Pat Dollard | Young Americans

And they think She-wolf and Osama are gonna fix things….right…

NATO’s Check-Up

Europe Awakens To Reality

By Ralph Peters

THERE’S life in the old alliance yet.

For 44 years, NATO has given itself an informal health exam at the Munich Conference on Security Policy. This year’s poking and prodding had to be encouraging to anyone with a long-term perspective.

But it wasn’t all good cholesterol last weekend.

Sergey Ivanov, Russia’s first deputy prime minister, is a snake with velvet-coated fangs whose skin has been polished until it gleams. Still, a well-mannered Stalinist with a proper knot in his tie is still a Stalinist.

Last year, President Vladimir Putin was in full Nikita Khruschev mode - spewing threats that repelled Europeans who longed for him to make nice. This year, the uber-sleek Ivanov blithely ignored his country’s tormented realities to assure us all that Russia has the world’s most promising economy, the best investment environment for foreign capital, an unmatched commitment to peace, a delighted citizenry and a firm commitment to democracy.

But his calculated smile always arrived a half-second too late, and his drama-class English only hinted at the interrogation room. Comparing notes with a fellow delegate, I found that we’d both heard a perfect Stalin-era declamation on the glories of the USSR - given a makeover in one of those salons that almost gets the latest hairstyle right, but misses by one embarrassing degree.

On the positive side, I was proud of the bipartisan solidarity and evident integrity of the US delegation’s congressional members. Sen. John McCain, who has long co-headed our Capitol Hill posse with Sen. Joe Lieberman, had to cancel at the last minute - but Sen. Lindsey Graham (en route to Afghanistan for his Reserve duty as an Air Force colonel) made a great substitute.

And the participating members of the House of Representatives, Republican and Democrat, made it clear to the crowd of presidents and ministers that all serious Americans are determined to defend our country against terrorism.

Separately, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who’s still repairing the damage done by his predecessor, made the case that NATO “must not - we cannot - become a two-tiered alliance of those who are willing to fight and those who are not.” The SecDef is trying to prod the lazier members of NATO to lift another finger to help in Afghanistan.

The current frustration on the part of the nations that do fight is understandable. Yet, recalling the old, complacent NATO of the Cold War years, I’m personally surprised that member countries contribute as much as they do.

NATO is (slowly) reinventing itself for a new era - and reinvention-by-committee isn’t easy. We must be careful not to demand too much, too quickly, of countries that have long been convinced that the United States not only always will do their fighting for them (while they complain), but that we’re obligated to protect them free of charge.

Don’t break NATO. It ain’t perfect, but it’s a lot better than nothing.

As for complaints that German troops won’t fight: Come on - isn’t the world better off with Germans holding beer mugs instead of rifles? Been there, done that, got the Holocaust . . .

And while a few more cups of coffee will be required, Europe’s eyes are starting to open to our mutual security requirements. The genuine progress to date showed up in the remarks of Javier Solana, secretary-general of the European Union, who tore into Russia’s Ivanov.

Solana criticized Russia’s recent tantrums, from threats over Kosovo to the Kremlin’s closing of British Council reading rooms in the Soviet Union (sorry, I meant the “Russian Federation”). He stated bluntly that there was “still no strategic convergence with Russia,” that Putin’s threat of a new arms race didn’t do much for Russia’s image, that Russia needs to respect the rule of law and become a “civilized state,” and that the Putin Gang must stop threatening to cut off energy supplies in the dead of winter to punish its neighbors.

In a quasi-diplomatic setting, that amounted to a bare-knuckles smack-down.

Sen. Graham responded brilliantly to Ivanov’s complaints about NATO encroachment on Muscovy, noting - in his cottonmouth Southern drawl - that, “If Russia feels surrounded by states that subscribe to democracy and the rule of law, it should feel lucky.”

It was not a good year for the Kremlin team. The president of Georgia hammered the Russians, too - as did a wide range of other speakers.

But what was really amazing to anyone who’s lived in Europe and listened to generations cry “Yankee go home!” was that, apart from Sen. Graham’s observation, it wasn’t Americans taking on the Russians - we didn’t need to. The Europeans did it themselves.

My fellow Americans, that’s progress.

Other conference trend lines were equally clear:

*Turkey’s going to be more of a problem in the future: Prime Minister Erdogan’s prickly keynote address was disastrous - including yet another denial of the Armenian Genocide during the Q&A session.

*Russia will be much more of a problem.

*France will be much less of a problem (but will still have Gallic hissy fits, of course).

*Poland still manifests a deeper love of freedom and greater courage than any other continental country.

It was marvelous to hear Poland’s foreign minister, Radoslav Sikorski, as he stood at the lectern right above the Russian delegation and spoke - with unmistakable emphasis - of events “25 years ago, in the days of oppression.”

Other than Russian hardliners, the only people on earth who miss the Soviet Union are American defense contractors.

Even the conference catch-phrases on display behind the speakers telegraphed a growing European willingness to grapple with the challenges of our time: “The world in disarray . . . shifting powers . . . lack of strategies?”

Those words meant something. Because the first step in developing a common strategy for the future is the realization that you haven’t got one.