NATO’s New Troubles
I haven’t blogged at PSA in ages, and I only have time to fire off a few lines about a recent Cato study, and an upcoming related event.
As Jordan Tama noted, there has been a flurry of news reports over the past week about an additional 3,200 U.S. troops being sent to Afghanistan, followed by some public grousing by Bob Gates about the NATO allies not pulling their weight there. (And then the allies grousing back).
My colleague Stanley Kober anticipated some of this last year when he began working on a paper discussing the difficulties of the Afghan mission and suggesting that these pointed to deeper problems in the alliance. He deserves credit for prescience (and good fortune) in that the release of his paper, “Cracks in the Foundation: NATO’s New Troubles,” was quite timely.
In addition to exploring why the Afghan mission is so crucial to NATO’s continued survival, the paper also touches on the Kosovo issue (some members of the alliance are uncomfortable with recognizing a unilateral declaration of independence by the Kosovars), and how the recent strains in the alliance call into question the wisdom of yet another round of NATO expansion.
Stanley will discuss his paper at a Cato Policy Forum on January 31st, beginning at 11:00 am, with additional comments by Susan Eisenhower, Lawrence S. Kaplan, and Jeremy Shapiro. If you’d like to learn more, or register for the event, please visit the Cato web site.
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