NATO may be the strongest military alliance in the history of the world.
Among many accomplishments over the course of its 66-year history, the alliance protected Europe from Soviet expansion during the Cold War, intervened to stop ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, and provided air support for the rebels who overthrew Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
And now it's responsible for what may be one of the most frivolous moments in the history of recent geopolitics.
On May 14, during a
meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Antalya, Turkey, a number of high-profile attendees somehow got roped into singing "We Are The World," the 1985 Michael Jackson and Lionel Ritchie-penned charity single written to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia.
"
We Are The World" is one of pop music's most iconic, most infamous, and
perhaps most-bitingly parodied works of unadulterated schlock.
At the time, it must have seemed like a stirring appeal to the world's conscience — the single
sold over 4 million copies within a month of its release. Today, it's a relic of an outmoded and paternalistic way of thinking that assumes individual awareness and charity can't help but improve nebulous problems like "famine in Africa" — issues with political and social dimensions that emotional outsider-driven appeals like "We Are The World" glossed over almost by their very nature.