I have long thought that making NATO: 1. a consensus-based decision making body (no votes, just talk, dilute, talk, dilute until all Members agree to a proposition), 2. with no procedure for expelling or suspending a Member, may have been a good and necessary idea at the time, but it’s why we are facing this dilemma right now. In the context of the Cold War, I don’t think that anyone contemplated that a Member would drift away from the common Alliance values to the extent that Turkey under Erdogan has. I am also not sure we would want to give up having an Ally, even a fickle one, controlling the Bosphorus Strait.
I have long thought that making NATO: 1. a consensus-based decision making body (no votes, just talk, dilute, talk, dilute until all Members agree to a proposition), 2. with no procedure for expelling or suspending a Member, may have been a good and necessary idea at the time, but it’s why we are facing this dilemma right now. In the context of the Cold War, I don’t think that anyone contemplated that a Member would drift away from the common Alliance values to the extent that Turkey under Erdogan has. I am also not sure we would want to give up having an Ally, even a fickle one, controlling the Bosphorus Strait.