NATO: a useful role at last?

South Wales has come under martial law in the last few days. As you drive the motorways police cars are to be seen on every bridge. On busy urban roads police with smart pale blue caps are monitoring every junction: on one I counted four cars and twelve officers standing at strategic points. Watching out, I presume, for any sign of threat. I wanted to ask them what they were watching for specifically but knew I wouldn't get an answer. And this was just Cardiff. Over in Newport, twelve miles down the road, a security fence eight feet high and nearly thirteen miles long has been built around the Celtic Manor hotel where the bigwigs are gathering. A colleague of my wife happens to live within the cordon. She has to pass through three separate checkpoints to reach her cottage, and at each one she has her car thoroughly searched.


In the heart of our own city, a steel cordon has been erected around Cardiff Castle, which last night hosted a banquet for the NATO players. Indeed, so total has been the security surrounding this great event that it seems almost as if it has overwhelmed any desire to protest- some did, to be fair, but their numbers were strangely few.


When I heard that NATO was coming to South Wales I considered being part of the protest, but as events have moved so quickly in recent months I in turn have found myself needing to reconsider my position on what NATO stands for at its most fundamental level.


NATO came into being after the end of World War II in order to counter the Soviet threat, whatever that was. As I understand it there never was a serious threat to the West from the Soviet Union. But nourished by a number of right wing nutters in the U.S. the Cold War was created, becoming a kind of self fulfilling prophecy. The U.S.S.R. had no option but to balance the threat they faced from NATO, and what followed was an increasingly insane arms race which gradually sapped the strength of the "Evil Empire". And when the Soviet Union finally fell apart, NATO looked even more like a solution looking for a problem. So for a long time and indeed until very recently, I have been in the "why doesn't it just go away?" camp. However, there is one situation looming in the Middle East at this moment which may require the commitment of all of NATO to address.


I have been looking at the Qur'an recently, and in the introduction I found this:


Often taken  out of context is the famous "Sword Sura" (9:5), though the word sword does not appear anywhere in the Qur'an. The contentious line is:


"Wherever you find the polytheists, kill them, seize them, besiege them, ambush them".


The term "polytheists" refers to the religion that obtained in Arabia prior to the rise of Islam. And it is certainly true that followers of the old faith and the new often engaged in bloody conflict as Mohammed fought to cast aside the old Gods and instate the one true God: Allah.. Apparently it is this line, above all others in the Holy Book, which is the one seized upon by members of IS to justify their atrocities. To them, "Polytheists" now means all of us, if we don't subscribe to their brand of religion.


If NATO has been a solution looking for a problem in the past, looks to me like they've found one right now. And this time it isn't the absurd notions of a few rabid conservatives. This time it's the real deal. Maybe we need NATO right now like we've never needed her before.