Is NATO dead without a main enemy to unite us?
There can be no trans-Atlantic alliance when one side is in profound disagreement with itself over many things and the other side has no desire to be drawn into the dispute. Nor can there be a military alliance where there is no understanding of the mission, the enemy or obligations. NATO was successful during the Cold War because the enemy was clear, there was consensus over what to do in each particular circumstance and participation was a given. An alliance that does not know its mission, has no meaningful plans for what problems it faces and stages come-as-you-are parties in Libya or Mali, where invitations are sent out and no one RSVPs, cannot be considered an alliance. The committees meet and staffs of defense ministers prepare for conferences -- all of the niceties of an alliance remain. SACEUR is still an American, the Science and Technology Committee produces papers, but in the end, the commonality of purpose is gone.
He has a point. But I am not nostalgic for that unity of purpose that made NATO an alliance. Although truth be told, NATO did not require every member to fight. But we did assume pretty much everyone would given the threat of defeat by the USSR.
So it is different today? I for one am glad it is different. We no longer live under a high-stakes environment where we study escalation dominance and throw weights and calculate circular errors probable like our lives depended on it.
If NATO is no longer an alliance, NATO still serves a very useful purpose:
I think that NATO should remain (with American participation) in case Russia becomes a military threat to Europe again (it would be too difficult to rebuild the alliance after disbanding it); to ease worries about united Germany's power within Europe; and to provide common doctrines and interoperability for coalitions of the willing amongst the biggest bloc of the world's democracies for out-of-area missions using coalitions of the willing.
Don't let the pursuit of the perfect wartime alliance be the enemy of a good peacetime training club. If NATO is dead, I say long live NATO. If our future is staging come-as-you-are parties, it would be nice to know who might show up with what when the invitations go out.
