Under the NATO shield, the nations of Europe have enjoyed their longest period of uninterrupted peace and prosperity since the time of the great emperor Charlemagne 1,200 years ago.

NATO was created by the North Atlantic Treaty in April 1949 to protect the nations of Western Europe from the threat of being militarily overrun by the mighty Soviet Union. In 1955, the Soviets responded by organizing their own satellite nations in Central and Eastern Europe into the Warsaw Pact. But when the Soviet Union disintegrated at the end of 1991, the Warsaw Pact fell apart too. Since then, NATO has reigned supreme as the only major military alliance in Europe and has expanded to include all the former Warsaw Pact nations and even three former Soviet republics -- Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia -- among it members.

But the bigger NATO has grown, like the old Marvel Comics superhero Giant-Man, the weaker it has become. Without the concentrating threat of the massed forces of the Soviet group of armies on the east side of the Elbe River in the old communist East Germany, the nations of Western Europe have spent their peace dividend every year by letting their armed forces in general and their military commitments to NATO in particular shrink by the year.

The war against the Taliban and al-Qaida in Afghanistan -- in striking contrast to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein in 2003 -- was adopted by NATO as an alliance war. Yet the entire 28-nation alliance, with a combined population of more than 800 million people, has been unable to scrape up more than 55,000 troops at the most -- including 38,000 from the United States -- to operate in Afghanistan, and in recent months the Taliban have been reviving in power.

Today, NATO-supported President Hamid Karzai is in reality no more than mayor of Kabul. His writ only runs where NATO troops are on the ground to enforce it, and there are precious few of them to do so. Obama has pledged to add another 11,000 to 12,000 U.S. troops and hopes for 5,000 more from NATO's member states. That really isn't much.

NATO's dilemma in Afghanistan, thousands of miles away from its home theater of operations, has been well publicized. What almost no one in Western Europe or the United States realizes is how much of a hollow shell the alliance has become on the European continent itself.

It did not respond to and remains impotent about the nexus of criminality, particularly in prostitution and drugs, that swept Central and Eastern Europe like a plague in the decade following the collapse of communism. Macedonia in particular in the Balkans has become what Cambodia is in Southeast Asia, effectively a collapsed state where the worst criminal elements operate with impunity.

Kosovo, part of the former Yugoslavia that was rescued by U.S. and NATO action from attacks by the Serbian state in 1999, has become a hot zone of Islamic extremism in Europe.

The NATO alliance was not designed to combat internal security threats in Europe, and it has remained effectively impotent against the rise in the threat of terrorist violence from extreme elements within the large immigrant Muslim minorities -- primarily from Algeria, Pakistan, Turkey, Bangladesh and Morocco -- within the European Union today.

NATO's 21st-century failures contrast with its astonishing 20th-century successes. What changed?

Part 2: Why NATO hasn't adapted to the world after communism

additional analysis
Outside View: NATO's future -- Part 1
by Paolo Liebl Von Schirach
Quite a long time ago, while in London, I happened to walk in St. James's Park at a time of some kind of veterans' celebration.

There were hundreds of old men, marching in perfect order, medals tinkling on many chests. There was a military band. And they were all led by a soldier carrying a flag. On the flag, one could read, "Burma Star." The whole thing was solemn and quite beautiful. And yet it was also sad and in many ways incongruous.

They were remembering a service that belonged to a past so remote that it had become irrelevant. "Burma Star"? In the middle of London? Sure, the British have maintained a keen interest in matters pertaining to their Old Empire. But remote, secluded, autocratic Burma, known today as Myanmar? A country where Britain has not had any clout or influence of any kind in more than 60 years? And so I looked at the marching old men, with their medals, their band and their beautiful flag, thinking with some sadness about past glories.

Well, the comparison may appear a bit stretched, but at the beginning of April, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization celebrated its own 60th anniversary. Unlike the celebration featuring the British veterans, this is about a living security institution binding Europe, the United States and Canada.

Therefore this celebration is not just about past history but about renewed vows over existing commitments, shared values and, as it happens, ongoing missions -- Afghanistan being the most obvious.

So, what is the similarity between the melancholy echo of a dead empire and NATO's 60th? Very simple: The British Empire is dead, and so is the spirit that supposedly was behind the creation of this alliance and that made it meaningful for many years. Now NATO may be technically alive, but it is not very meaningful.

We do a have a North Atlantic Treaty Organization and, for all I know, we shall continue to have a NATO for quite a while. And all parties would claim that NATO is very useful, that it provides an institutional forum for a trans-Atlantic dialogue on security matters and many other issues. Fine.

But there is a basic equivocation about the foundations of the alliance that goes back to the very beginning of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Reading the preamble to what was known at the time as the Treaty of Washington, the North Atlantic Treaty that established NATO on April 4, 1949, one gets the idea that NATO was all about getting together to preserve shared values.

Part 2: Exploring the ambiguities of the NATO alliance in the 21st century

(Paolo Liebl von Schirach is the editor of SchirachReport.com, a regular contributor to Swiss radio and an international economic-development expert.)

(United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.)

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