Make way for imperial NATO with new flanks to secure

NATO is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The name should have been changed long ago, when NATO shifted its focus and operations south and eastward. NATO is shifting once again, most seriously by expanding its membership without any serous planning about how to secure its new flanks.

Outgoing NATO Chief Jens Stoltenberg said last month that China should face consequences for its support of Russia. He wasn’t specific. “It’s too early for me to say exactly,” he said. “My message is that … it’s not sustainable and viable that China continues to fuel the biggest security threats … for NATO allies, especially in Europe.”

Adding China, even theoretically, to the concerns of the Atlantic Alliance is a very big step and it widens the list of countries looking for NATO protection.

The limited good news at the NATO summit is that the alliance actually recognizes its weakness. The plan is to increase budgets and significantly enlarge the number of troops that can be committed if NATO goes to war.

According to the internal plan, NATO must grow its deployed or deployable troop strength by 35 to 50 brigades. The NATO leadership will need to convince its members to enlarge their armies, equip them, and have the transport and supply capability to support them in the field.

The US also has around 100,000 troops in Europe, with around 20,000 helping shore up NATO’s battlegroups. NATO’s troop expansion is on top of the US troop presence.

A brigade in NATO is 3-5,000 troops, meaning that NATO could be short up to 250,000 troops in total. Raising and training a large number of soldiers in NATO countries is a challenging task; it may also be impossible.

In most of Europe and in the United States, military recruiting is well below