Many NATO leaders are keen on talking about Alliance transformation, NATO's new tasks and the future of the Alliance. The thing is, as former Warsaw Pact countries joined the Alliance, they weren't signing up for the 'new' NATO, they were signing up for the old one. That is, they looked to NATO to defend them from external threats. The Russian war with Georgia strongly reinforced this view. Yesterday, the Kyiv Post reports that it was restated forcefully by Polish Deputy Defence Minister Stanislaw Komorowski:
"We now face a different situation," Komorowski told a panel during the informal NATO defense ministers' meeting. "We're after the crisis in Georgia and I can assure you that there is much more of a discussion right now within the alliance, to a large extent because many partners realize that the enemy unfortunately can be much closer to our borders." "We have to take this into account when we plan the future of the alliance," he added.
This is a dichotomy that will need to be dealt with future Strategic Concept adaptation talks.
No comments:
Post a Comment