To Mark Bowen:

Speaking of “brilliant idiocy,” you might need to take a class in remedial reading. Did you happen to notice that I closed the first paragraph of my last post by referring not only to the Security Council of the UN, but also to the General Assembly. My point was that issues relating to force and international intervention should be opened up to the membership of the UN-at-large and not restricted to the permanent members of the Security Council.

I am well aware that any one member of the Security Council can veto the proposal of other members of the Security Council and thus, Russia and/or China can hamstring proposals to deploy peacekeepers (or member military forces) from the US and UK—-and vice versa.

I never claimed that I could speak for citizens living in any EU nation, and NO, I have not lived in Europe—-but I feel reasonably certain that they do not feel threatened by the “Iron Curtain” of the Stalinist USSR, which was the ostensible reason for forming NATO in the first place. Why am I so certain of that? Because neither the USSR nor the Warsaw Pact exist anymore.

As for my not having a “strong grasp” on international relations, arms control, diplomatic politics, etc., all I can say about your comment is that it’s simply your opinion. The fact that I have studied and have a degree in International Studies with focuses on Asia and Latin America doesn’t necessarily make me any more qualified than any other average citizen and I am willing to concede that, but I fail to see anything in your post that successfully refutes what I’ve stated in my previous posts.

If the only words from my posts that stood out for you were “naive” and “obtuse,” and you fail to point out just how I am lacking in a grasp of foreign affairs, (as opposed to your own superior understanding, I take it?) other than to imply that I must live or have lived in a EU nation to understand just what is going on, my only response to that is to throw your own words back to you, because, buddy: that’s some brilliant idiocy, indeed.

To respond to Mitchell P’s latest post, let me go point by point: No, I do not think that the UN Security Council is “perfect,” but YES, I do think that the Security Council is preferable, although I think that the international resort to force and intervention should be opened to vote by the General Assembly of the United Nations.

The use of NATO is for Washington and London’s purposes and as you may have noticed (or perhaps you hadn’t) during the Bush years, international law and international opinion didn’t matter. NATO is basically an excuse for the foreign policy mandarins in Washington to form a power bloc and throw their weight around, and also to keep the merchants of misery in the arms trade fat and happy.

As to NATO having a more rapid response time than UN peacekeepers——that’s debatable. Even if one were to accept the deployment of troops into Afghanistan after the Sept.11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentatgon as being totally legitimate (also debatable), it took approximately a month for those troops to invade. Of course, the air power component of that invasion was a good deal quicker, but it hardly bears comparison with UN peacekeeping units whose role does NOT include airstrikes.

You reiterate your claim that NATO is a “voluntary” organization (YES, among state officials, but not necessarily among the general populations of either the US or Europe who have NEVER been offered a vote in any kind of referendum or plebiscite on this matter) but completely ignore my remark that such a “voluntary” arrangement comes after diplomatic and/or economic pressure is brought to bear in some cases. Are you really that obtuse and naive as to believe that there are no strings attached?

As to your claim that NATO “keeps the peace,” that’s risible: or have you forgotten the conflicts in the region formerly known as Yugoslavia and Albania?

Moreover, as another poster has sardonically pointed out, he was astonished to learn that the North Atlantic (the region supposedly defended by NATO against the now-long defunct Warsaw Pact) has extended into Central and South Asia.

If you think that such imperialistic over-reaching is somehow “keeping the peace,” then you are seriously in need of a reality check.

Finally, I have no problem with the US and the European Union (and NON-EU states, for that matter) having good diplomatic and commercial relations, but the entanglements of formal military alliances are dangerous in the extreme.

If you doubt that, you need only examine the relationship between the US and Israeli governments and how the “alliance” between them has corrupted both. The US government, due to its compromised position owing to massive quantities of military and financial aid to Tel Aviv, can no longer be seriously viewed as an “honest broker” when it comes to mediating the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts.

Imperfect as it is, it is the UN that must broker peace between those two parties—-with or without the help of Washington.

To answer your question Mitchell-Would you prefer the US and EU-two the world’s freist regions not to be allied militarily?  the obvous answwer is: absolutely.  The US power system is so demented, incompetent, bellicose, and bloodthirsty that all other power systems should break all military ties and not form too close economic ties either.  the less military power the US has the better for the world and for the American people.

Reinhold Niebuhr suggested in a passage in 1937 that the greater the decline of a power, the more boastfully it tries to puff itself up.  It was only when the Bushites seized power and eviscerated US world power that the US becaome known as a Superpower.  It cannot even defeat countries with a tenth its population and a hundredth of its economic strength.

But the US can certainly kill a lot of people.  And a Nato alliance feeds its megalomania to kill a lot more. A decrease in its military power will decrrease the hatred and fear of the people of the world, and decrease the oppression of the US as a militarized police state.

Should Canada or Mexico invade, or Granada deprive us of its strategic nutmeg commidity, we will just have to defend ourselves without brandy Alexanders.

Pfaff isn’t all bad.  Dibanding NATO is a great idea but most likely it will just die of intertia.

NATO= a bunch of rich people sending family members and friends to other countries on vacations under the guise of DOING ?SOMETHING?[nobody really knows what] REALLY IMPORTANT!!!!

We are now in an era when, the ideal of an organization like NATO is not a useful tool of foreign policy.
If anything it is now used for controlling the people in the constituent countries and for propaganda purposes only.
The disbanding of an anachronism like NATO is now an imperative in these times of “terroristic wars.”
Nation States, except in small regional conflicts almost never go to war anymore, for they have learned the lesson that national and international wars are extremely costly and harmful to the citizenry that an organization like NATO is supposed to protect. NATO is merely a political tool of an outdated and outmoded foreign policy that cannot change with the times. And as an added expense to countries already overburdened with the costs of maintaining a standing armed force, the constituent countries cannot afford to underwrite such an organization anymore.
Should the US with the largest and most expensive in the world armed forces, continue to underwrite all
of the expense of NATO?  I believe that it is high time that we give this organization the heave-ho and allow it to die. France and Germany no longer contribute to the foreign policy decisions of the US,
they are in most cases standing against the foreign policy of US hegemony in the world and will not fight
the battles that America chooses because of our flawed foreign policy that includes hegemony in the Middle East.
Surely we are now faced with the decision that only a
maverick country makes, to stand alone or ask for help with our troubles. We, the American government, cannot stand much more of the “cowboy” image of foreign policy and we should now stop our hegemonistic foreign policies.  And as sure as shooting this does not include an organization like NATO.

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, William Pfaff!

I have waited a long time for someone to point out that NATO is “not real” and has no “coherent overall purpose” that would stand the daylight of close examination.

It seems to be that the main excuse for keeping this zombie organization intact is to keep the merchants of misery in the arms bazaar fat and happy.

Shift is also correct in stating that NATO has always been about “controlling it’s own people, particularly the left, as [much] as it has been about discouraging communist aggression.” Only, sometimes this Communist “aggression” has taken the form of people actually VOTING for Communists, as has been known to have happened in Italy, among other places.

Mitchell P. seems not to grasp the fact that (as Pfaff already mentioned), that NATO has served as an end run for D.C. policymakers to do an end run around the UN, even though the US and the UK are both permanent members of the Security Council. Mitchell P. may be unaware that the “voluntary” nature (and invitations) to NATO membership are likely accompanied by diplomatic and/or economic pressure exerted from Washington and are also likely to be conditional on Washington’s dominance and control of the alliance.

While he may be unsure whether Pfaff is calling for the abolition of NATO, I know where I stand: abolish NATO and democratize the UN!

NATO is and always has been as much about controlling it’s own people, particularly the left, as it has been about discouraging communist aggression.