An alliance on paper only?

I find it difficult to disagree with much that Lew MacKenzie says here:

So, Canada has worked out a way to provide our troops with medium-lift helicopters in southern Afghanistan: a one-year lease for six Russian-made helicopters that will cover us until we can purchase six used Chinooks from the U.S government next year. Total cost? More than $300-million.

This simple but telling example is, in my mind, the final nail in NATO's coffin.

The Atlantic Alliance was a successful bulwark against the Soviet Union from 1949 until the early 1990s and the end of the Cold War, but in today's more complex world, it's time for it to "rest in peace."

There are more than 3,000 medium-lift helicopters sitting safely on the ground far, far away from Afghanistan, at airbases located in NATO's 26 member countries. Three thousand, and Canada is stuck with providing helicopter support, not just for its own troops, but for all the other national contingents in Region South. [Babbler's bold]

The only mitigating point I can raise is that it's disappointing that a wealthy G8 nation like Canada has been on the borrowing end of medium-to-heavy helo support for the past eight years ourselves. And close air support. And attack helos. And medevac. And, until recently, strategic airlift.

In other words, we're still clearing our stuff out of the basement of that glass house that MacKenzie's lobbing stones at.

But other than that, he's spot on: what exactly is the justification for NATO at this point if its members can't be relied upon in its first bloody test?

Update: As it turns out, I'm in the awkward position of agreeing to a good degree with Scott Taylor:

While it has become standard fare for our politicians and generals to bash NATO for not “stepping up to the plate" and inflate our own self-impor­tance by proclaiming Canada to be the foremost “heavy lifter" in Afghan­istan, this helicopter mess serves to remind us just what a lightweight nation we are militarily.

A G8 country and founding member of the NATO alliance should not be in a predicament in which six years into an operational deployment we are beg­ging for loaners from allies and leasing used Soviet aircraft from private businessmen.

Even a broken clock, and all that.