Terror', on the grounds that the al-Qaeda suicide plane attacks were the hostile acts of a foreign power on US sovereign territory.

But Nato's original purpose was primarily as a defensive alliance. Did it really have a future with its old role and its old Soviet foe gone?

This is the question the alliance's leaders still have to answer satisfactorily, and the conduct of Nato over Georgia, and in its first big expeditionary 'out of area' mission in Afghanistan, suggest it is in urgent need of a rethink, and possible replacement.

Since the end of the Cold War, Nato has accrued new members in eastern Europe, including the three former Soviet Baltic states, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia. In doing so it has sent two unfortunate messages - which may turn out to be disastrous.

In the case of the Baltics, it appeared to be offering a promissory note that Nato allies would actually fight for these states, which it had no intention of redeeming. Imagine if Georgia had been a Nato member this

summer, as France and America want. Would we be diverting troops now from Basra and Helmand to defend Gori and Poti?

The second unfortunate message was that Nato's expansion was a bid by America and its allies to contain and confine Russia. Yet the world is no longer involved in a confrontation along the old lines, over the conquest of Europe and the free world by Soviet Communism, nor is Russia threatening to send its armoured columns across the Rhine. Georgia is a 21st century crisis of minority interests, new security spheres and access to the global economy.

Yet the barrage of rhetoric from the US and the nationalists in Nato seems to treat Putin's Russia like Stalin's or Brezhnev's Russia, which patently it is not. And this is proving to be the biggest single failure of Nato politicians and diplomats since 1989.

The sense of confusion and muddle at the core of Nato is compounded by the lack of direction and common purpose in its running of the International Security and Assistance Force, the 37-nation operation to destroy