The Madonna Curve
Her chart-topping talent for reinvention has inspired the makeovers of Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and Kylie Minogue, and now Madonna has been proposed as an unlikely role model for Nato.
International defence analyst Dr Peter van Ham, the director of global governance research at the Netherlands Institute of International Relations, says Madonna’s career should provide the blueprint for “a strategic extreme makeover” for the alliance.
Rather than Nato troops taking up purple leotards and conical bras, he contends in the latest Nato Review that the alliance should regularly reform itself in order to meet the challenges of the 21st century, such as cyber terrorism, weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and competition for energy resources.
Nato leaders are due to meet in Bucharest later this week and the US president, George Bush, is expected to press for more troops in Afghanistan. Attending his final Nato summit, Bush will try to maintain momentum for the organisation’s eastward expansion to take in the Balkan states of Albania, Croatia and Macedonia, putting the former Soviet states of Ukraine and Georgia on track for membership, and attempt to ease strains with Russia.
Van Ham, an expert on European security and WMD, told guardian.co.uk Nato was currently like “a band we all look upon with some nostalgia, remembering the good old days, and feeling slightly saddened by its inevitable demise; a band who should have stopped earlier, but has failed to do so because of popular demand. The Rolling Stones come to mind”.
He warned that Nato’s current strategic concept was dangerously out-of-date, having been drawn up before 9/11 and the mission in Afghanistan – its first deployment outside of Europe. He said the organisation should strengthen ties with allies such as Australia and work more closely with other global organisations such as the European Union, the World Bank and the United Nations.
The only alternative to a Madonna makeover, according to van Ham, “seems a steady decline in relevance and merit”.
He said: “The quality of adapting to new tasks while staying true to one’s own principles is something which business analysts qualify as the Madonna-curve. This curve is named after the legendary pop-diva who reinvented herself each time her style and stardom went into inevitable decline, but whose audacity has lifted her up to ever-higher levels of relevance and fame.
“Nato should follow the Madonna-curve, and not wait till its controversies escalate into public wrangles.”
But Robin Shepherd, senior Europe research fellow at the international affairs thinktank Chatham House, said Nato needed to be more like Rambo than Madonna.
“An ageing pop diva is not an excellent analogy for Nato. What they need is a go-get-the-bad-guys, Rambo-meets-Arnold Schwarzenegger approach,” he said.
Shepherd said merely reinventing the alliance’s strategic concept would not address the fundamental problem the organisation faces – that some member states were not prepared to commit troops to the frontline.
He said: “The key question, especially since Afghanistan, is whether member countries have sufficient understanding and willingness to commit themselves to a security alliance. Why will Germany not commit it troops to the frontline in southern Afghanistan? Sure, have a makeover, but that won’t address that central problem.”
Madonna’s British spokeswoman said van Ham’s proposal was a “nice idea“, but that the pop star was unavailable for comment.
Madonna, who at 49 is 10 years younger than Nato, is the world’s most successful female recording artist, according to the Guinness Book of Records. This week, she is expected to rack up her 13th number one in the UK and a record 37th top 10 hit in the US – more than Elvis and the Beatles – with her new single 4 Minutes.
Source: The Guardian/www.guardian.co.uk
thanks to Vincy