12-08-2016 (Photo: ) http://JohnBatchelorShow.com/contact http://JohnBatchelorShow.com/schedules http://johnbatchelorshow.com/blog Twitter: @BatchelorShow

After NATO: Can the US Ally with Russia? Gregory Copley, Defense & Foreign Affairs

“With regard to NATO, we see herculean attempts to move this monolithic and exquisite machinery into an age which is very different from the age for which it was designed. NATO officials have an in-stitutional bias to see a continuation of the status quo ante, which means continuing to see Russia as though it was the Soviet Union, and therefore an implacable and irreversible foe to “the West”. The key, however, to any review of NATO will be whether it is possible to modify the famous Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which says that an attack on any member is an attack on all. Removing this means, for the Baltic states and Poland, in particular, leaving them exposed, or feeling exposed, to an attack from Russia which would then not trigger a robust NATO defense. But if Article 5 cannot be removed or substantially reinterpreted, then it would be difficult for NATO to be re-purposed. And the Baltic states and Poland essentially don’t want to re-purpose NATO. 3. One of the fundamental questions is whether the European Union, now without the UK, really moves ahead with the concept of an EU military force, or whether this would undermine — or make less rel-evant — the retention of NATO. The likelihood of the EU actually creating a viable or comprehensive union armed force is, in my opinion, fairly low. But there is a need and scope for EU member states to make much more sense of their defense policies and defense industrial planning. So, too, for the UK, Canada, and the US. And within this framework, we need to see what is emerging as the “new aerospace” sector, and, arguably, the “new defense industrial sector”. 4. Will Brexit start to reduce the number or scope of major multinational collaborative weapons pro-grams in Europe? The United Kingdom was once part of these, and there is still significant co-ownership of major defense industrial assets between the UK and the EU. That need not necessarily reduce defense industrial cooperation between the UK and EU, but we can see how, for example, the divorce of Russia and Ukraine ultimately saw the degradation of the feasibility of some major Russian-Ukrainian aerospace and defense cooperative programs.”