Rothkopf’s gloom on NATO
In an interesting piece, David Rothkopf draws some invidious comparisons between the harmonious BRICS summit this week and NATO’s squabbling over the Libya operation. Here’s how he summarizes the state of play for NATO: NATO is at a watershed. The Libya "moment," which President Obama and others wanted to offer up as an example of ...
In an interesting piece, David Rothkopf draws some invidious comparisons between the harmonious BRICS summit this week and NATO's squabbling over the Libya operation. Here's how he summarizes the state of play for NATO:
In an interesting piece, David Rothkopf draws some invidious comparisons between the harmonious BRICS summit this week and NATO’s squabbling over the Libya operation. Here’s how he summarizes the state of play for NATO:
NATO is at a watershed. The Libya "moment," which President Obama and others wanted to offer up as an example of a new robust, American-led multilateralism, is quickly morphing into a demonstration of NATO’s weaknesses. America wants to be accorded the respect of being the leader but is hamstrung by domestic problems and a lack of strategic clarity. France and Britain seem willing to pick up the slack but others won’t follow. Germany seems increasingly uncomfortable with the burdens placed on it as Europe’s de facto leading power. The military alliance is overly dependent on U.S. power. There are too many chefs. There is not enough overall mission clarity.
Here’s my question: couldn’t a quite similar paragraph have been written about NATO in the midst of the 1999 Kosovo operation or at various particularly fraught moments during the ongoing Afghanistan operation? The dissension that Rothkopf identifies as a sign of a perilous NATO "watershed" moment may in fact simply be the way that a large, open, democratic alliance fights.
As for the BRICS, how long will it be before territorial, immigration, and economic disputes emerge between China, India, and Russia? It’s easy to forget that not all that long ago there was actual combat between both Russia and China and China and India over disputed territory.
David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist
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