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NATO Must Rethink Its Role to Survive
| Article
# : |
12204 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
2 / 1987 |
2,183 Words |
| Author
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Sir Alfred Sherman
Sir Alfred Sherman is a policy adviser to Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher and has written widely on global strategic
and domestic policy. |
When NATO was founded in the early postwar period, it was justifiably Eurocentric. The main Soviet threat was to mainland Europe and Scandinavia. The Berlin blockade was a recent memory. The North German plain seemed the most vulnerable sector. The countries of the northern and southern flanks needed political and military reassurance against Soviet attempts to pick them off one by one. Reinforcement from North America in the case of need was the main strategic and logistical problem, and there was a consensus that the alliance possessed the naval, air, and ground forces necessary, provided technical problems were solved.
In 1950, the wider world framework seemed stable. "Containment," as outlined by George Kennan in 1947, was accepted as the order of the day. The politics of NATO members' relationship with the rest of the world seemed safe to leave in their individual hands. Coordination of the NATO powers' extra-European policies as a function of the defenses of Europe and its North Atlantic lines of communication was never attempted, let alone achieved. Member went their own way with their various world and regional interests and responsibilities, real or imaginary; their own way with their various world and regional interests and responsibilities, real or imaginary; their regional groupings; involvement in the United Nations, Commonwealth and other distractions; and their attempts to buy popularity from all and sundry.
Since then, the international framework within which NATO must operate has changed beyond all recognition. The Soviet forces and their allies have leapfrogged round the world, outflanking Europe and the North Atlantic
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