First Strike Nuclear Madness
Page January 23rd, 2008
For those of us who grew up during the later years of the Cold War, the acronym “NATO” brings back memories of watching the evening news with our families, when most discussions of US foreign policy weren’t complete without mentioning “nuclear weapons” and “the Soviets”. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (or NATO) is a military alliance that is a relic of the Cold War; it was founded in 1949, basically as a counter-balance to the USSR, where:
The [NATO] Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them… will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.
The NATO countries played an important role in the Cold War nuclear arms race by either having their own nuclear weapons (e.g. France and the UK), or allowing nuclear weapons to be stationed on their soil (e.g. Pershing nuclear missiles in West Germany). The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists‘ “Doomsday Clock” is a vivid historical indicator of the Cold War nuclear tensions (click the image at right).
The Cold War ended in 1991. The US and Russia have fewer nuclear weapons than they did, but still have far more than enough to render the Earth uninhabitable; the US has about 9,900, and Russia has about 15,000 (pdf). NATO has changed its mission to adapt to post-Cold War conflicts; one of the most recent examples is the takeover of US-lead military operations in southern Afghanistan by a NATO-lead force in the south of Afghanistan.
What does the future hold for NATO? General John Shalikashvili (former NATO commander in Europe), General Klaus Naumann (ex-chairman of Nato’s military committee), General Henk van den Breemen (former Dutch chief of staff) Admiral Jacques Lanxade (former French chief of staff), and Lord Inge (former chief of the general staff and defense staff in the UK) have proposed reforms for NATO that make me wonder if they are yearning for the Cold War days.
