Was watching Pacific Rim last night and although a little campy it did touch on a subject that we covered (in the brief way that SNAFU does it business) on integration of weapons and I guess in particular NATO integration.
The film is like many others. The world is facing an Alien threat and the nations put aside their differences to finally unite and win the day.
That's where the theory of NATO breaks down in my opinion and at the end of the day, I believe its because of a tremendous dose of nationalism, corporatism and a fear of losing secrets.
But imagine for just one second if we could have actually done it in the fight against the Soviet Union? Imagine if we could do it in preparation for the coming war with the Chinese?
The best minds from the US, UK, France, Germany, Japan, Australia, S. Korea, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Belgium and the other countries that I failed to list all getting together to build the absolute best weapons possible at a reasonable price.
The F-22? A lower tier fighter to what could have been made...and even then it would fill the skies like the F-16. The Leopard 2A6? Standardized and built in all allied countries. Cavour? Standard light carrier NATO wide. Nimitz? Shared and manned by all nations...cost shared, multi-national crews and everyone trained to TOP GUN standards.
But it would take cost sharing that everyone would deem fair. Commitment by all to fights that the majority were in favor of, yet all would participate.
It would would take NATO being what NATO was meant to be but never achieved.
Ain't fantasy grand?
