NATO reconsidered.

• Author: Abrahamson, James L.

NATO Reconsidered

By Joseph A. Harriss, The American Spectator

http://spectator.org/archives/2011/03/28/nato-reconsidered/

While Joseph Harriss, the Paris correspondent of The American Spectator, prepared this article for publication, NATO began its much criticized, but now apparently successful, effort to drive Moammar Gadhafi from power in Libya. Whether that operation will change his or a reader's views about NATO's profligacy and usefulness strikes this reviewer as very doubtful.

Harriss began his assessment of NATO with a description of its pricey new and futuristic glass and steel 2.7 million square-feet headquarters and the building's many amenities for its Brussels staff of 4,500, which he described as "a stately pleasure-dome for coddled fat cats" and a "perfect illustration of Parkinson's Law" that bureaucratic expansion usually accompanies an organization's loss of its original raison d'etre: preventing a Soviet invasion of Western Europe. The Alliance also has hundreds of committees and, outside of Brussels, employs 6,000 people at fourteen agencies in seven countries.

To the discomfiture of NATO's East European members with vivid memories of Soviet occupation, Germany and France now regard Russia as a partner, and--despite protests from Washington--France recently made a $2 billion sale of Mistral-class ships to NATO's former enemy. As NATO's Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen tries to "cozy up to Russia," NATO's Baltic members are exploring alternative defensive arrangements with the Nordic states.

Rather than pressing its European members to increase their force structure and focus on Russia, NATO has gone in search of "out-of-area" missions and adopted new strategic concepts, such as nation building, cyber war, climate change, and...