Germany's Social Democratic Defense Minister Peter Struck apparently takes international law somewhat more seriously than his American counterpart does. In a major speech, Struck stated, "One can most certainly question whether what the USA has done in Iraq was legitimate under international law."
Struck diplomatically but unmistakably raised the question of whether it's any longer in the interest of the European democracies to remain in NATO. He didn't say it that way. But he criticized the Bush Doctrine notion of relying on ad hoc coalitions in conflicts like Iraq as opposed to established alliances like NATO.
The Spiegel article I just linked doesn't give the full quotation on this point. But it quotes him indirectly as saying that a NATO that is restricted to a "tool kit role" - the Bush Doctrine concept of NATO as a pool for ad hoc coalitions - would not survive.
Noting that the German government had been restrained in its criticism of the Bush foreign policy the last few months, it quotes Struck as expressing a far more assertive stand:
According to Struck's words, the gaps in the military capabilities
between the USA and other NATO states has to be eliminated. "These things are
also important in order to diminish the attempt of our American alliance partner
to fall back on the 'coalition of the willing', which is a damaging pattern for
the [NATO] alliance as a whole."
For anyone who's been taking this "European wimp" propaganda by American conservatives too seriously, it may be surprising that the combined countries of the European Union have more soldiers in uniform than the United States. Europe isn't weak in its ability to defend itself. It just doesn't have the ability to project military force worldwide that the US does.
It's seems clear to me that the democracies of Europe will not permanently accept the Warsaw Pact-like status that the Bush Doctrine envisions for them. NATO will not survive such an arrangement for many years longer. And this strikes me as a strong diplomatic statement of how close the US is to losing the NATO alliance, though the diplomats are not likely to put it that bluntly quite yet.
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