The Germans and the French seem to be stubling blocks in NATO. All the instability is causing everybody to walk on eggshells.
Neville Chamberlain redux.
Actually the French got out of NATO in 1966. They decided that the thing wouldn't be of much help in the case of a real Soviet attack, and thus decided to build their own nuclear weapons and get out of the NATO integrated military command.
Maybe the French did have a point. After all, article 5 of NATO stipulates that an attack against one member is viewed as an attack against all members. If Georgia was a member, would NATO have sent in boots to fight the Russians? I read an interesting article yesterday that was saying that ironically NATO was lucky that Georgia was not a member, since (if it was) it would have shown conclusively that NATO was a paper tiger.
The thing that bothers me the most about NATO is that all the heavy lifting is left to the US. Anyways, geo-politics sure are interesting.