LONDON, Aug. 28 -- The advantage General Sir Gwyn Jenkins is describing is not firepower. It is permission.

The First Sea Lord told The Times that the Joint Expeditionary Force, the ten-nation grouping Britain leads in northern Europe, can act without waiting for everyone in it to agree. "Because you don't need consensus among all ten nations in JEF to act, it gives you a political flexibility to respond, particularly in crisis, earlier than we might see, for instance, Nato being able to mobilise with its higher bar of consensus being required for action," he said.

Read carefully, that is a statement about clocks rather than about alliances. NATO now has 32 members and takes decisions by consensus, which means any one capital can hold t...