NATO: Still Mission-Creeping at 60

We're heading toward the sixtieth anniversary of NATO. There's to be a ceremony on April 3-4 in Strasbourg and Kehl, the latter being the German town facing Strasbourg on the east side of the Rhine. Sarkozy of France and Merkel of Germany will meet and embrace, in symbolic affirmation of Unity Restored, after divisive conflicts now buried in the mists of time. I'm not sure what theatrical events are being planned to symbolize this celebration of Gallo-Teutonic entente, perhaps some flotilla on the mighty Rhine, with Sarko as a latter-day Mark Antony and buxom Merkel as Cleopatra.

To give vibrancy to the event, Sarkozy has just formally brought France back into NATO's "integrated command." Charles de Gaulle, a leader who looks better with every passing decade, took France out in 1966 as a rebuke to American domination of the alliance. No doubt there'll soon be an institutional shift back to Paris by NATO personnel, wearied of moules frites and waterzooi.

You can be sure there will be gale-force gusts of bombast about the NATO alliance's historic role as Europe's mighty shield and buckler, guarantor of its freedoms against "aggression," thus perpetuating sixty years of humbug. There was never the slightest chance of the Soviet Union and its auxiliaries in the Warsaw Pact rolling west in the prospective onslaught luridly evoked by Winston Churchill in a speech at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in March 1949. Churchill raised the specter of the Mongol "hordes" that had menaced Europe 700 years before, heading home only when the Great Khan died. "They never returned," rumbled the old faker, "till now."

Subscriber Login

User Name

Password

Subscribe Now!

The only way to read this article and the full contents of each week's issue of The Nation online is by subscribing to the magazine. Subscribe now and read this article -- and every article published since for the past five years -- right now.

There's no obligation -- try The Nation for four weeks free.

• Get The Nation at home (and online!) for 68 cents a week!
• If you like this article, consider making a donation to The Nation.
• Reprint this article. Click here for rights and information.