NATO is a UN subsidiary.(THE LAST WORD)

Afghanistan is immensely distant from what has always been known as the North Atlantic region. Yet U.S. and other coalition forces in Afghanistan are now serving under the auspices of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Those forces were transferred to NATO command in 2003. That transfer of power also placed our Afghanistan military operations under United Nations command since NATO has always been a UN subsidiary. Hence, once again, NATO is being employed as the UN's military arm to enforce Security Council resolutions.

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Formed in 1949 under Chapter VIII of the United Nations Charter, the leaders of the alliance have rarely been forthcoming about NATO being a UN "Regional Arrangement" subject to the world body. But, as membership in the pact was being considered almost 60 years ago, Secretary of State Dean Acheson enthused that NATO is "an essential measure for strengthening the United Nations." Only 13 senators voted against inserting our nation into the organization and, once the United States was entangled, the (then) 12-nation alliance was launched.

Senator Robert Taft opposed entry into the pact because NATO's Article 5 pledged all member nations to consider an attack on one as an attack on all. He insisted that the use of the U.S. armed forces should be exclusively "to protect the liberty of our people," not those of other nations. His plea to fellow senators included criticism of the Truman administration because it "had adopted a tendency to interfere in the affairs of other nations, to assume that we are a kind of demigod and Santa Claus to solve the problems of the world, an attitude that is more and more likely to involve us in disputes where our liberty is not in fact concerned."

After the United States became a NATO founding member in July 1949, American military personnel took up stations in Europe for the stated purpose of countering the Soviet threat to Western Europe. Yet NATO has since grown to include numerous nations from the old Soviet bloc, thereby exposing the lie behind the alliance's supposed raison d'etre.

Since its founding, NATO's real role has been to provide the United Nations with military clout. When President Truman was questioned about sending U.S. forces to Korea in 1950 without a congressional declaration of war, he relied on his newly acquired authority to send troops to NATO. Senator Taft termed this willingness ...