Adrian Hamilton: Nato is Dead – It's Just That We Won't Admit It

Adrian Hamilton is The Independent’s comment editor and writes a weekly column largely on international affairs with particular focus on the Middle East, Iran and foreign policy issues.

If ever the death knell was sounded for an organisation, it was sounded by the US Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, in a farewell speech to Nato in Brussels last Friday.

Of course, in talking of the 60-year-old alliance facing a "dim if not dismal" future of "military irrelevance", he was primarily expressing Washington's growing irritation with its European allies for not doing more in Afghanistan and over Libya. If they didn't pull their socks, up, he said with the bluntness that only a departing minister can voice, it would all be over for Nato.

You can't fault his analysis. The longer the Libyan intervention has gone on, the more it has shown up an alliance whose European members are divided on the goals and whose leader, the US, just doesn't want to go on providing the heavy lifting for something it feels should be a European show.

But then this only reflects the fundamental dichotomy of view between the US and Europe over how they see their security interests now. For most European countries, the fall of the Berlin Wall meant the end to the most direct military threat to their security, the raison d'être of Nato...