"If in 10 years, all American troops stationed in Europe for national defense purposes have not been returned to the US, then this whole project [NATO] will have failed."--Dwight Eisenhower

When the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was created in August of 1949, it was as a US-backed defensive alliance which protected western Europe against possible invasion by the new, and menacing, USSR-led Warsaw Pact.

In 1959, NATO still existed. And 30 years later, when the Warsaw Pact evaporated, along with the Communist menace itself, the US scrambled to find new rationales for NATO to exist, to keep its military in Europe, and to keep Europe humble and in thrall.

There was the mid-'90s drive to expand NATO, an expensive scheme (for European and American taxpayers alike) designed to legislate lucrative new business for Lockheed Martin and Boeing. NATO obediently expanded, but still nobody knew why NATO existed. There was the 1999 NATO-led bombing of Yugoslavia, a useful--but one-time--US gambit to control the carnage without the more critical fig leaf offered by the UN Security Council. Still, the question remained: why does anyone need NATO?

This week, the Bush Administration tried a new strategy for justifying NATO's utility to America: as an objective "outsider" whose expertise can lend legitimacy to the Pentagon's crackpot weapons fantasies.

Alas, NATO can only do so much with a straight face. While there was ostensibly something in it for Europe when America insisted upon expansion and the bombing of Kosovo and Serbia, it's hard to see what Europe's elites gain by having Colin Powell stick his hand up their backs and move their lips.

And, so, Powell's trip to Hungary this week ended in yet another Bush foreign policy embarrassment. The Pentagon's space warriors wanted NATO to beg the Americans to protect Europe from the commu--er, rogue state menace by dismantling arms control treaties and building a ballistic missile system that protects America. The idea, you see, is that once deployed here (National Missile Defense), we could extend the system to Europe and the globe--which is called Theatre Missile Defense, a plot for space-based global domination that is very much in the Pentagon's sights.

But it takes someone crazy enough to believe NMD will work to believe that Europe, the logical secondary target, would be thrilled to be left defenseless while rogue states couldn't attack Big Daddy. Colin asked, and Europe laughed. Tuesday's "compromise" document (as US media faithfully put it) was actually a stinging rebuke. Powell wanted NATO to declare that all 19 member countries faced "a common threat" from rogue nations; instead, the final draft says that NATO should address threats that such missiles "can pose."

Of course, at any moment, meteors "can pose" a threat of ending all sentient life on Earth. (Like an IQ-based neutron bomb, this would essentially leave all of Washington DC untouched.) You can bet that such jokes were flying, in German, French, and Italian, right in front of the clueless Americans' faces.

The Brits, who actually study languages in their schools, did us the favor of not translating. Stiff upper lip and all that.

When the translator's headphones were on, Europeans were too circumspect to voice what they were thinking: "The Americans are insane." And: "Who needs you guys?" In fact, the more notable news from Hungary, ignored by US media, was an "understanding" reached with Turkey Tuesday night that paves the way for the European Union to set up its own security and defense arm. The EU now hopes to have "limited operational capacity" by the end of the year and 60,000 troops on call by 2003.

More than ever, NATO appears to be a pointless, expensive, dangerous dinosaur. We could use a good meteor.