The end of NATO: Fissures in an alliance
Pfaff, William
WILLIAM PFAFF THE END OF NATO Where U.S. & European interests diverge he debates which dominated the annual Munich Conference on International Security earlier this month— over U.S....
...national missile defense (now renamed "global"' missile defense) and the planned European rapid-reaction force—continue to suffer from lack of candor...
...The unavowed, even unacknowledged, purpose of the project is to justify a vast research program whose results, currently unforeseeable, might prove interesting and important...
...The principal argument made by Donald Rumsfeld and the other Americans who oppose the European force is that it would weaken NATO...
...REV...
...The writer is Metropolitan Archbishop of the Orthodox Catholic Church of America...
...taxpayers want to spend their tax money on research for technologically improbable weapons—in the guise of defending against equally extravagant scenarios of threat from unimportant states with ramshackle economies and negligible technological capacities—why should anyone else care...
...Abroad, one might argue that if U.S...
...E. BRIAN CARSTEN Angola, Ind...
...2002, Los Angeles Times Syndicate International 8 . (Continued from page 4) Lived wisdom Luke Timothy Johnson's persuasive article on John Paul II's theology of the body is perhaps the finest article of its kind I have read in forty years...
...It would, at the same time, keep the military aerospace industry at work, an essential element in a national industrial policy of maintaining technological leadership...
...This is not a simple expression of that instinct of self-protection or selfaggrandizement that every bureaucratic body possesses...
...But it is mainly recognition of a fundamental fact: Europe and the United States are different societies, with different histories, and facing different futures...
...It is security against an imaginable revival of a Russian threat, even though few in Europe expect that (and its strategic rationale for Russia is hard to imagine...
...Moreover, the fact that the EU has decided to build a rapid-reaction force reveals that Europeans understand this, and know that someday, sooner or later, they will have to get along without NATO...
...Most of them have long ago put aside church teaching on birth control...
...There is, in Europe today, a perception of gradual strategic disconnection from the United States...
...Both of these Commonweal articles are priceless and full of wisdom from men who have actually "been there and done that...
...GEORGE R. FITZGERALD, C.S.P...
...ANDREW GALLIGAN Tracy, Calif...
...One wonders in what spatial reality their authors live...
...On different planets Luke Timothy Johnson's critique of Pope John Paul II's reflections on sexuality was the most theologically cogent and pastorally persuasive commentary I've read in years about Catholic sexual teaching...
...Yet this outcome is precisely the one Washington most wants to avoid...
...Maybe that's why there is such massive apostacy among young people of marrying age, as well as so many who are married...
...To be sure, Luke Timothy Johnson will not be joining Avery Dulles at the next consistory...
...Obviously, they do care abroad, and with some reason, since the U.S...
...Few in the U.S...
...24...
...incorporate it...
...It reflects the fact that without NATO, the United States would have no institutional base in Europe, and no rationale for claiming a role in European affairs...
...No red hat Luke Timothy Johnson's incisive critique of John Paul II's pronouncements on love, sex, and pleasure should be studied and openly discussed in every Catholi college and Newman Club in the nation—together with Paul Baumann's humorous reflections on George Weigel's biography of our pope ("Crossing the Threshold," December 3, 1999...
...Britain's defense minister Geoffrey Hoon assured the Americans present in Munich that the new force would have "neither planning structures nor separate command...
...The French defense minister was the only one to say frankly that the European Union, "which is not a state, but is more than a group of separate states," wants to possess the means to play a larger political role internationally, and wants the instruments to manage crises, when necessary, on its own...
...The rational response of Russia and China would be to reinforce their own offensive nuclear missile systems, whose deterrent plausibility is, in theory, threatened by the American program...
...MOST REV...
...Criticized by Washington, they currently minimize the significance of their decision to establish such a force...
...How long can we afford to lose this critically important segment of the Catholic church in favor of a moral theology of sexuality that appears so rigid and static...
...In my congregation there is a man who left his position as an active priest in the wake of Paul VI's Humanae vitae...
...Is anybody listening to them...
...Of course, both will be decried by those who believe Catholics should all walk in lock step with any current papal teaching, especially in matters of sexual ethics...
...initiative undermines the major-power strategic stability that existing arms-control agreements have provided since the end of the cold war...
...The threat they make is that this European initiative might provoke the United States to leave NATO...
...Hence Washington is led to oppose any attempt by the Europeans to create a military instrument that would reduce the importance of NATO, replace some of its functions, and offer the possibility, at some future date, of making NATO unnecessary...
...Vail, Colo...
...If all of this were true, the Europeans should spare themselves the bother of setting up the force...
...Oh well...
...Javier Solana, the European Union's official responsible for foreign and security policy, said in Munich that the Europeans have done nothing other than "replace the initials WEU"—those of the long-moribund preNATO European security organization— "with EU," for European Union...
...The entire issue of human sexuality and the gospel tradition is, it seems to me, not so much a matter of church versus individual conscience...
...A Le Monde commentator said that the Europeans at Munich, facing the Americans, were behaving as if they were children caught in mischief...
...Joschka Fischer, Germany's foreign minister, insisted that "NATO remains the first choice" for Europe...
...I must admit, sadly, that in my thirty-six years as a priest, most married persons—and those to be married—with whom I have spoken feel that the church doesn't really address the complex problems couples face today...
...Have they ever had any firsthand, practical experience with marriage...
...But, alas, people like him who try to introduce fresh ways of looking at such questions, while preserving the deep values of our faith, often find the welcome mat snatched out from under 23 them...
...government does not want the Europeans to manage crises on their own...
...Washington needs NATO more than Europe does, and Europeans fail to understand this...
...Formulating the research project as a program to give the country protection from missiles makes the expenditure politically and psychologically irresistible to a majority of voters...
...But in the final analysis, Western Europe, with a bigger industrial economy and a larger population than the United States, could, if it had to, get along without NATO...
...It is due in part to commercial rivalries...
...It has become the principal vehicle of transatlantic political, as well as strategic, relations and cooperation...
...Who wouldn't prefer to be tucked away from possible enemies behind an invulnerable shield...
...scientific community, or even the strategic community, really expect the missile project to produce a defensive shield that countermeasures could not defeat or imaginative delivery methods evade...
...The documents issuing from Rome and diocesan offices come across as totally abstract and divorced from real life...
...Rather, it is about the church learning from the lived wisdom of her members and having the courage to (here is that word...
...The U.S...
...The Europeans have many good reasons for wanting to see NATO continue...
...It has been part of the institutional landscape for more than fifty years...
...It's exciting to read something like Johnson's refreshing insights...
...In part, it follows from the self-absorption of Washington today, and the unilateralism of such American decisions as national missile defense...
...A similar unwillingness, or inhibition, prevents the Europeans from being candid about the motives behind their planned rapid-reaction force...
...Each time we gather at the Lord's table, I see in his eyes, lo these many years later, the struggling wisdom that is so evident in Johnson's words...
Vol. 128 • February 2001 • No. 4
