If Latvia or Estonia or Lithuania were destabilized and Russia moved in immediately to stabilize a government or coup...what would NATO do? I think NATO would do nothing, but tuck tale and run. http://rt.com/news/208907-american-armored-vehicles-europe/
NATO is the most useless organization have ever created. While the main goals of this pseudo organization is unclear, we provide our 'allies" with military and economical aids. We have been saving their azzes not ours since 49. We have our own international policy!
NATO serves the purpose of keeping Russian expansion in check and little else. There is the concept of shared resources for protection from aggression and the stability it creates, but that is a vague curtain. In my opinion, NATO is little more than an Ideological alliance born of justifiable fear.
There is that... But Nato also open many opportunity for multi-national training exercises which is good for the troops.
Don't know what the NATO members would do about Latvia or Estonia or whatever, but I'm not much worried about it; Russia is a failed state and not nearly the threat some think it is. as for NATO being useful, yes, it is; just because the mission has changed doesn't mean the framework, common defense missions, and communications networks should be abandoned. Europe isn't all that 'unified', and such an organization requiring regional cooperation is still very much necessary; the U.S. still needs to act as a referee between the various factions. Fortunately, the military establishments of most all fo the members aren't as divided as the political establishmments are, and tend to agree on many issues, so it's not that divisive internally as an organization. Reducing the U.S.'s share of the funding and manpower is certainly an option, though.
NATO is still the main defense organization in Europe. 22 of the 28 EU nations are also members of NATO. And in the EU defense charter, it gives "first refusal" to organizing military responses to NATO. In other words, the Common Security and Defence Policy only comes into effect only if NATO decides to not intervene in a conflict. So the real question is not if NATO is useful, but is the EU useful militarily? And then the real question is not what NATO would do in an attack on say Latvia, but what would the EU do? I am betting the EU would do nothing, it would be up to NATO to get involved.
Sorry, but that is a really horribly written and inaccurate article. Point in fact, the US can't "close bases" in Europe. This is primarily because they are not US bases to close! The bases belong first to the host country, then to the NATO organization. The US can not close them, the most they can do is pull their own personnel out of them. As the article states, one of them I picked at random is RAF Mildenhall. This is one of the bases according to the article the "US is closing". Well, as the name clearly says, it belongs to the "Royal Air Force", the US only uses the base. So the base may very well be closed by the RAF once the US forces leave, but the US itself is not closing it. Now the Brits may ultimately decide to close the base. They also might assign other units to it (from the UK or possibly even another NATO member), they may even simply mothball it. But that decision is theirs, it is not for the US to tell them what to do with their base.
Technically that is correct, but it avoids the larger truth that US forces in Europe are being drawn down.
*shrugs* We have been drawing them down since the Soviet Union fell. No real news there. The more then doubled the size of Fort Bliss in the last decade, just to make a place for the 1st Armored Division to come home to. While the names changed many times over the decades, this is essentially the Armored Division that went ashore in Normandy in 1944 and stayed in Germany until 2007 when it finally returned to the US.
In Italy the American presence is going to remain substantially the same. For accuracy I agree with whom says that there are no proper "US bases" in Italy, actually they are Italian bases and the Italian government concedes their usage to US Forces [and US government pays Italy for this]. A part these technical details, just Italy has received suggestion from US administrations, in particular the Bush one, to improve our military capabilities [I would say that today if Italian Navy has got two battle groups with a new modern battle carrier, an other one is quite aged, and stealth warships ... it's a merit of George W., F35 production included ...]. This was a clear indication that NATO is absolutely unbalanced as organization. Without US and Turkey EU military forces are ridiculous [and UK can say nothing about ... no carriers in service for the Royal Navy now ...]. Is NATO useful? NO, it isn't, from an American perspective. YES, it is, from a European perspective.
