If this hasn’t been a wakeup call to NATO that their membership process is broken then I doubt we’ll ever see a new member. The time, energy, unpredictability, and susceptibility to influences from bad actors is a huge deterrent already, and it’ll only get worse over time.
If they can’t do away with the veto system there should at least be a mechanism in place for ejecting bad actors. Maybe Turkey is too strategic to face such a risk, but backsliding countries like Hungary would at least need to stop exploiting/blocking the system without legitimate cause. Far too easy for Russia/China/etc to buy off a handful of politicians to block any future expansion.
Common to many of our institutions, international and national, are that they were designed based on an expectation of some sort of correctness and decency and respect towards the institution by members and associates.
But way to many players have thrown away the rule book, and are working the system on the borderline insane. This goes to the extreme for instance for these notable examples: Putin, Xi, Erdogan, Trump, Orbán. (Russia, China, Turkey, USA, Hungary) Draging their entire country with them. Making this insanity ancompass at least a third of the globe!
We need to guard our democracies and institutions against the outrageous even borderline insane populists, even in well established democracies and international organisations that are a huge benefit to all member states. There are examples of people who threaten to tear it apart.
We will see if Netherlands and Gert Wilders will be added to the list of declining societies, in many ways he is not unlike Orbán, and could create huge problems for EU too.
If this hasn’t been a wakeup call to NATO that their membership process is broken then I doubt we’ll ever see a new member. The time, energy, unpredictability, and susceptibility to influences from bad actors is a huge deterrent already, and it’ll only get worse over time.
If they can’t do away with the veto system there should at least be a mechanism in place for ejecting bad actors. Maybe Turkey is too strategic to face such a risk, but backsliding countries like Hungary would at least need to stop exploiting/blocking the system without legitimate cause. Far too easy for Russia/China/etc to buy off a handful of politicians to block any future expansion.
Common to many of our institutions, international and national, are that they were designed based on an expectation of some sort of correctness and decency and respect towards the institution by members and associates.
But way to many players have thrown away the rule book, and are working the system on the borderline insane. This goes to the extreme for instance for these notable examples: Putin, Xi, Erdogan, Trump, Orbán. (Russia, China, Turkey, USA, Hungary) Draging their entire country with them. Making this insanity ancompass at least a third of the globe! We need to guard our democracies and institutions against the outrageous even borderline insane populists, even in well established democracies and international organisations that are a huge benefit to all member states. There are examples of people who threaten to tear it apart.
We will see if Netherlands and Gert Wilders will be added to the list of declining societies, in many ways he is not unlike Orbán, and could create huge problems for EU too.