Giuliani makes a bold proposal.

You've got to give the guy credit for this proposal:

Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani urged NATO to admit Australia, India, Israel, Japan and Singapore on Wednesday as part of proposals to combat Islamic extremism.

On the merits, there are a few big problems and some plusses. For the most part, the list looks a lot like the "anglosphere" idea -- an alliance of the post-colonial English-speaking states -- that's been floating around the Right-wing blogosphere for years. Plus-wise, Australia, Singapore, and Japan will probably be easy to sell on a counter-terror alliance. Australia is a staunch ally of the United States on terror already, and Japan is likely to continue happily beefing up its self-defense forces with more U.S. support. Singapore may or may not go along, although it doesn't seem as if they have much to lose by staying away from the idea.

India, on the other hand, is a question mark. Although India might decide to go along with the deal to rachet up the pressure on Pakistan, India might decide that getting too attached to the United States isn't in its long term interests. India is in a tougher neighborhood than Singapore or Australia, so India has a lot more to lose by ending up on the wrong side of NATO's potential expansion into Asia.

The biggest problem on the list is Israel. That's not to say that the deal is a lousy one from the Israeli point of view. I'm sure that Israel would applaud any gesture of the West to help it fight terror, as opposed to, say, politely lionizing the terrorists as anti-Zionist freedom fighters. In other words, the real deal-breaker is that Left-wing parties around the West will almost certainly unanimously rise up against plan as the demented plotting of yet another Neocon cabal (not that Giuliani was going to win New York City in 2008 anyway, though).