NATO 5-23-2012

23, May 2012                            NATO

NATO has increasingly been used as a US surrogate and serves as a cover for United States military operations, to provide the false belief that there is a united front on all the wars we choose to fight. For example, Austria has only 3 troops in Afghanistan but is nonetheless considered a NATO partner.  NATO is an outmoded military alliance which regards all conflicts and disputes solvable by pounding away with its awesome US led ‘hammer’ power. We have witnessed the utter failure of this approach with our decade old war in Afghanistan. How can the Afghan forces degrade the Taliban resistance fighters with the planned withdrawal of NATO forces in 2014? The small remnant of troops will be extremely vulnerable to the Afghan army who have weak loyalties to the Karzai government and have repeatedly demonstrated their hostility to NATO forces. Furthermore, a Taliban surge is likely to emerge in 2014. The partial withdrawal is largely a political decision to pacify the war hawks and those on the political left. If  Europe is concerned about its enemies it should invest in its own defense and not drain the US currency on futile projects such as the ‘star wars’ missile defense shield in Poland which has unnecessarily provoked a Russian threat of retaliation.  NATO undermines the goal of the United Nations Charter, which seeks to resolve regional disputes non-violently. It is a Cold War relic and has lost any shred of legitimacy.