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I'm hardly an expert, but isn't NATO also about exercises, standardization and command structure? It's doubtful that international coalitions like we saw in Ir
by jopsen 6y ago
I'm hardly an expert, but isn't NATO also about exercises, standardization and command structure?
It's doubtful that international coalitions like we saw in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libia, Kosovo would be possible without NATO command structure.
Am I wrong?
Getting military branches from various countries to collaborate can't be easy -- certainly not without prior training and trust.
- ed25519FUUU 6y agoNATO is a collective defense agreement, meaning if one nation is attacked all nations respond as if they were attacked, including the United States.
- runarberg 6y agoIt is so in words, but not action. The only time this has happened was after the terrorist attacks on the twin towers. Some NATO countries have been invited on other occasions, but it has never been considered an "attack on all nations". All the while NATO has been more and more comfortable participating in invasions. In writing NATO says they are a defense pact, but history shows it is very much an invasion force.
- greedo 6y agoHistorically an invasion force? Afghanistan is the only place where NATO has been involved in anything like an invasion. Unlike the Warsaw Pact which helped subjugate Chechoslovakia and Hungary.
- runarberg 6y agoBefore Afghanistan there was Bosnia and Herzegovina, and since there is have been some missions in Iraq, and the Gulf of Aden and a full scale intervention in Libya. Your not doing your cause any favor by pointing to another military alliance to proof a point. Too the contrary what you say about the Warsaw Pact is my point exactly. Military alliances are dangerous and need to be condemned by the UN.
- greedo 6y agoCan you give some examples of how military alliances are dangerous? Not all alliances automatically require members to fight. Usually there's enough wiggle room for a country to say "not my business."
- runarberg 6y agoWW1, the seven years war, current conflicts in the middle east (including foreign interventions in the Syrian Civil War), the Napoleonic Wars, all escalated to catastrophic proportions in part because of complications in relations to military alliances. Even the recent war between Azerbaijan and Armenia is made more complex and harder to resolve peacefully because of relations to Russia and especially Turkey. There is a reason why many nations are currently condemning Israel’s opening relations to Morocco. It is seen as a normalization of (a) Israel’s occupation of the Palestine territories and (b) normalization of Morocco’s occupation of Western Sahara. So if a war breaks out in either of these places, it is gonna be more devastating as a result.
- nradov 6y agoCondemning the establishment of peaceful diplomatic relations between Israel and Morocco is just bizarre. They haven't established a military alliance.
- runarberg 6y agoThe reason people condemn it, is because those two nations are both occupying forces of a different nation. It is not explicit, but people suspect that both are in fact silently supporting each others occupation. If say the Polisario front starts an armed insurgence for a Sahrawi liberation in Western Sahara and it is met with brutal forces from the Moroccan military, a peaceful resolution seems less likely because now Israel has stakes in allowing Moroccan military to advance as brutally as they wish—knowing that similar brutality might be preferably against an armed Palestinian insurgence.
- jopsen 6y ago> NATO is a collective defense agreement. At it's heart yes. But didn't that bring along the capability to form coalitions? If we dismantled NATO what framework would a wide western coalition, as was deployed in Libya rely on? Can you magically make distinct militaries of different counties coordinate logistics and operations together? My point is that, besides the mutual defense agreement, NATO coordinates training and integration of capabilities across borders, without which I doubt we launch coalitions as we did in Libya or Kosovo. Both of these followed a UN resolution. In Libya there were participation from non-NATO members, yet these coalitions were NATO-led, why? Probably because NATO was the only organization with experience, training and infrastructure to coordinate such a coalition.