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A former Pentagon official says the future of NATO is questionable because the member states do “not have the resources” to maintain a strong alliance.
"It is a really serious question on what the future of NATO is going to be. And I think that because the Europeans are not putting the resources that they committed to [in order] to maintain NATO strengthened and vigilant, there are some increasing questions about what they are going to do now,” said Michael Maloof.
"We saw that NATO forces that committed to Afghanistan couldn’t wait to get out of there,” Maloof told Press TV in a phone interview on Saturday.
This week, a US military spokesman said that a US cavalry squadron based in Germany is heading to Poland and the Baltic states to replace some 600 US troops who were deployed there in April.
In April, a contingent of 600 US forces were sent to Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Poland for joint war games amid escalating tensions between Washington and Moscow over the crisis in Ukraine.
At the time, Moscow condemned the move as Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said, "War games by NATO in Poland and the Baltic states are also not helping the normalization of the situation. We are forced to react to the situation.”
As Washington is replacing its forces in the region, the first rotation of 173rd soldiers deployed there conducted a joint military exercise – called Saber Strike – on Friday which involved some 4,700 personnel from 10 countries.
Maloof said the United States "has got to make a show of some kind of commitment to NATO” as he stressed that "peaceful talks will always be the remedy.”
The US and Russia have been at loggerheads over the crisis in Ukraine, especially following a March referendum in the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea in which people overwhelmingly voted to join the Russian Federation.
PressTV
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