The Death Knell for NATO?

[Frimost]

NATO, we hardly knew ye...
For all those years what did it accomplish?
Bosnia? Kosovo?
To small marginal wars in the Balkans, and then *poof* Falling apart faster then armed resistance to Germany's invasion of France in 1940.

Split looms for Nato over Iraq

 

[Lasz]

So long Nato we will miss you.

I would like to say so long to threads that involve politics too.

 

[mig]

NATO was conceived as opposition to the Warsaw Pact.

Who needs it now?.

 

[April]

Sorry people, but just because there is a disagreement, does not mean that NATO is breaking up. There's way too much infrastructure and financial and personnel commitment for it to break apart that easily.

I am, however, very surprised at Belgium for following along behind France like a puppy dog.

 

[Lost Cause]

NATO and the U.N...

Can be absorbed into the new EU Reich, let them handle their own shit from now on.

 

[Coolville]

So... because Belgium agrees with France and Germany they are suddenly puppy dogs? Hardly. The Belgian government, as well as the Belgian people, have long voiced their opposition to the American war.

Nato... so long. Ancient history. And now that the Yanks are trying to use the org. for their own interests, the sooner it's gone the better.

France, Germany, and Belgium are blocking an agreement under the Nato treaty's article 5 - whereby an attack on one country is considered an attack on all - to provide early warning radar aircraft and American Patriot air defence missiles, and anti-chemical and biological warfare units to Turkey to protect that country from an attack by Iraq.

Michele Alliot-Marie, the French defence minister, accused the US of jumping the gun and of using the Nato card for its own agenda.

Article 5 referred only to an "imminent threat", she said.

She told Mr Rumsfeld: "To be an ally means to consult, to find consensus; it is not saying my idea is necessarily the right one and all those who don't agree should be pushed aside or excluded."

 

[teddybear4play]

I don't get how Article V gives them the power to block protection of a fellow member.

They're just skeeved because the U.S. is freezing them out of the decision-making processes. We'd rather talk to people who support us than deal with them, and it's pissing off their inflated sensibilities.

TB4p

 

[Frimost]

They suck

God France, Belgium, and Germany are SUCH assholes!
This isn't even about The War in Iraq so much as it is about protecting a NATO member, ensuring it's safety. The U.S. is trying to put in place a contingency plan in the unlikely even that Iraq counter-attacks Turkey in retaliation for the U.S. lead invasion or the fairly likely event they launch some missiles at her in revenge (you always have to have a Plan B for backup). France, Germany, and Belgium are playing politics with Turkish lives, what a bunch of dick-heads!

Nato 'bad blood' rocks alliance

At stake is not actually despatching forces to Turkey, but just the preliminary planning - so as to be ready to do so if war threatens.

These forces - mainly air defence units - would not be involved in a war against Iraq, but would protect Turkish territory and airspace against any retaliatory Iraqi threat.

The Bush administration has given its commitment that the Ankara government will get whatever it needs.

And the Dutch have already said that they will ship Patriot anti-missile batteries to Turkey - a clear indication that the Netherlands for one does not agree with the Franco-German position.

Visiting Munich at the weekend for the annual security conference there, I came away with the sense of a major rift within Europe and between France and the United States in particular.

But with Nato more and more uncertain about what its future role should be, the rift between Paris and Germany on the one hand, and Washington on the other, could have a corrosive effect on the functioning of the whole alliance.

The fact is that Nato's European members are deeply divided - so divided it seems that they cannot even agree to plan to assist one of their own allies who may be under threat.

But that of course is precisely what Nato's principal role is supposed to be.

 

[Frimost]

This whole article is filled with interesting stuff...

Iraq crisis provokes anger and confusion

The first row concerns a late effort by France and Germany to head off war by proposing an alternative vision under which Iraq would be contained by a tighter inspections regime.

After talks in Paris with the French President Jacques Chirac, the Russian President Vladimir Putin swung behind the plan.

In so doing he joined "New Russia" to "Old Europe" as the Franco-German alliance has been called by the US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

The intervention has in any event infuriated the United States whose Secretary of State Colin Powell, the dove turned hawk, contemptuously compared any extra inspectors to "Inspector Clouseau running all around Iraq".

Inspector Clouseau was the comically incompetent film detective played by Peter Sellers. He was, as General Powell well knows, French.

The divisions over Iraq produced the startling sight of the German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer publicly haranguing Donald Rumsfeld at a meeting in Munich over the weekend.

The second row is within Nato, which has been split by a proposal to send equipment to help defend Turkey in the event of war. This would be made up of AWACs airborne control aircraft, Patriot missiles and chemical and biological defence teams.

France, Germany and Belgium objected on the grounds that it was preparing for war not helping to avoid it.

Those tracking Belgium's role, incidentally, will recall its refusal to provide Britain with shells before the Gulf War in 1991.

Mr Rumsfeld, as always, had his own words: "I think this is a disgrace," he announced.

And speaking after talks in Washington with the Australian Prime Minister John Howard, Mr Rumsfeld said that if there was no agreement in Nato about giving help to Turkey, it would be given anyway.

The latest straw in the wind comes in a proposal to reshape the American military presence in Europe.

According to the New York Times, American delegates on the plane carrying them home from the Munich meeting were talking with approval of a briefing they had been given by the new American commander in Europe, General James Jones.

A new Axis: France, Russia, and Germany? One could hardly ever imagine a more unlikely partnership in the history of Alliances then this scenario has formed borne out of a mutual distrust and jealousy of America and contempt for the possibility of democracy ever taking root in the Middle East.

 

[HeavyStick]

France has a war record of 0-5-4, are we really going to miss them?

 

[Guest]

France has a war record of 0-5-4, are we really going to miss them?

What about The Statue of Liberty? There's gratitude for ya!