James said:

Now, only a crazy person would suggest using NATO to smash up Europe’s dangerous Islamic ghettos.

Fair enough, but I tend to take the view that “only a crazy person” would want to include Georgia in NATO.  (Happily, James and I are entirely on the same page in opposing entry for Georgia and Ukraine.)  We have these “crazy people” already–how much longer before we get the next batch?  Besides, we have seen NATO used as a hammer for smashing states that are deemed to be too harsh on their Muslim population.  The principle of using NATO to handle the internal political problems of European states has already been established.  How much longer before a NATO with nothing to do becomes Europe’s military police force?  Granted, it would probably be used to crush an attempted Flemish declaration of independence (at which point the defenders of Kosovo independence would express grave anxiety about separatism!) before anyone in Brussels would entertain the idea of directing its attentions elsewhere, but this is exactly why NATO as guarantor of “local security” also seems to me to be a very bad idea.  Croatia’s local security is just fine.  Albania is, of course, a center of criminality and human trafficking, which is a good argument for keeping Albania out of any European structures, and the only thing NATO could do to improve local security in Albania is to occupy it.  Meanwhile, since NATO has become America’s de facto posse in Afghanistan, shouldn’t the priority of the moment be building up existing members’ military strength to spread the burden more evenly among the allies we already have?  Albania does not contribute to this, and may detract from it to the extent that it is no position economically to fund the kinds of military upgrades that its forces would need just to bring them up to alliance standards.  We already have enough allies-as-dead-weight.  Why take on more?  It’s not as if our current burdens are light and few.