Neo NATO

 "There are legitimate questions about whether, if present trends continue, NATO will again be able to sustain the kind of operations that we have seen in Libya and Afghanistan without Great Satan taking on even more of the burden"

North America and The Others?

Is that the new initialization for the Euro Centric Alliance that - unless Deutschers get rowdy (3rd times the charm, nicht wahr?) prob won't see Europa all scratched up and bloody of their own devices. Russia may have fangs on or about her Near Abroad, yet she is no condition to launch a Warsaw Pact style Panzer Armee blitz to the coast of Spain in a week anytime in the foreseable future.


As per Ambassador Daalder, the longer-term thang will be getting as many countries as possible into the global NATO security network.

Why exactly?

Power in a network flows from connectedness, or what network theorists call “centrality.” The most powerful member of a network is the node that has the most connections to others, which means that a node can increase its power not only by adding connections directly, but also by increasing the connectedness of nearby nodes.

In other words, Great Satan can increase her own power both by connecting to other NATO members (and then ensuring that NATO is connected to as many other countries and organizations as possible) and by increasing the connectedness of those other countries and organizations. 

Power for what? 

NATO has more of an interest in defusing Syria’s crisis than Libya’s. Turkey, a NATO member, is on Syria’s border and has seen violence spill into its territory. Other nations are threatened, too; Sunday night a cleric sympathetic to Bashar Bay Bee’s opponents was assassinated in Lebanon. Libya is of modest strategic importance, while the fall of the Assad regime, Iran’s major ally in the Arab world, would have strategic benefits for Great and Little Satan, and everyone else working to keep Iran from becoming a nuclear power.

This is mystifying not just because the humanitarian stakes are as great in Syria as in Libya. As with Libya, NATO could support the Syrian opposition without putting its own troops at risk. And the alternative to NATO action in Syria is not just a slower democratic victory, nor even a return to Assad-regime stability. Instead, as we’ve written before, Syria’s conflict, already increasingly violent, might well degenerate into full-blown sectarian warfare; this war could jump into Turkey, Lebanon and Iraq, and al-Qaeda would profit murderously from this opportunity. 

NATO leaders might feel that if they don’t talk about Syria, these outcomes won’t be blamed on them. They are, after all, preoccupied in their search for the exit from Afghanistan. The alliance  cannot shirk this issue indefinitely. As Syria burns, the Libya “victory” rings increasingly hollow.

 If the non Anglo/Great Satanic NATO members are unable or unwilling (often the same thing) to operate outside the box with fully funded fully crunk militaries then... 

Great Satan once opposed an independent European defense.  Now she should insist on it.  Or rather—since it is not America’s place to decide Europe’s future for Europe—should adopt policies likely to lead to that result.  The Europeans could use the existing alliance structure to organize continental military affairs, perhaps in cooperation with the European Union.  (Albania, Croatia, Iceland, and Turkey are not currently EU members, but Croatia is slated to join next year and the others are candidates for membership; Canada is the only true outlier.)

Pic - "Asphalt Soldiers"