‘International War on Terror’ seems to be more in the rhetoric of US and UK.Other countries of the NATO are routinely sending troops, as a Govt.clerk shall forward files. Every Nation is strengthening its defenses and ,most of them seem to realize, rightly so, that war on this front can be fought only in their respective countries and not by going into a country of which they know very little.
Again,in an Unipolar World,what role NATO has to play?There is no USSR,you are scared of North Korea, shiver about China, and do not know what to do with Pakistan.
You can not deploy NATO in any of these areas as there is no consensus and even if you decide to do so,member countries are reluctant to participate.
In short,NATO is a white elephant which accommadates Generals who have to be kicked up,Other than that it has no purpose at all
Story:
There is almost no sense anywhere that the war in Afghanistan is an international operation, or that the stakes and goals are international, or that the soldiers on the ground represent anything other than their own national flags and national armed forces: Most of the war’s European critics want to know why their boys are fighting “for the Americans,” not for NATO. Most of the American critics dismiss the European contribution as useless or ignore it altogether. As Jackson Diehl pointed out Monday, the central debate about future Afghanistan policy is taking place in Washington without any obvious contributions from anybody else. I’m not going to blame the U.S. administration alone for this: It’s not as if Europe has put forward a different plan — and there was certainly a moment, back at the beginning of this administration, when that would have been very welcome.
The fact is that the idea of “the West” has been fading for a long time on both sides of the Atlantic, as countless “whither-the-Alliance” seminars have been ritually observing for the past decade. But the consequences are now with us: NATO, though fighting its first war since its foundation, inspires nobody. The members of NATO feel no allegiance to the alliance, or to one another. On its home continent, NATO does precious little military contingency planning, preferring to hold summits. Above all, there is no recognizable alliance leader who is willing or able to engage in the national debates of the various member countries, to argue in favor of the Afghan mission or any other. President Obama could in theory do this, but I’m guessing the idea doesn’t fill him with inspiration.
None of this might matter much in Afghanistan, since the outcome of current deliberations may well be some version of the status quo. But the next time NATO is needed, I doubt whether it will be there at all.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/19/AR2009101902510.html
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