Yes indeed. I think Gates' speech was rather silly. He appears "stuck in the mud." NATO doesn't serve as a bulwark vs the USSR any longer since the USSR has ceased to exist. As Walt says the US "warmongers" have managed to use NATO to get support for their imperial war in Afghanistan, with some success. But as that war seems increasingly hopeless our NATO allies are less and less willing to spend money on it. The US just now is trying to use NATO to get the Ukraine involved with NATO, mainly to fly in Russia's face, but I doubt that will work either. In fact, Germany appears to be moving away from NATO and into closer ties with Russia as the construction of the Nordstream gas pipeline direct from Russia to Germany suggests. As Germany phases out its nuclear power industry, it will become even more dependent upon Russian gas for its energy.

I doubt that his intention was to pressure Nato countries to contribute more -- surely that should be a nonstarter. I think he does, at some level, realize Nato should be abolished. However, Nato is a huge bureaucracy and as such will work to preserve itself.

Dismantling this dinosaur will likely require many many years. Gates is sending a strong signal that maybe this process should begin now. Certainly, the finance ministers in every EU nation heard what he said.

I think Europe must at some level realize Nato could be worse than irrelevant but very dangerous. Let us imagine the US succeeded in extending membership to the Ukraine and Georgia. Would that have committed Europe to go to war against Russia in 2008? This would not have been in anybodies self interest. One would think that the foreign ministries in those countries would like to see that danger removed.

Certainly Gates is not stupid. But even bright people can get locked into positions that force them to seem "stupid" due to the demands of the job. He was simply mouthing what US policy (that is way past its "sell date") demands that he say. US foreign policy is amazingly frozen in the past. Not only re NATO, but in Asia, and also the Middle East. And the US apparently can't manage to stop wanting to annoy and harass Russia, quite unnecessarily. And present politics in
Washington show no sign of the US doing a complete "re-think" of its foreign policy to bring it up to date. I doubt a GOP President would be any better and might well be worse.

Gee, I don't know about this one Stephen. You're right in what you say but I think that you can take this a little bit further. I think that we see some of the limitations of realism here. I tend to think that what we see here is the classic free rider problem, which has always been the major problem in US-European relations with respect to NATO. The US performs a vital function; it largely maintains a system of global order which exists underneath an umbrella of power, including but not limited to military power, that is most favourable to US and West European interests. The Europeans have been pretty comfortable with that and would like to free ride some more. Perfectly rational. The US, despite the huffing and puffing, I think has largely gone along with this as the sort of inevitable price to be paid for being the primary power within "the affluent alliance." But the aftershocks of the financial crisis, BRICS and Global Trends 2025 and all that makes free riding more of problem. Again, perfectly rational. That, I suppose, would be a kinda realist way of seeing things. I think that as *relative* US decline starts to bite free riding by Europe becomes more of a hassle and a bug for Washington. So, yes, it is *structural* and it is kinda *realist* although it's the type of realism that is prepared to be super cynical. Realists don't take their cynicism far enough, especially when talking about their own states in my opinion.

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/14/can-we-afford-the-military-budget/

Interesting information bearing on the matter.

From my point of a German view, the reality is even more different to the perception of Mr. Gates.

First, we understand history now better than some decades ago. When NATO was founded, most Germans believed the story of a communist threat. Now we learn that the communist threat was grossly and intentionaly exaggerated to make Germans accept remilitarization. Further we learned that NATO ran programs like Gladio behind and democratic control and under that program committed false flag terror attacks in western Europe to prevent the democratic processes playing out when people wanted leftist governments. So NATO is an organisation witha track record to prevent true democracy in Western Europe.

Second, NATO and especially the US pose a threat to our Russian friends. t's not in the interest to have trouble with our Russian friends. The Russians offer a good and large market for German products and they deliver cheap and clean energy to Germany. But the U.S. still insists on having nuclear weapons in Germany to threaten our Russian friends. And, of course, they also endanger Germans because nobody knows if there will be a nuclear accident once with these nuclear weapons.

Third, to the overall level of defense spending, most Germans are eager to cut it a lot. Many Germans ask, what the defense spending is good for it all. People in Iceland live fine, too, and they have no army. If the Americans can afford 700 bln Dollars defense budget a year, because their economy is fine and they can't find any better way to spend their wealthy budget on, Germans will not oppose to that - at least as long as the U.S. doesn't come along Germany to threaten our friends like Russia or our new friend China. But Gemany is a country indebted with almost 70 percent of GDP, so the federal German budget is restricted, and most Germans can think of millions of better things to spend our money on than military.

Of course, these changes are playing out only slowly, knowledge about history only slowly grows as does trade with Russia or reducing military budget. But the tendency is very clear.