<Your argument that NATO isn't obligated to defend Turkey is interesting -- maybe that's the underlying truth>
I conceded the point that France and Germany had a NATO obligation to defend Turkish (including non-European) territory.
But.......
During the cold war, Turkey was a sideshow, a flank, not the center of the action.
Today, Turkey is the NATO beachhead in the center of the Moslem homeland, so it becomes the Center, if NATO is going to be redefined, become a totally different organization:
Redefined from a defensive to an offensive alliance.
Redefined from a Europe-only area of action (OK, OK, plus Turkey and N. America, but nobody ever expected that's where the fight would be concentrated) to a pan-global area of action. The U.S. is trying to redefine NATO by fiat and bullying, not negotiation and consensus.
Israel is the other beachhead, but it is unusable; the American-Israeli alliance hurts, not helps, our ability to operate in Muslim countries. Yes, yes, I know the U.S. has no formal guarantee for Israel's territory, but de facto we guarantee Tel Aviv as much as we guarantee Hamburg or Honolulu. In the 1950s, the Israel Lobby was unable to stop a U.S.-orchestrated oil embargo against Israel, to force a return of Sinai to Nasser. In the 1990s, that Lobby was able to foil a Bush attempt to tie U.S. aid to a hold-still of Israel's creeping colonization of the Occupied Territories. This change was not a matter of a change in tactics, or change in Administrations. It was a much more fundamental change. It was because Israel, de facto, became the 51st U.S. State. Israel was added to our core obligations.
All our other beachheads within the Moslem world, are very insecure. They are dependant on the whim of governments that have no democratic legitimacy, in countries where 80-95% of the population (according to polls) are strongly opposed to our War.
What France and Germany are saying, is that they aren't sure they want to be part of this alliance, where everything is changed except the name. |
