'The beginning of the end' of NATO?

Washington Examiner ^ | 10/19/15 | Charles Hoskinson

[markomalley]

Russian President Vladimir Putin has taken the Obama administration's idea of a "reset" in relations and turned it into a wedge, which experts say he's using to try to break the NATO alliance.

It's no secret: Since Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimea in March 2014, the Kremlin has ramped up the pressure on NATO as well, especially in the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which used to be part of the Soviet Union. And alliance leaders have scrambled to find ways to react to the Kremlin's more aggressive posture and reassure members of its relevance to their security.

But in recent weeks, a number of current and former officials, along with several Russia experts, have warned that Putin's gambit to split the transatlantic compact and redefine international security relationships to Russia's advantage appear to be working.

"Before us is emerging one of the premiere strategic challenges of the post-Cold War period," said retired Marine Gen. James Jones, a former NATO supreme allied commander in Europe who also served as White House national security adviser from 2009-2010.

"I think it's possibly the beginning of the end of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. I think it's that serious. We just can't sit back and let this happen."

Russia has been building an "arc of steel," a network of bases on the country's outer flanks from the Baltic to the Black Sea aimed at hemming NATO countries in, Adm. Mark Ferguson, chief of NATO's Allied Joint Forces Command Naples and U.S. Navy commander for Europe and Africa, said in an Oct. 6 speech.

Russian ships and aircraft also have dramatically increased their testing of NATO defenses, even along U.S. borders.

One of the alliance's key challenges in meeting the new Russian threat is convincing member states to ramp up defense spending after two decades of a post-Cold War holiday from the Eastern threat that had initially brought its members together.

In an Oct. 12 speech to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly in Norway, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg warned members that "once there was a time to collect the peace dividend. But now is the time to invest in our defense.

"Deterrence is often seen as some kind of old-fashioned, Cold War concept," he added. "But being strong enough to stop others from attacking you is not old-fashioned. Being strong enough so that your people can go about their business without the fear of war is not old-fashioned. We have strong forces not because we want to fight a war, but because we want to prevent war."

Another major threat to the alliance's stability is a massive state-run and state-sponsored global media campaign to push the Kremlin's point of view, to which NATO officials have not yet managed an effective response.

This information and psychological warfare campaign has even reached into NATO countries. A June poll by the Pew Research Center found that majorities in France, Germany and Italy opposed the idea of using military force to defend another NATO country against Russia. The results pose a grave threat to the principle of collective self-defense that forms the cornerstone of the alliance, and were not seen as reassuring to Eastern European members under Russia's shadow.

"We need to employ a much more effective strategy," said Heather Conley, a former State Department official now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "This is the great challenge of our time and we don't have an effective answer."

[ExCTCitizen]

NATO has their day, however, NATO back in the 90s should've change to help Europeans to build their defense, in case Russia started to be the USSR.

However, I think we need to rethink the military. Lets use the military to build the wall, defend our shores and then use the military to help other countries.

[gtx960]

NATO is a Cold War relic that should be dissolved.

NATO leaders know Russia will never allow Ukraine to become part of an anti-Russian military alliance encircling Russia.

The only way NATO maintains continued relevance is if it abandons its Cold War mindset.

And its been a quarter century since the Iron Curtain collapsed and Communism vanished.

NATO raison d’etre disappeared along with it.

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Many posters forget that Russia is not the mighty USSR of times past. It has an economy smaller than Italy’s and a population barely one-third that of the USA. It’s trade policy is basically third world, relying on exports of raw materials—and the mercy of the commodities markets—for income. Russia is, in fact, the Italy of the 1930s, a relatively weak second rate power that is able to play the world power game because great nations (or great alliances like NATO) aren’t willing to put it back in its box. The parallels between Putin and Mussolini are too obvious to ignore.