BRUSSELS—The festering dispute between France and Turkey over a naval standoff in the Mediterranean Sea has revealed NATO’s struggle to keep order among its ranks and exposed weaknesses in a military alliance that can only take action by consensus.
The dispute has also spotlighted NATO’s limits when its allies are or are perceived to be on different sides of a conflict—in this case in Libya—especially when a major nuclear ally such as France has lamented the “brain death” at the world’s biggest security organization due to a lack of U.S. leadership.
