The USA has good reason to be dissatisfied with NATO, but NATO still is a tremendous military resource that we should not disdain.

We might wish that our NATO allies in Afghanistan fought better, but the very fact that NATO has responded militarily to the 9/11 attacks has caused radical Moslems to significantly recalculate the potential consequences of attacks targeting the USA.

One problem in placing these anti-missile systems in Poland (an action I support) is that we are straining the political consensus that holds NATO together. We had to twist a lot of European arms to get this agreement — and an NATO’s leader it is our own burden to twist arms — and so we are developing a lot of political resentment. Europeans perceive that we are exaggerating and provoking the Russian threat.

Maintaining the enormous NATO force and its enormous political consensus means that we must exert our leadership very patiently, slowly, steadily and diplomatically. It’s a strategy similar in many ways to investing financially in very safe securities. It’s more exciting to rock the boat, but NATO is not a good place to do so.