Relevance of NATO

A few weeks we talked about "security communities" in my grad seminar on the role of ideas and identity in IR. Thanks to a North Atlantic identity, NATO endures even in the absence of a Soviet threat. Anne Applebaum, however, seems to disagree. She writes:

The fact is that the idea of "the West" has been fading for a long time on both sides of the Atlantic, as countless "whither-the-Alliance" seminars have been ritually observing for the past decade. But the consequences are now with us: NATO, though fighting its first war since its foundation, inspires nobody. The members of NATO feel no allegiance to the alliance, or to one another.

Applebaum's evidence is found in the way that countries frame the Afghan War. She notes that countries are not discussing the Afghan War as an international operation. Rather, national governments and the media portray sacrifices in nationalistic terms rather than as a collective enterprise. I suspect this is partially for domestic consumption, and perhaps elites privately concur that this is an international concern.