Not your grandfather’s NATO

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, once a simple defensive alliance, now faces a crisis.

Today, NATO is a huge multinational alliance of 32 countries, far larger and covering vastly more territory than the original grouping of 12 countries. In raw numbers, it has a potential military force of 3.5 million people and covers 25.07 million square kilometers (15.58 million square miles) of territory.

While that would seem to be massive, for a variety of reasons NATO’s power and capability depend on the United States. This was true from the start, and it remains so today. Initially an American-led anti-Communist defensive alliance, NATO has morphed into a US-led power bloc that is aggressively expanding.

Despite declarations in the NATO Treaty, the alliance no longer coordinates with the United Nations (at least on a consistent basis).

Despite efforts to reinforce its presence in Poland, Romania and Estonia, the alliance faces significant problems:

• a critical shortage of armaments,
• untested and undermanned armed forces and
• a US presence that is still mostly expeditionary.

Ukraine

Although NATO has expanded and continues to feed arms into Ukraine, the prospect for Ukraine surviving Russian attacks seems poor.

Meanwhile, Russia has learned a great deal about how to deal with NATO weapons using its air defenses and electronic jamming capabilities. The cupboards in the United States are noticeably empty as a result of the conflict, and there is no reason to think that, aside from air power, NATO could do any better in Ukraine than the Ukrainians.

NATO is still strident when it comes to Ukraine and its posture toward Russia. Some non-factors such as the European Union are even worse rhetorically. But the new NATO is facing a