'NATO Expansion From Within' Is Nonsense

No one wants this, and no one needs it.

Arshan Barzani proposes the very silly idea of “NATO expansion from within”:

Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty covers only Europe and parts of North America north of the Tropic of Cancer. Swathes of member countries’ land, such as Puerto Rico and French Polynesia, fall outside the pact. At NATO’s birth in 1949, this limit served to exempt far-flung colonies. Amid Russia’s war in Ukraine and Chinese saber-rattling, NATO’s self-imposed geographic limits absent the alliance from the Indo-Pacific and weaken it in the Atlantic.

The treaty rightly limits the obligations of alliance members because the only legitimate purpose of the alliance is to ensure the security of what the treaty calls the North Atlantic area. Trying to amend the treaty to include distant possessions and old colonial holdovers is a waste of time and would probably serve to divide the alliance for no good reason. If the U.S. and other governments wish to create collective security arrangements in other parts of the world, no one is stopping them, but extending NATO guarantees to cover the likes of New Caledonia and Guam is absurd. NATO has no role in the “Indo-Pacific,” and to the extent that it tries to have one it will come at the expense of its real responsibilities in Europe.