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# Posted 5:59 AM by Patrick Belton

HAVING WORKED HAPPILY AT THE ALLIANCE and holding fond views of it as a community of allied democracies, I still have to question the dubious decision by Nato's new secretary-general to bill today's ceremony raising the number of allies to 26 as the end of the Cold War. It's 2004, and the Cold War has incontestably been over for between thirteen years (from the end of the Soviet Union as a political entity) and fifteen (since the fall of the Berlin Wall). That the alliance's new leadership has sought to frame the accession of new allies in terms of an official recognition of an event that happened one and a half decades ago does not inspire confidence in its ability to move even now out of the operational framework of the Cold War to address out of area operations in Afghanistan, the Balkans, and eventually in the Middle East and counterterror theatres. At worst, this is reflective of a paradigmatic problem in facing new operational realities; and at best, a rather embarassing political misstep.

UPDATE: After I posted this, CNN quickly revised their headline from "NATO ceremony ends Cold War" to "Larger NATO facing 'new threats'". They also struck the line "in a ceremony being billed as the official end of the Cold War." The original is here. I'm glad we get such fast results!

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