Future of Nato at risk, says Reid

[lovuian]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4680162.stm

Defence Secretary John Reid has warned Nato members that they must change for the alliance to survive.
Mr Reid told the Associated Press greater flexibility and better co-ordination with the EU were needed.

He was speaking ahead of a security conference in Germany, which US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are attending.

"Nato today faces greater threats to its long term future than it ever did at the height of the Cold War," he is expected to tell the conference in Munich on Saturday.

Mr Reid will say Nato is not guaranteed to "survive and prosper as the cornerstone of the collective security we need" but must change in order to meet new challenges.

more...
US tightening grip on NATO!!!

[fooj]

1. It's all moving...

NATO, that pesky UN...

Peace.

[alcibiades_mystery]

2. NATO is completely outdated

It's utterly stupid. Most NATO members have no real interest in the alliance anymore. If it is just a vehicle for the US and UK to exert hegemony, then it is worthless, and should be disbanded.

[IndianaGreen]

3. NATO has long outlived its mission

It is time to bury this turkey.

NATO was first used as an aggressor alliance in the former Yugoslavia. From that moment forward, NATO became a tool of American imperialism.

[RaleighNCDUer]

8. American imperialism in Yugoslavia? WTF?

NATO, along with the US, intervened to prevent the spread of a genocidal war in the Balkans, to keep the Serbs from establishing a "greater Serbia" and they tried to settle old scores from generations past.

Where's the imperialism in that?

You are aware that WW1 & 2 both stemmed from the Balkan conflicts of the 19th century, aren't you. You don't think that keeping that from happening again might be a good idea?

As long as these countries are in treaty with us, they have some slight mitigating control over this administration. Where imperialism showed its head, in Iraq, NATO did NOT comply and in fact, most of it was dead set against us.

[IndianaGreen]

9. It was the Croats under Franjo Tudjman who began the ethnic cleansing

of Serbs. We didn't bomb the Catholic Croats.

As to WWII, the Serbs opposed the Nazis while the Croats embraced them.

[RaleighNCDUer]

12. Yeah. When it started Bush1 ignored it, and it got way out of hand

until Clinton convinced the NATO allies that they didn't need another Balkan war on their doorstep. By the time anyone did anything at all, the Croats were on the run, the Serbs were moving against the Bosnians, and picking fights with the Albanians as well.

And just because the Serbs preferred Stalin over Hitler is not much of a recommendation.

Isolationism is NOT the opposite of imperialism. Giving up on treaties makes international conflict liklier, not less likely. NATO may need a bit of re-working to adjust to a post-cold war world, but abandoning it helps no one.

[stlsaxman]

15. I went to Serbia/Bosnia i Herzegovina to play for the NATO troops...

in 1999. I did it because they were PEACEKEEPERS. All 19 NATO nations were in Sarajevo and no one died. I was proud and I promised myself I would play for the troops in the future when- lo and behold- the Warmongers took control of this great nation.

WE are the aggressors, not NATO. That's why the US wants to shut them down.

[RaleighNCDUer]

4. It has its uses. Allies don't often attack each other. Scuttling NATO

might be all that's needed to destabilize Europe.

That said, with the US the major partner in NATO, ten years ago all the new democracies were begging to join -- with * in charge, we now see members having second thoughts.

[alcibiades_mystery]

5. So NATO is useful to prevent

the dreaded England-France war?

Puh-leez.

[RaleighNCDUer]

6. Do you have any idea how many wars have been fought between

England and France in the past 250 years? Between England and Germany? Germany and France? Greece and Turkey? How many brushfire wars there have been in the Balkans? Little wars that kicked off major conflicts?

The NATO alliance and general war exhaustion are the only reasons that the past 50 years has been relatively peaceful. The European Union is an anomaly of history, at odds with the past 2000 years, and I predict it will not survive my lifetime - and I ain't a kid anymore.

[alcibiades_mystery]

7. Oh, yes, I know

The point is that those wars were related to specific historical and economic conditions that no longer apply. NATO was an alliance against the Soviets. To believe that NATO prevenmts another Germany-France war today is historical ignorance masquerading as historical knowledge. The conditions are utterly transformed, and bear absoilutely no resemblance to the conditions that caused ANY OF THOSE WARS. Period. To believe otherwise is to be an historical dunce.

[RaleighNCDUer]

10. And you can't imagine new specific historical and economic

conditions arising? What happens when global warming puts a quarter of Germany's northern coast under water, displacing a couple million citizens? N. Germany is diked amost as heavily as Holland. What about conflicts over North Sea oil drilling as we hit peak oil? What happens when Germany finally gets its eastern provinces fully integrated, making it as powerful as the entire rest of the EU combined? Will France be willing to let Germany dominate the continent, when the Euro is nothing more than the new name for the Deutche Mark?

As long as they players are allied, they won't be lining up tanks on their borders. They may not be comfortable allies, but they haven't been shooting at each other for a while and it would be nice to keep it that way.

[daleo]

11. The main threat to NATO is U.S. efforts at empire building

The U.S. can't be party to a multinational alliance like this, and be an empire at the same time. History shows that alliances with empires are very unstable.

[ArtH]

13. NATO

     Has anyone considered just what NATO would be if, as is
very likely, in a single generation, the majority of military
aged men in many of its member nations will be Muslim, and not
merely Muslim but ethnically different from and antagonistic
to, the present Europeans? I believe, that in short order,
NATO will simply no longer exist as even a ghost of an
alliance with any teeth at all. Indeed, if you want to worry,
consider a Europe, with all its intellectual, industrial and
economic capital solidly on the side of the mullahs.
    It's one think to face a mullahcracy which abandoned the
use of reason by the 13th century and is a hapless backwater
whose only power is the existence of oil in its ground. It is
yet another to face a European Islam.

[Ben Ceremos]

14. Yeah,

whatever. Islamophobia and Europe-xenophobia are not under
discussion here. You sure must read alot of the stuff put out
by the right-wing. Your analysis is shallow. Europe is already
majority Muslim and we are still Western democracies.

[daleo]

17. I have looked at these demographic claims and they don't add up

For example, in France Muslims would have to have an average
family size of 20 children for this to occur.  Non Muslims
would have to maintain a family size of somewhat less than 2
children.  These are not realistic projections.

[bemildred]

16. Rome had trouble controlling its Imperial federates too.nt