"But be warned - among the younger there are no less that wish our country to oppose american influence. "

You think I haven't seen that the past 10 years? Of course I have! Problem is that asking the US to continue defending you while you do a glacially small buildup - and taking every opportunity to slit Uncle Sam's Achilles tendon while we remain somehow obligated to continue defending you - simply is not going to work. We cannot 'domineer' Germany into doing anything. That is not completely a bad thing even for the US. But the German form of not being dominated seems to be saying 'no' to everything, and that will not work.

The US CAN force Germany to contribute to it's own defense, but only by breaking the NATOP alliance even more than Germany has already done. I think the German view tends to be that the only legitimnate role of NATO and the US armed forces is defending Europe. The American view is that limiting NATO to that role benefits Germany greatly and the US very little.

Tell me, why should the US continue to heavily subsidize the defense of trading rivals?


"The US here have the smell of a country that has domineered us long enough. We made peace with the French and the Brits, we got rid of the Russians - now the US are next."

Do you mean 'make peace' with the US? Or 'get rid of'? Actually I think we are in agreement here. You wish to 'get rid of' the US and I wish to get out of NATO - at least the parts of NATO who palpably wish to benefit from the US contribution without giving anything substantial in return.

"Think about it. It is the reason our politicians receive public cheer whenever they thwart american plans like taking Ukraine and Georgia into Nato."

Yes, I knew that. But you make an unwarranted assumption here - that I support Bush on expanding NATO when the opposite is true. The US needs to pull resources out of NATO and permit the Germans the freedom you yearn for. Perhaps then the countries can be friends again, although not for many years, because both Germans and the US feel betrayed by each other now. Or rahter the US already does and Germany will do when we remove the German birthright - getting defended without cost or sacrifice.

True, at this time Russia is no threat to Germany. And in fact at times Germans seem to value the Russian partnership more highly than that with the US.

But I think Heisenberg's Uncertainty theorum may apply to politics as well as physics. The fact is that Russia has no hope of military victory over NATO - while the US remains part of NATO. If the US were to withdraw from NATO and remove the security guarantee the situation would fundamentally change, although I won't predict how it will change. I suspect Russia would become much more assertive in that circumstance.

Germany and Germans have been undervaluing the security guarantee the US has provided for at least a generation. This will lead in time to an earthquake in trans-Atlantic relations - and a new world. That split may occur in 5 years or 20 years.

Or if Europeans actually try to address the problems the US is talking about) it may not happen at all. But I'm not betting on the latter. I think sooner or later you will treat a Democratic President as roughly as you treated Bush - and alienate your very last remaining friends in the US body politic.

"Don has argued for some time that NATO is becoming, or already is, a bad deal for the US. And yet, successive US administrations, including the present one, have not only been committed to NATO but want to expand its size and scope. Why?"

I think there are two things going on, SC. I think it's obvious to almost everyone that NATO in it's traditional form is pretty much 'mission accomplished'. No more USSR and most of the former Warsaw Pact has been absorbed into the western alliance.

The older European members of the alliance have radically cut their defense budgets and become significantly more pacifist as their proximity to the remaining threat recedes. This tendency extended across the the entire alliance (not excluding the US) but Germany is by far the most extreme example of this shift to pacifism. The US, UK, and possibly France much less so.

So NATO needs to change or go the way of the Holy Roman Empire and be recognized as defunct. One obvious way to make NATO relevant again is to expand the alliance to cover countries which are physically closer to the remaining threat - Russia. This has already been done by NATO expansion. This has several effects - it removes traditional western Europe further from the threat and thus reinforces the pacifistic and busy-body tendencies of the older European members. They can cut their contribution to NATO while raising the profile of their demands upon NATO policymaking and even insist upon a controlling influence upon US policy outside of NATO upon the grounds that the US is a member of NATO and therefore everything the US does must be controlled by NATO. There is no substantial cost to behaving this way; the Bear is now a very long way from Germany/France/Italy and is no threat at all to these countries - as long as the US and UK maintain the 'security guarantee.

What's not to like from the POV of Germany? Extremely low defense expenditure - historically the lowest ever, I believe - coupled with strengthened influence over the immensely powerful US military which will be available as needed and which can be condemned at all other times to raise the public image of Germany - at the expense of the US' image.

The Bush proposal to further expand NATO to Ukraine and Georgia make no military sense - one has to consider the politics to see the logic. Public opinion in Ukraine is fundamentally divided between pro-NATO and pro-Russian camps - Ukraine should not be admitted until that is resolved. Georgia has the public support but is a long way from the strategic center of NATO - so that doesn't make strategic sense either - unless one believes that NATO should expand to be a global alliance as Rudy Guliani proposed.

But expansion would have several political effects. It would dilute the relative influence of the 'pacifist' members. It will be popular in Eastern Europe. And it will make NATO more relevant. To statesmen of the Bush generation (I include McCain and HRC in that statement) NATO is an invariant - it is assumed to be needed and must be patched and repaired through all the stresses that it has experienced in recent years. The Bush expanison plan can be seen as a desperate effort to preserve NATO and make it worthwhile for the US to participate. Such desperate meausres rarely succeed.

I ask a more fundamental question. The late Peter Drucker wrote that every organisation needs to ask itself a fundamental question about all of it;s operations each year: "If we had to build this from scratch today - would it make sense to do so?". If the answer is 'no' then the organisation needs to start winding down that operation.

Until the fall of the Berlin Wall NATO was definately needed and the answer was yes. Since 1989 the answer to the question has been increasingly obviously 'no', measured by how much the members have been willing to give up to preserve it. Watch Germany - Germany is the canary in the coal mine. Germany is the closest traditional NATO member to the Bear - and Germany is the least-willing to sacrifice anything to preserve NATO. There is your answer - say No to NATO.

What is needed is for a generation of politicians to see the situation with fresh eyes, which is the primary reason why I am supporting Obama for President this year. He is the most likely to do this and he is very sharp and principled. McCain is cold-war generation and will see NATO in that light. HRC is transitional and (I think) completely expedient; I don't see her doing anything not driven by opinion polls. Obama is the best bet to look to the future interests of the US.

Yes. NATO is in a curious situation. If an extraterrestial were to analyze NATO given no more information than that one member was spending 3.7% of GDP to defense and another nation only 1.3% of it's GDP, and asked which country was spending the higher figure and which the lower, I think 'ET' would reply that it is obvious that the US is expending 1.3% and Germany 3.7%! The US has no strategic threats worth mentioning - and Germany does. Potentially at least. To it's trade partners if not to German national territory - although the threat is more real than people understand I think.

Some significant part of the US 3.7% is effectively neutralizing the threat from Russia to Europe - and has done so for two generations. Both Europe and the US have lost sight of that fact, Europe more than the US I think. For Europe this is now considered part of it's 'birthright', I think. Not something which has to be paid for in any way.

I don't think people in the US would agree, and the more obvious Europe makes it that they think this way the less people in the US will agree. A widening fissure.

Umm, yes. Citing the totals begs the question of effectiveness. Italy spends about 33 billion euros and Russia spends 40 billion - that means the Italian military is 80% as effective as Russia's, no? Not (say) 10% or 20%. Ummm, right. And Europeans call US Yank's 'materialists'!

I think it's realistic to judge the Russian military as about equivalent as those of Germany, France, Italy, and Spain combined, perhaps better because of the tradit6ion and the experience factor. More and sometimes better equipment and a MUCH better idea how to use the equipment! Remember the early days of the Russian campaign in WWII. Russia had a considerable material advantage both in quality and quantity over Germany, so who was threatening whose capital in December 1941? Hint: It wasn't Berlin.

Just to posiit a hypothetical situation: Suppose the US were to withdraw the Security guarantee (and really mean it) and Russia were to take the opportunity to grab for it's traditional prize - the Dardanelles. Going through whomever they need to to get that.

Who in the remaining NATO states could effectively respond to that (apart from Turkey itself)? France, perhaps. The UK - if it wished to. But Turkey is a long way from London - almost as far as Afghanistan is from Berlin. So say the Brits opt out - "too involved in Afghanistan, old man"!

Who stops them, tell me? Italy, Germany, Spain? Don't make me laugh! Greece? Ummm, right. Greece would be providing covert aid but not to the Turks. France? Is France going to take Russia on nearly alone? I don't think so, France simply doesn't have the mass. Neither does the UK for that matter, not practically. France AND the UK - possible.

You depend upon the US (and the UK) for all kinds of capabilities - and you routinely abuse us for being wretched militarists. And you do your best not to help - not even to maintain the capability to help - to do so would be 'immoral', and the actions of 'war criminals'.

"British theatre is sustained by plays such as “The Madness of George Dubya”, “Guantánamo Baywatch” and “Stuff Happens”.

"Yes, British theater is truly sustained by those plays."

Excellent point, Álvaro. I live in London and attend the 'British theatre' once or twice a month, which almost certainly makes me AR's leading authority on the subject. And it's utterly silly to claim that Anti-Dubya plays are anything but the emphermal froth on the wave of British theatre. The true mainstream are the classic drama beginning but not ending with Shakespeare. Most of the profit is probably made by long-running musicals - which are not known for making political statements. I attended 'Fiddler on the Roof' and 'Porgy and Bess' last year, both of which are as political as musicals get. Both are very mild.

Occasionally the National Theater runs a play with a contemporary political point - occasionly I attend of the price is right, but have noticed over the years that the dramatic worth of most plays has an inverse relationship with the polemic fervor of the playwrite. Even the most political play I have seen (Miller's 'The Crucible') profited from a degree of subtley and indirection in that the plot was about the Salem witch trials of 1712 while the political point was to decry Senator McCarthy - but with subtley.