I cancelled all subscriptions that used to burden me with all this paper (including marketing high-gloss paper), such as the SZ, a boulevard newspaper, the Spiegel, the Sunday FAZ. And now I feel truly liberated and happy with my decision.
Now I get all my information through the internet (with PAD, Kindle and notebook), as well as the radio. Whenever it is reasonably possible, I listen to my favourite station Bayern 2, (for instance) the program radioWelt. Here, I find all I need: well selected information, plenty of background knowledge and excellent interviews. They really get their interview partners to disclose what they know.
For example, this morning I found the conversation with Karl-Heinz Kamp, who used to work at the Rome NATO Defense College, very interesting. He was asked how the NATO was going to position itself after the shooting of a Turkish military jet by a Syrian antiaircraft missile.
Following a Turkish request, an important NATO meeting where the conflict between Turkey and Syria will be discussed is going to take place this morning. Even as a small child, I always perceived the NATO as an iron and martial alliance. Its mission was to defend the “Freedom of the Western Countries” and it drew its legitimation from the threat of communism – in particular from the Warsaw Pact threat.
Later, they declared the collective defense case for fighting terrorism. To be sure, I never understood how you can fight terrorism through the NATO, but I probably just lack technological competence… Then again, this interview again made me wonder.
I learned that there are articles 4 and 5. Article 4 will probably be the one Turkey is referring to. But this article has no effect at all. Even article 5 of the NATO Pact – describing the collective defence case – does not really mean a lot. All it means is that, if one of the pact countries is attacked, all other pact countries shall consider themselves attacked.
Any reaction to such an attack would then be the own affair of each individual country, dependent on the issue at hand. No country is forced to automatically help the attacked partner. First, you would have to find a “coalition of the willing” who want to fight with military weapons.
To say it in a nutshell – it does not seem like the NATO is actually a true alliance. It seems to me that Herr Kamp knows what he is talking about. Yet to me, his language sounded like an attempt at justifying something that basically cannot work.
Well, that is something that, again, makes me thoughtful. Probably the NATO is also one of those institutions where we should be politically courageous enough for reforms.
Perhaps you can listen to the interview on the internet at some other time? Maybe you want to listen more closely.
RMD
(Translated by EG)
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