The New Club NATO — Thomas Friedman: ‘I wonder how many lady F-15 pilots the Latvians have. Actually, I wonder how many Denmark or Spain have. I suspect the number is zero. And that is the main reason why I don’t object anymore to NATO being expanded. Because, as we already saw in the Afghan war, most NATO countries have fallen so far behind the U.S. in their defense spending and modernizations, they really can’t fight alongside of us anymore anyway. So what the heck, let’s invite everybody in.

“It’s now Club NATO,” said Michael Mandelbaum, author of the new book The Ideas That Conquered the World. “And Club NATO’s main purpose seems to be to act as a kind of support group and kaffeeklatsch for the newly admitted democracies of Eastern and Central Europe, which suffered under authoritarian rule throughout the cold war.” ‘ NY Times op-ed