Word: nato
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...evidently, there is something in NATO for France. What about the other Europeans, old and new? The world has been totally transformed since 1949, but the ancient cliché about NATO, authored by its first secretary-general, Lord Ismay, still works. NATO, Ismay said, had three functions: keep the Americans in, the Russians out and the Germans down...
Keeping the Americans in is still the most potent glue. Old NATO hands (like this author) can no longer count all those Euro-American crises and collisions that threatened to demolish the coalition about twice a year. The almost-breaking point came in 2002-03, when Paris, Berlin and Moscow joined hands against President George W. Bush and his war in Iraq. And yet the Alliance held...
...about "keeping the Germans down"? Surely that is old hat 64 years after the end of World War II? In the old days, the U.S. had to promise to keep troops in Europe in order to gain its allies' assent - especially that of France - to West German rearmament and NATO membership. The U.S. had to balance power not only on the outside, but also on the inside. Just by being there, the U.S. acted as twin counterweight. With its enormous power it reassured Europe against the Soviet Union and also against a rising Germany, which was always...
...clearly prepared to run against him for the Elysée in the 2012 elections. Former Prime Minister and long-time foe Dominique de Villepin has been seemingly omnipresent on French TV and radio second-guessing Sarkozy's thrifty economic stewardship and denouncing his decision to return France to NATO's integrated military command. (Read a TIME story on NATO...
Headlines blared "Russia versus NATO" in Europe and the U.S., raising the old specter of the Cold War. But the Obama Administration did not seem to be concerned. "It looked like the comments of the President of Russia were largely for domestic consumption," White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters on Tuesday. Analysts, in fact, believe that, far from picking a fight with NATO, Medvedev was using the western alliance as a weapon to prod his own military into much needed reform. (See Russia celebrating its military might, Soviet-style...