As the Israeli war on Hezbollah continues – and it is, pace the protests of the anti-Israel crowd at home and abroad, not a war on “Lebanon” – the outline of the endgame for this phase becomes more clear. The Israelis are willing to accept an international force on its northern border, provided that force has a robust mandate, and provided it is led by NATO. This is at once a good idea and a bad one, and its implications extend far beyond the mere imposition of peace, such as it is, between Israel and the Litani.

The first thing to remember is that Hezbollah is an Islamist organization, and as such it is not especially interested in having its warmaking capacity thwarted or taken away. Its apologists enjoy praising its provision of social services – much as Hamas, the Soviets, and the Nazis all did in their respective societies – but that provision is at best a sideshow to its raison d’être: the extermination of the Jews. (One expects that in time, or if the Jew-killing mission is frustrated, this impetus will turn toward a broader mission of destroying the non-Muslims within grasp – surely a chilling prospect for the much-harried Christians and doughty Druze of the Lebanese state.) Hezbollah without the annihilationist capability is as sensible as the Ku Klux Klan as a clinical provider. Yet this is what many expect it to become, stripped of its weaponry under a NATO tutelage: some manner of charming third-world advocacy group, colorful, strenuous, and emasculated.

The reality is that Hezbollah will fight. Even as it fights the IDF in the dusty valleys of southern Lebanon now, it will fight the Westerners who arrive to strip it of its core mission. It cannot do less: it knows that acquiescence means the end of itself in its own conception; and its mentors abroad do not fund and teach it on the premise of peace. If the present war is that of the IDF versus Hezbollah, the next will be NATO versus Hezbollah. The Europeans of NATO – and it will be all Europeans – may prosecute the mission with somewhat less enthusiasm than the IDF; but it will be the same mission nonetheless. Israeli acquiescence to “peace” in this sense is an Israeli handoff of the war to foreigners. It’s a good deal for Israel – and a momentous one for those stepping in.

NATO has had two combat missions in its existence. It drove Serbia from Kosovo, and it now fights Islamists in Afghanistan. The suppression of Hezbollah would constitute its third, and it would strongly imply a fundamental strategic realignment of the alliance. The original intent of NATO was to serve as a mutual-defense pact in the face of territorial aggression; but it was never invoked when its member states suffered actual aggression outside of the North Atlantic area. The first activation of its mutual-defense provisions came in the wake of the 9/11 massacres, when NATO aircrews helped monitor North American airspace as US forces streamed into central Asia. (Strangely, this was not invoked when the Moroccans tried to seize Isla Perejil.) This direct response to Islamist aggression, compounded with the Afghan mission, and compounded with the prospective campaign against Hezbollah, all add up to a new role for NATO: as the anti-Islamist military front of the West at large.

This is hardly a wholesale or overt re-orientation, of course. NATO member Turkey would never acquiesce to the open realignment of the alliance in this manner. Nor would the more dhimmi-minded NATO members – Zapatero’s Spain, Belgium, et al. But that is formality: reality would be something different. As we travel further into the 21st century, the great questions of the age will be met by great combinations of states and peoples. NATO defended the West against the existential threat of the last half of the 20th century. If it assumes the burden, with Israel, of defending against the existential threat of this century, it will be, in one sense, a profound change. In another sense, it will be a rational continuation of an eminently worthy mission.