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Laura Flanders talks to creative thinkers and change-makers from the worlds of politics, arts and the new economy. The smartest conversations, with the smartest thinkers and doers of our time, distributed in multiple formats on a variety of platforms. Keep abreast of fresh content by following GRITtv, the site Flanders founded, on Twitter @GRITtv.
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About this episode
Apr 2, 2009
02:56
News & Politics
It's a strange idea, that the future of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization lies in the mountains of Afghanistan. But that's just the case that P...
It's a strange idea, that the future of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization lies in the mountains of Afghanistan. But that's just the case that President Barack Obama and British Defense Secretary John Hutton are making at the NATO's 60th anniversary summit this weekend in Strasberg.Hutton, like Obama, is trying convince his counterparts in NATO that they should commit more troops to Afghanistan. In fact, he told the BBC on the eve of the summit that the Afghan war is the defining conflict for NATO in this part of the 21st century.It's the same message carried by Obama.Will it fly? I guess that depends on how much history makes its way into the celebration. When it was founded 60 years ago, no one would ever have imagined that it's defining conflict more than a century later would be in central asia.NATO was created in 1949 to defend western democracies from scary Stalinist Russia.A recent guest on our program, Andrew Bacevich, said in a commentary in the LA Times this week, that the best gift any American President could give NATO right now would be "a valedictory address, announcing his intention to withdraw the United States from the alliance.""The U.S. has done its job. It's time for Europe to assume full responsibility for its own security," wrote Bacevich.And he argues that “the US has done European nations no favors urging the alliance to expand its reach," abandoning its defensive posture to become an instrument of intervention."On the matter of defense, NATO sat out the only really significant fight on its continent last year, the one between Russia and Georgia and so far it's achieved more backlash than lash in Afghanistan.Peace activists gathered en masse outside the Strasberg meeting demand more than the exit of the US, they want he end of NATO altogether. The biggest threat to Europe they argue, are economic and environmental; the military build up is just a money-sucker.Whether you think it should go, or only that the US should leave. NATO in Asia doesn't make much sense. After all the A stands for ATLANTIC. Not Afghanistan.
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