Not yet. However reform is long overdue. At the end of the cold war I declared that with the disbanding of the Warsaw Pact, NATO too should stand down, since the threat which it was designed to deter had gone away. The problem with military alliances is that if they are not needed\u00a0to counter a threat, they can easily create one, because their very existence is threatening to those outside it.<\/p>\n
As long ago as 2009 I wrote and published that if NATO was to remain, especially if it was to expand east into the old Warsaw Pact territories, Russia should become a member, as it was a European power. Future threats to Europe would come from outside Europe not within. This did not happen and Russia found not only that it was excluded, but that everyone else, right up to its border, was to be included. Alarm bells rang in Moscow. Recalling invasions\u00a0from the West by Napoleon, the Kaiser and Hitler, Russia set about modernizing its military. We know the rest.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile NATO, although it\u00a0had the wits to refuse to join in the invasion of Iraq in 1991, engaged itself in the Balkans and Afghanistan then blundered into Libya. The Balkans were stabilized, Afghanistan is a mess, Libya is a chaotic mess, Al Qaeda has morphed into IS and, as part of the chain reaction,\u00a0Syria has been all but destroyed in a terrible civil war. \u00a0The same fate now seems to be engulfing Yemen. Clearly reform, realignment and remodeling across the whole international scene is a matter of priority. Whilst NATO sees itself as part of the solution, it is also part of the problem. The wind of change must blow though its corridors also. It very likely will, because President\u00a0Elect\u00a0Trump has expressed sentiments very similar to those set out above. \u00a0The terms will be simple. If NATO wants his money it will have to do his bidding.<\/p>\n
\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Not yet. However reform is long overdue. At the end of the cold war I declared that with the disbanding of the Warsaw Pact, NATO too should stand down, since the threat which it was designed to deter had gone away. The problem with military alliances is that if they are not needed\u00a0to counter a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-malcolm-blair-robinson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11167"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11180,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11167\/revisions\/11180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}