There certainly was a tendency to find a useful purpose for NATO in a world without the Soviet Union. But the Bush administration squandered U.S. goodwill worldwide, and abandoned NATO in Afghanistan for an ill-fated adventure in Iraq.

Ironically, the Soviet Union is back, lacking its satellite powers and dressed up in the illusory image of a liberal democracy. Putin is rebuilding his military, challenging the West on several fronts, and enjoying unprecedented wealth from oil. If this keeps up, the West could use NATO, assuming the U.S. will ever be able to adopt the role as "Leader of the Free World" and inspire the rest of Europe to keep NATO alive.

The world could also use a fundamental rethinking of military power. At some point Americans have to ask how much longer they will pay half a trillion dollars a year for a worthless military machine that can't defeat a ragtag insurgency and is besotted with the counterproductive use of air power. Maybe Russia has learned this lesson in Afghanistan and Chechnya, and it would be interesting if China was paying attention also.

Perhaps U.S. military might works in state-to-state war, as with Bosnia, where the central government doesn't collapse. But in failed states like Iraq, warfare has been redefined in a way that makes the U.S. and similar major powers useless.

Which brings us back to NATO and Afghanistan. This is the most recent exercise of NATO's power and it is failing. Like the U.S., NATO requires a basic rethinking of its military purpose and capabilities.

Put a chocker collar on both Bush and Cheney and yank their leashes to stop them.
All they are doing is increasing the canyon between Islam and Christianity.
At least most of Europe is trying to fill in the gap and work together.
The hate these two people have generated against Islam will take years to repair.
I hope it is not too late?

_{repressive governments mix administrative clumsiness & inefficiency with authoritarian tendencies.}

You're right. NATO was all but dead in its tracks - little more than a club where old generals could exchange world war stories - 'til along came the Bush administration to haul it back up into harness (excuse the laboured metaphor) and force European alliances in support of its middle-eastern adventures. Classic divide and conquer. Diabolically clever really. On my map, at least, Afghanistan is one hell of a long way from the North Atlantic. At the same time, the effort was being used to marginalize and trivialize the UN security council. The US was certainly never interested in having peace keeping forces in Afghanistan, and has always abhored the idea of finding itself under multi-national UN commands. A light weight refresher is at NATO stuff. Of course, when it comes to the UN, there's also that troublesome matter of the International Criminal Court. NATO is much more malleable. An old commentary, regarding Rumsfeld's hamfisted threat to move NATO headquarters from Belgium, if that country didn't exemt the US from its 1994 law that empowers prosecutors to go after any war criminal regardless of nationality, for crimes against humanity wherever they may have occurred is still online at at Other NATO stuff

NATOs continued existence after the fall of the USSR was to keep arms sales high by selling weapons to Eastern Europe. They figured that this would empower the militarists in Russia so that as the ecomony rebounded they could compete for resources with the civilian economy and restart an arms race.

It worked like a charm! In Russia and in China the militarists have been competing successfully for resources. Our side can then scare the idiots (Congress) into responding, which then provokes a response from the other side, ad nauseam. And everybody's happy. Except of course for peace-loving people. But who gives a damn about them.

I mean ending it all. Start all over again.
Nuke Iran, end the oil flow, crash the economy. Industry and technology have already been exported out so "we" are no big loss to the world.