NATO Nonsense

At a glance it looked like an April Fools joke: Albania joining NATO. But it's a real news item, worth noting as a milestone in the dissolution of a once-important organization. NATO had its role during the Cold War but once the Warsaw Pact fell apart, and the Soviet Union collapsed, NATO should have been disbanded or mothballed. Instead, as an organization in search of a mission, NATO started promiscuously adding new members. So now the U.S. is bound by treaty to defend the security of Albania. How sensible is that? If Albania were a base on the moon maybe it wouldn't matter. But lest we forget, there were some nasty wars in the Balkans in the 1990s and many observers, including me, don't believe that everything's been settled yet. Indeed, round two may well include rearrangement of borders to better suit the Albanians spread across Kosovo, Macedonia, Albania, and Greece. In an odd way it might be fitting to require NATO to clean up that mess but I can't think of any good reason why the U.S. should be involved...