This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday January 31st, 2008. I'm Caleb Brown.

NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was never intended to deal with a threat like Al Qaeda.

Along with the United States making numerous

pledges to protect nations around the globe, the cracks in NATO's foundation are beginning

to crumble.

So says Stanley Cober, a research fellow in foreign policy studies at the Cato

Institute, we spoke on the subject of his new policy analysis on NATO's new troubles.

What was the U.S. purpose in joining NATO?

The US purpose in NATO was to provide a deterrent against attacks so that anybody,

and we were obviously most concerned

the Soviet Union at the time,

would realize that if they were attacked,

were to attack a NATO country, that would involve a war with the United States

and presumably they would not want to go to war with the United States.

Article 5, what was it designed for?

It was designed to remove any ambiguity.

Article 5 is basically kind of a three musketeers article,

one for all, all for one.

An attack against one is considered to be an attack against

all. We respond through constitutional process, but you're supposed to look at an attack at any NATO member country as the

equivalent of an attack on your own country.

Article 5, as it was written, was envisioned to deal with nations attacking each other.

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