Stephen Walt claims "NATO is slowly fading into irrelevance":
Americans want Europe to spend more on defense, so that they can contribute more to our far-flung global projects. But why should they? Europe is peaceful, stable, democratic, and faces no serious external military threats. Its combined GNP exceeds ours, and the European members of NATO spend almost eight times more on defense than Russia does. So where's the threat? The plain truth is that Europe has little reason to invest a lot of money on defense these days, no matter how much Americans implore them to, and so they turn a deaf ear to American entreaties.
Joyner defends the alliance:
NATO outlasted the demise of its raison d'être, the Soviet threat, and went on to fight together –along with many of its former adversaries — in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Libya. Is there seriously any doubt that other challenges will emerge in the future in which the Americans and its European allies might benefit from working together?
The Dish 