Post-Paris attacks, NATO faces calls for collective retaliation

by Anna Maria Tremonti (feat. Kyle Matthews)

The Current
November 18, 2015

Within a day of last Friday's attack on Paris, France had stepped up its military assault on ISIS -- bombing targets associated with the militant group in Syria.

But as France considers its longer-term strategy for waging war against ISIS, experts around the world are calling on the country to match these extraordinary circumstances, with an extraordinary measure.

There are calls for France to invoke NATO's Article 5. That is the defence clause in the NATO treaty stating that any armed attack against a member state shall "be considered an attack against them all."

Benjamin Weinthal believes now is the time to invoke NATO Article 5. He is a research fellow at the Foundation for the Defence of Democracies in Washington, and European correspondent at The Jerusalem Post. We reached him in Jerusalem.  

Kyle Matthews fears NATO Article 5 may invoke unintended consequences and feels the move will lead to feeding into ISIS propaganda. He is a fellow at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute. He was in Montreal.

Margaret MacMillan is a well-known Canadian historian and the Warden of St. Antony's College at Oxford University in England. Her latest book is about leadership and is called "History's People: Personalities and the Past." Margaret MacMillan joined us from Oxford to give us a historical perspective on on the topic of retaliation.