Who Needs NATO?

Brian Doherty | May 28, 2002

Old bureaucracies neither die nor fade away. The latest, and perhaps most absurd, example of this timeless truth is NATO's refusal to shake hands and disband given the fact that the enemy it was primarily designed to counter is not only now gone but, for all intents and purposes, joining the alliance.

An agreement signed between the 19 nations of NATO and Russia this week in Italy, reports Reuters, commits them to "cooperation on counter-terrorism, crisis management, non-proliferation, arms control and confidence-building measures, theater missile defense, search and rescue at sea, military-to-military cooperation and defense reform, civilian emergencies and 'new threats and challenges.'"

Clearly, there's a new NATO in town. Equally clearly, no one with any say in the matter is going to publicly raise the point: Maybe expensive and potentially dangerous alliance organizations that commit dozens of nations to war over any member nation's problems should disappear when their original purpose does.