Giuliani wants to add Israel to NATO

[Pekka]

I think NATO has mostly psychological preventive power. Naturally it can provide a lot of power to the battlefield as well, if it functioned 100%.

THis is the problem. I honestly believe that there's going to be problems with too many members. Say, if Russia was to take over the baltic countries, I'll bet my money they are left alone and the absolute minimum is done to help them. The absolute minimum. Members will be looking for all kinds of excuses and clauses to get out of the situation with possible all out war or bigger escalation.

NATO will give them their sympathy, use some rhetorics, but I think that'll be it. I think NATO's eastern front can be divided, isolated and taken, and at least keep the status quo of the aftermath.

This is what I honestly believe would happen, and that would immidiately bring down the morale of other members as far as security goes as they see it doesn't work like it was supposed to work. So I think NATO needs less members, more firepower and definitely more guarantees that if a member state is attacked, NATO will answer fast and with all its force.

[Proteus_MST]

I think Pekka might be right there.

There are some large countries, like China or Russia which can do almost everything they want, because neither the US nor any other country would want to risk a war (the possession of nuclear weapons and long range carrier systems by these countries is an important factor for this, but also their large conventional army)

[Shrapnel12]

Pekka

Sad but true.

[BeBMan]

Currently that's nothing but speculation. The entire point of the alliance would vanish if the members don't help eachother in case of an open attack. And none of the members can really afford that, because it means that in fact there is no alliance, and everyone can be attacked without any fear of facing the whole alliance.

[Pekka]

bebro, right. That's why I think NATO has to show more than it shows now. But that's not even too bad, EU security guarantees are even worse. NATO exists only for military purpose, thus it is likely to function within that context. It is designed for it.

EU however is something different. Theoretically sure, other members might recognize it as an attack against all members if one is attacked, however, what happens after that? It's a nice thing that it was recognized, now what? Are they going to send the tens of thousands of troops they have around the EU? Wow. Thanks. But EU doesn't face break up when they'd start sneaking out from this agreement, because it has lots of other things that keeps them cohesive.

NATO would collapse very fast though, so I think they have a bigger incentive to follow up .... however, still, when faced with a big threat, I still think certain countries are up for grabs. Because it won't go down the way that some country declares one sided war and just attacks them wildly. THEN I would believe NATO would try to supply the best way they can.

But they'll start isolating the one member early on. "This is an issue between two countries", "two independent countries are having a political conflict", "We have the right to defend ourselves against provocation without the fear of having large military alliance backing up the aggressor" etc etc. It'll be a war of rhetorics, where NATO is the one listening and giving out blank statements.

At that moment they'll supply stuff to the country that is threatend, send in some experts, liaison officers, maybe few soldiers even to back up their own international businesses, entities or citizens or whatever.

But that's going to be it in my opinion. There's no way they would risk an all out war with a big country. It would mean effectively, that NATO would have to strike inside that country hard, not just defend some border or regions in one member state, and then they figure out hey, we're going to lose people, we're going to lose ****loads of money, when we could all just be more careful, stay back a bit, no one will blame us really and everything is debatable, and not get hurt at all, plus no one really gives a crap about some small country somewhere. Hey, they said that they started it, it's their problem, we can't be expected to go into war when some of these people go nuts and start their own crap.