Nato

Defense Secretary Robert Gates was right to call out our European allies for their lack of commitment to NATO and their over dependence on the defense forces of the USA ("Gates hits NATO allies hard," June 11). Anyone who has traveled to Western Europe can only marvel at the standard of living enjoyed by the majority their citizens. Germany is an interesting case in that this is a country that suffered greatly economically as a result of two world wars but with the help of outsiders has become an economic powerhouse.

It is quite obvious that the U.S. and NATO are being outsmarted by the Taliban, who are wearing fake Afghan soldiers' uniforms to kill our soldiers and sow discord among the alliance. Moreover, the restrictions placed on our peace keeping forces prevent them from fighting a more aggressive conflict, which is absolutely a hindrance to our assisting the weak Afghan government and military. Quinton D. Thompson, Towson

Any assessment of NATO's future has to take account of one of the suppressed realities of the old Cold War, namely that two superpowers -- one totally outside Europe and one on its edge -- kept European tribal conflicts at bay through their unspoken military alliance. This is not how the U.S. and the former Soviet Union officially described their ideological rivalry and nuclear duopoly. But their shared interest was genuine and it persists, if for no other reason than their continuing capability to obliterate one another.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai made a very weak excuse recently when, in response to recent insurgent strikes in Kabul, he stated that the "attack showed a 'failure' by Afghanistan intelligence and NATO" ("Attacks in Kabul show vulnerability," April 17). In my opinion, this statement should be considered an extreme embarrassment to Mr. Karzai. As anyone else who is as keenly interested as I am should be well aware, this raging conflict between the Taliban rebels and the Afghanistan government and their military forces is, and has been for some time, in desperate need of much stronger support from the U.S and NATO troops in order to quell a challenging problem.

LONDON -- Expansion of NATO probably will occur, in part because it would be too awkward to turn back at this point. However, arguments for expansion strike skeptics as proof that NATO is a superannuated institution that has fulfilled its mission and now is implausibly improvising a new one.At NATO's founding in 1949, it was said to have three purposes: keeping the Americans in Europe, the Russians out and the Germans down. America has now had soldiers on the Rhine for 50 years, an almost Roman engagement, Russia's military is disintegrating and Germany has been in NATO since 1955.

How should NATO be transformed so it is relevant to the new security situation in Europe?The Soviet Union is unraveling not only politically but militarily. The U.S. is under great domestic pressure to draw down its forces assigned to NATO by half or two-thirds, thus raising questions about the U.S. military presence in Europe.Meanwhile, Washington and Moscow have offered to rid the continent of most tactical nuclear weaponry. The European Community is trying without success to force an end to the Yugoslav civil war. France and Germany are proposing a 50,000-man force to turn the Western European Union into an organization with military capability.

As the world gropes for a security system responsive to the needs of the post-Cold War era, NATO inexorably comes to the fore. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, arguably the most successful military alliance of all time, was born and bred in the Cold War. Since the collapse of the Soviet empire east of the Elbe, there has been intense debate whether NATO has a mission and a future or whether it should be buried honorably next to its vanquished foe,...

WORLD POLITICS has changed. There is a new alliance altering the balance of power and will.It is called the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO. It is led by a powerful nation that had been discounted as isolationist and broke, the United States.This new NATO is like nothing before, especially the former NATO, which had outlived its reason-for-being without new purpose or will.This new NATO emerged in September, when its air forces picked apart the high-tech air defense in Serbian-held Bosnia that NATO members had helped the former Yugoslavia erect against the Soviet threat.

Washington. -- The Clinton administration has given its answer to the problem of Central and East European security. It is as equivocal as this administration's other foreign-policy initiatives: a proposal that all the countries of the region become members of NATO, but not real members.Secretary of Defense Les Aspin said October 20 that the U.S. proposes NATO ''partnerships'' that would not include security guarantees. President Clinton is to put this idea forward at the scheduled NATO summit meeting in January.

THE NATO ultimatum to Serbian forces around Sarajevo could be, at long last, a first step toward ending the bloodiest aggression in Europe in 50 years. Or it could be an empty gesture by politicians trying only to escape embarrassment.On the encouraging side, the allies seem to be serious about using air strikes if the Serbian aggressors resume shelling civilians in Sarajevo or fail to move their heavy weapons back 12 miles in the next 10 days. Previous NATO threats have been jokes, and quickly seen as such by the Serbs.

There's a scene in the movie "Pretty Woman" where the kindhearted hooker played by Julia Roberts asks her client, portrayed by Richard Gere: "Who do you want me to be?" Regardless of who she might really be, she realizes that it's far less attractive than a tabula rasa onto which her client can project his own desires, and around which she can then build a tailor-made, palatable persona. It's essentially the same principle that dating-and-mating books recommend adopting when suggesting that women retain an air of mystery at the outset of a relationship and be the first to hang up in phone conversations with a man. The idea underpinning these contortions is that whoever you truly are is less attractive than whatever someone can project onto you, so you should let them continue to dream about who and what you might be for as long as possible so you can rope them in. It's a strategy sometimes seen in politics, as well -- and in the case of the upcoming French elections set for a first round of voting this weekend, it may well be the winning strategy that determines the country's next president.

Since the conception and birth of our nation, the basic challenge for our existence has been our participation in our wars of survival which have required our citizens to gallantly rise up and take arms and go into battle. Such action by our nation began with the Revolutionary War (1775-83) when our American colonies gained their independence from Great Britain. This tremendous victory has been followed down through the years by early skirmishes with the native Indians, Spain, France, and Mexico, and then later by the two World Wars, Vietnam, the Korean Conflict and the powerful9/11attack.

Where is Afghanistan policy headed at this crucial moment? As the nation's excellent if unsung war commander, Gen. John Allen, testifies on Capitol Hill this week, and as Republican presidential aspirants continue to attack President Barack Obama from both the left and the right on the subject, these questions are especially timely. Will the president soon be tempted to say that with Osama bin Laden dead (on the positive side), but with the Afghan and Pakistani governments still very hard to work with and the insurgency still resilient (on the negative side)

The wife and four children of Maj. Robert J. Marchanti II stood silently before his casket Monday. Their arms were wrapped firmly around one another in a display of family solidarity and devotion for the soldier killed in Afghanistan. Hundreds of mourners, gathered at Trinity Assembly of God Church Monday, witnessed that endearing sight and listened as the family shared their memories and some of Marchanti's many missives to them. "Words cannot express how sad we are today," said Aaron Marchanti, the oldest of three sons, who wore his Baltimore City firefighter's uniform.

There has been widespread fury in Afghanistan and parts of neighboring Pakistan over the burning of the Quran at the Bagram Air Base. Several U.S. and NATO servicemen have been killed by angry Afghans, and violent demonstrations continue days after the incident despite the swift and sincere apologies issued by President Barack Obama and the chief of army operations in Afghanistan. The "inadvertent" burning of old Qurans was an inexcusable blunder on our part and shows how culturally insensitive our troops and advisers are, despite our presence in Afghanistan and Iraq for over a decade.

As violent protests continued in Afghanistan over the burning of copies of the Muslim holy book by NATO forces, the Pentagon confirmed Monday that a Maryland National Guard major was one of two U.S. military officers shot to death inside a ministry building in the heart of the Afghan capital over the weekend. Maj. Robert J. Marchanti II, 48, a longtime physical-education teacher in the Baltimore County public schools, had been working since September as a mentor to the Afghan National Police, part of the NATO partnering mission at the center of U.S. strategy in the country.

WASHINGTON -- The "second creation" began this week with the announcement by NATO foreign ministers in Berlin that after two years of squabbling they have figured out how Europe can take over some defense burdens from the U.S.The solution is dubbed, "Combined Joint Task Forces,` a scheme to let Europeans borrow American intelligence and logistics for peacemaking operations in which only European troops are present on the ground. Moreover, France will soon rejoin the integrated NATO command it left three decades ago. Spain, the other member of the political, but not the military, wing of NATO, will also join the military command."

BRUSSELS, Belgium - I've been a long and cranky opponent of NATO expansion, out of fear that it was going to dilute the organization. But now that NATO is expanding to 26 countries, I say: Why stop there? Virtually all of NATO's future threats are going to come not from the east and Russia, but from the south - the Middle East and Afghanistan. So if NATO really wants to secure Europe, it can no longer just be in Europe. It needs to help stabilize these other regions. To do that, NATO needs to add three more members: Iraq, Egypt and Israel.

The Obama administration may finally be on the right track in its strategy for combating terrorism, as its new strategic doctrine has sworn off counter-insurgency in favor of a more targeted approach — one that we see already in effect as unmanned drones carry out strikes in Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere. The new approach is contained in a 19-page document, the "National Strategy for Counterterrorism," which was outlined Wednesday by John O. Brennan, President Obama's counterterrorism chief.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates was right to call out our European allies for their lack of commitment to NATO and their over dependence on the defense forces of the USA ("Gates hits NATO allies hard," June 11). Anyone who has traveled to Western Europe can only marvel at the standard of living enjoyed by the majority their citizens. Germany is an interesting case in that this is a country that suffered greatly economically as a result of two world wars but with the help of outsiders has become an economic powerhouse.