATO wish to remain relevant, one of two (preferably both) things must happen: America must not implement the same social policies that have made European countries irrelevant on the world stage, completely unable to project diplomatic, economic or military power, and/or European countries must fundamentally re-order their social policies to enable their own defense. To the extent that European leaders and media are trying to influence our election, they are influencing it in a way inhospitable to a relevant NATO. America has paid for European defense for over 60 years. It is time now for Europe to grow up and pay their own way. This is especially important as America seems not to have understood the irrelevancy caused by European social policies and may be about to make ourselves irrelevant, too. http://inthisdimension.com/2008/09/08/obama%e2%80%99s-irrelevant-america/

NATO is wonderful insofar as joins Western Europe and the US in protecting common interests. Unfortunately, there are some in this US administration who have sought to use NATO as a vehicle for pursuing an agenda which Europeans see as contrary to their interests. Europeans have no interest in encircling and threatening Russia. Europeans do not see Georgia, the Ukraine, or Belorussia as being within the Western European family. They wish them well, but do no think any of these countries worth the blood of as much as one of their soldiers. Neither, of course, do most Americans. So what is the purpose of trying to force the European allies to admit Georgia into NATO if none of us has the slightest intention of going to war for Georgian territorial integrety? If the US had less military and more intelligence (this word is used in both its meanings) it wouldn't have got itself involved in its zillion dollar unnecessary misadventure in Iraq. However, when all you have is an enormous military machine, all your solutions become military solutions. Dumb Dumb Dumb.