It was singer/songwriter Bob Dylan who wrote the infamous lines "the times they are a'changin,'" and the times have certainly changed. When the United Nations and NATO were forced created the world was divided into three distinct geopolitical spheres of influence. One of obviously the United States, the other was the Soviet Union, and China was bringing up the rear spreading its influence over Eastern Asia. However in the past half-decade out world has drastically changed. When the Soviet Union finally economically imploded onto itself, it scattered about a plethora of struggling independent republics, all fully armed, and all very desperate. However, the Soviets also left the United States with a gift. Where there were three powers before, now stood only one, America. It is undeniable that the United States has an enormous economic, political, and military gap with the rest of the world. Now, the United States just has to figure out what to do with its new found dominance, before it dwindles and declines at the hands of superpower candidates such as China, India, and maybe even Russia will make a comeback. Nevertheless, in this new world of sole-superpower politics, the United States now turned against NATO, and rightly so. I believe this will be my only digression and unintelligent remark, but seriously, **** NATO.
I will not even begin to describe to you the numerous NATO failures in this decade... (Ex. Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, Liberia, Zimbabwe...etc.etc.) However I will highlight the inadequacies of this so called "Military Peacekeeper." NATO was originally meant to stop soviet influence from spreading... but now with the Soviet Union long dead and buried what's this multi-billion, international military peacekeeper supposed to do. Well in November of 2002 NATO held a summit in Prague where it expanded the alliance from 19 to 26 countries, adding (get this): Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Romania. Now looking back at the Second Gulf War (pass no judgment on the war on Iraq.. this post has nothing to do with it.. and you cannot deny the clear military victory over the Iraqi ARMY not the Muslim insurgency).. I realized that the war was won easily through advanced military technology. Through the F-18s, the Abrams and Challenger tanks, through the Joint Direct Attack Munitions a.k.a. JDANs, and through the Apache Helicopters... etc. And I began to wonder, "How many F-18s to the Latvians have? How many Abrams or Challenger tanks can the Estonians deploy? How many Apache's will the Slovenians send to battle" and just how many JDANs will a long-standing member of NATO such as Portugal or Spain drop when called upon to do their assigned peacekeeping duties. I, along with numerous military analysts estimate this number to be close to ZERO.
NATO has truly become what Michael Mandelbaum, author of The Ideas that Conquered the World, calls “Club NATO" And Club NATO's purpose seems to be to act as a kind of support group for the newly fledging Eastern European democracies. NATO has become a crutch for these new nations to lean on to help build an economic infrastructure and shed the yoke of communism. NATO is by no means a longer serious fighting force. If... god forbids... an international crisis was to erupt, NATO would be inadequate to handle the crisis because they are simply ill equipped.
So the main question is where to go from here? Certainly the United States, with all of its military superiority cannot act as the world's sword as Austria did for the better part of the 16th century. NATO needs to be replaced, and I propose exactly what Thomas Freedman proposes in his book "Longitudes and Attitudes." He proposes an alliance of the three like-minded English speaking nations, America, Great Britain, and Australia. All three nations are global sea powers, have a tradition of fighting abroad, have the ability to transport troops around the world, and have mobile Special Forces that pack a global reaching punch. He proposes to call this new organization NASTY (Nations Allied to Stop Tyrants) as hilarious as this sound... I would rather see NASTY protecting the security of the world rather then the dilapidated NATO.
NATO has become what I can call a "Dial an Ally". If you want a minesweeper you call Spain, a chemical warfare agent, call Germany, and if you want personnel call Poland. But in this world... if you really want to restore peace to a troubled area, just stay on the line and wait for the US, Great Britain, or Australia to intervene and then you can wage a real modern conflict.
The United States needs to withdraw out of NATO ASAP and set the precedent of a new order of global politics.