2005-09-20
Securing Europe
Winston Churchill once said "The day will come when the joy bells will ring again throughout Europe". Well, the day that I think most represents that was watching the Bulgarian minister as his flag was raised at NATO Headquarters. You can see that here and the other 6 countries can be found here.
NATO is the premiere alliance. Some people think that it is moribund. Because it requires approval from all 26 members before it will act. But to me this is exactly how it should be. A non-aggressive alliance. It's meant to be defensive and it should stay that way to avoid spooking places like Russia and China. You should see some maps of NATO and NATO Partnership for Peace. The NATO juggernaut is solid from the US, across to Europe, all the way down to Turkey. Austria and Switzerland are now totally enclosed by NATO and thus protected, so Austria should be in a position to ditch its semi-enforced neutrality. Iraq and Afghanistan, two newly-freed countries, are in a strong position to join NATO, or at least, NATO PfP themselves. Iraq borders a NATO country (Turkey). Afghanistan borders several NATO PfP countries, and if we topple Iran, then Afghanistan would be linked to Europe via Turkey and Iran. World freedom is so wonderful. NATO has unimaginable reach.
There's still the problem of what to do about Russia. We have the NATO-Russia Council already, but I think it needs to be strengthened into a formal alliance. I believe the thing that is standing in the way of this happening is Russia's continued presence in Georgia and Moldova. I haven't seen any commitment from NATO on this, but I can't see any reason why NATO shouldn't simply come out and say "if you get out of Georgia and Moldova, we'll create a NATO-Russia alliance". I could see a reason for not saying that when the Baltics joined. NATO didn't want to set a precedent for countries becoming members of NATO only with Russia's permission. But that doesn't apply for Georgia and Moldova. They are not ready for NATO membership yet anyway (take a look at the map of world freedom on my site). I don't see a strategic problem with simply letting Russia know where it stands - withdrawal from those two countries will eventuate in a formal NATO-Russia alliance. Then we will be in a better position to protect places like Taiwan.
|
NATO is the premiere alliance. Some people think that it is moribund. Because it requires approval from all 26 members before it will act. But to me this is exactly how it should be. A non-aggressive alliance. It's meant to be defensive and it should stay that way to avoid spooking places like Russia and China. You should see some maps of NATO and NATO Partnership for Peace. The NATO juggernaut is solid from the US, across to Europe, all the way down to Turkey. Austria and Switzerland are now totally enclosed by NATO and thus protected, so Austria should be in a position to ditch its semi-enforced neutrality. Iraq and Afghanistan, two newly-freed countries, are in a strong position to join NATO, or at least, NATO PfP themselves. Iraq borders a NATO country (Turkey). Afghanistan borders several NATO PfP countries, and if we topple Iran, then Afghanistan would be linked to Europe via Turkey and Iran. World freedom is so wonderful. NATO has unimaginable reach.
There's still the problem of what to do about Russia. We have the NATO-Russia Council already, but I think it needs to be strengthened into a formal alliance. I believe the thing that is standing in the way of this happening is Russia's continued presence in Georgia and Moldova. I haven't seen any commitment from NATO on this, but I can't see any reason why NATO shouldn't simply come out and say "if you get out of Georgia and Moldova, we'll create a NATO-Russia alliance". I could see a reason for not saying that when the Baltics joined. NATO didn't want to set a precedent for countries becoming members of NATO only with Russia's permission. But that doesn't apply for Georgia and Moldova. They are not ready for NATO membership yet anyway (take a look at the map of world freedom on my site). I don't see a strategic problem with simply letting Russia know where it stands - withdrawal from those two countries will eventuate in a formal NATO-Russia alliance. Then we will be in a better position to protect places like Taiwan.
# posted by Paul Edwards @ 04:46 
