Must our fate be tied to NATO: the NATO Charter, forged during the long-dead Cold War, still binds all NATO members to wage war if any member is attacked. Is this treaty in our nation's best interests?(WORLD)

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The U.S. Constitution assigns the power to declare war to Congress. The North Atlantic Treaty issued by the United States and other founding members of NATO in 1949 states that an attack on any member of the military alliance must be viewed as an attack on all of the members. By becoming a party to NATO, our government subverted the congressional war power, for now an attack on any one of a group of nations would pull the United States into a war with or without a congressional declaration.

This frightening transfer of power entangling America's fate with that of other countries in North America and Europe is spelled out in Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty:

 
   The Parties agree that an armed attack 
   against one or more of them in 
   Europe or North America shall be 
   considered an attack against them all 
   and consequently they agree that, if 
   such an armed attack occurs, each 
   of them, in exercise of the right of 
   individual or collective self-defence 
   recognised by Article 51 of the 
   Charter of the United Nations, will 
   assist the Party or Parties so attacked 
   by taking forthwith, individually and 
   in concert with the other Parties, 
   such action as it deems necessary, 
   including the use of armed force, to 
   restore and maintain the security of 
   the North Atlantic area. 

Though the North Atlantic Treaty allows for responses short of military ones, the key segment in interpreting the level of response is that "an armed attack against one or more ... shall be considered an attack against all." That is, a member of NATO should respond as if the attack occurred against that nation, even if the attack occurred against another member of the NATO alliance. This understanding is also the understanding of Senators Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman, who coauthored an opinion piece in the August 27, 2008 Wall Street Journal stating: "The credibility of Article Five of the NATO Charter--that an attack against one really can and will be treated as an attack against all--needs to be bolstered."

Why would the U.S. government entangle itself in the NATO military alliance? Why would the American people tolerate any such entanglement? In 1949, the United States was in the midst of the Cold War, and NATO was presented to the American people as a necessary bulwark against communism. American troops remained in Europe based on the alliance, and the U.S. government--and U.S. taxpayers--assumed much of the budgetary burden of providing for the defense of Western Europe against the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites.

But the Cold War that provided the rationale for NATO ended with the crashing down of the Berlin Wall, the opening of the Iron Curtain, and the apparent death of Soviet communism. Yet NATO did not die with the Cold War. In fact, it has expanded.