{"id":187305,"date":"2021-06-21T12:01:12","date_gmt":"2021-06-21T11:01:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=187305"},"modified":"2021-06-18T09:47:03","modified_gmt":"2021-06-18T08:47:03","slug":"meet-nato-the-dangerous-defensive-alliance-trying-to-run-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/06\/meet-nato-the-dangerous-defensive-alliance-trying-to-run-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet NATO, the Dangerous \u201cDefensive\u201d Alliance Trying to Run the World"},"content":{"rendered":"
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15 Jun 2021 – Yesterday\u2019s summit showed how the \u201cNorth Atlantic\u201d Treaty Organization has decided it has an extremely expansive global mission.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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President Joe Biden speaks at the NATO summit at the group\u2019s headquarters in Brussels on June 14, 2021.\u00a0 Francisco Seco\/Pool\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

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In a stop<\/u> last week on his way to Belgium for Monday\u2019s NATO summit, President Joe Biden\u00a0visited a Royal Air Force base in eastern England. \u201cIn Brussels,\u201d he told the assembled crowd<\/a>, \u201cI will make it clear that the United States\u2019s commitment to our NATO alliance and Article 5 is rock solid.\u00a0It\u2019s a sacred obligation that we have under Article 5.\u201d<\/p>\n

These lines were aimed at a tiny number of human beings. Certainly almost no Americans have any idea what \u201cArticle 5\u201d is part of or what it says.<\/p>\n

But Biden\u2019s words were genuinely significant. Article 5 is a clause in the North Atlantic Treaty, the founding document of NATO, which states that any armed attack against any member of the alliance \u201cshall be considered an attack against them all.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is at the core of how the U.S. runs the world and intends to keep running it in the future. It also signifies that should we face the prospect of sharing power with others \u2014 today that mostly means China \u2014 we may end up destroying the world.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The North Atlantic Treaty is also known as the Washington Treaty, which tells you most of what you need to know about it. It was written in 1949,\u00a0a time when U.S. power was so overweening that it could simply dictate terms to its allies. Most of whatever little discussion there was with other countries\u2019 diplomats took place in secret over two weeks at the Pentagon. It was co-written by the delightfully-named Thomas Achilles, a State Department official who later said<\/a> his boss had told him, \u201cI don\u2019t care whether entangling alliances have been considered worse than original sin ever since George Washington\u2019s time. We\u2019ve got to negotiate a military alliance with Western Europe in peacetime and we\u2019ve got to do it quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n

The public rationale for NATO was that it was a defensive alliance necessary to stop the Soviet Union from invading Western Europe. The private rationale, as articulated by Achilles, was somewhat different:<\/p>\n

At that point Western Europe was devastated, prostrate and demoralized and it badly needed confidence and energy within. With the Soviet armies halfway across Europe and still at their full wartime strength and the Communist parties the largest single political elements in France and Italy, something to inspire Soviet respect was equally essential.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Some top U.S. officials did honestly think that the Soviet Union was poised to stage a military attack. Whether that belief had any basis in reality is extremely debatable; about 27 million Russians, or\u00a01 in every\u00a06 people in the country, had just died in World War II. The equivalent for the U.S. today would be 50 million dead Americans. Even Joseph Stalin might have had a tough time motivating the country to immediately embark on another such event.<\/p>\n

A more reasonable concern for the American government was a political, rather than military, threat. As Achilles said, there were powerful communist parties across Europe, especially in France and Italy \u2014 ones that could plausibly win honest elections. The anti-communist forces in those countries needed the \u201cconfidence and energy\u201d of NATO to fight back. Meanwhile, NATO would \u201cinspire Soviet respect\u201d that would hopefully lessen Russian support, material and moral, for Europe\u2019s communist parties.<\/p>\n

Something else is notable about NATO\u2019s founding. The original\u00a012 members were Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the U.K., and the U.S. \u2014 in hindsight, something of an all-star league of European colonialism. It\u2019s difficult today not to notice the blindingly alabaster complexion<\/a> of the officials who signed the treaty. The original version of the treaty even specifies that it applied to any attack on \u201cthe Algerian Departments of France.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A fuller reading of history suggests that the formation of NATO helped intensify and institutionalize the Cold War.<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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In any case, the architects of NATO would say that they were simply responding to the Cold War, already in progress at the instigation of the Soviets. A fuller reading of history suggests that the formation of NATO helped intensify and institutionalize the Cold War. The Warsaw Pact, after all, was not created until 1955, six years later, and its text<\/a> is in many ways a replica of that of NATO\u2019s treaty. It even has its own Article 5 language, except it\u2019s in Article 4.<\/p>\n

The unstated logic of both NATO and the Warsaw Pact was also the same. Indeed, it\u2019s identical to that of similar alliances for thousands of years going back to the Delian League<\/a>, founded in 478 B.C. and led by Athens. Providing protection is one key way for powerful countries to bind less powerful ones to them. The U.S. didn\u2019t create NATO because we believed that we\u2019d someday need Luxembourg\u2019s military might to save us, nor did the Soviets come up with the Warsaw Pact because they felt that way about Albania. Rather, both superpowers knew that if they didn\u2019t promise smaller countries protection, the smaller countries would feel compelled to protect themselves \u2014 which would lead to them wandering off on their own with their own foreign policies. That\u2019s no way to run a sphere of influence.<\/p>\n

NATO worked during the Cold War, both in the sense that there was no Soviet invasion and that\u00a0the U.S. was able to corral Western Europe into following our instructions most of the time. A smattering of new countries joined during this period: Greece and Turkey in 1952, West Germany in 1955, and Spain in 1982.<\/p>\n

Then came the dissolution of the Soviet Union, beginning in the late 1980s. If NATO\u2019s champions were correct, it would have similarly been disbanded, its purported purpose now moot. But NATO\u2019s more skeptical critics, who claimed that it was largely an aggressive instrument of U.S. power, have clearly been proven right by time.<\/p>\n

As Mikhail Gorbachev attempted to peacefully dismantle the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, he sought assurances from the U.S. that NATO would not expand into the areas the Soviets were vacating. James Baker, President George H.W. Bush\u2019s secretary of state, told\u00a0Gorbachev not once but three times<\/a> that wouldn\u2019t happen. \u201cNot an inch of NATO\u2019s present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction,\u201d Baker promised<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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NATO\u2019s goals have expanded along with its territory.<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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Instead, in 1999 NATO incorporated the Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary, a big chunk of what had been the Warsaw Pact. Then in 2004 Bulgaria, Romania, and Slovakia, more of the Warsaw Pact, joined, along with Latvia and Lithuania, which had actually been part of the Soviet Union. Other Eastern European countries followed, bringing NATO\u2019s current membership to 30.<\/p>\n

NATO\u2019s goals have expanded along with its territory. The U.S. has found it particularly useful as a way to create legitimacy for wars when the United Nations won\u2019t authorize them, as with the bombing of Serbia in 1999 and Libya in 2011. In both cases, the American government pointed to NATO\u2019s involvement as making the wars \u201cmultilateral\u201d \u2014 that is, not unilateral acts by the U.S. \u2014 even though the U.S. provided the crucial firepower and neither war would have happened if America hadn\u2019t wanted them to.<\/p>\n

Russia has greeted these events with the same enthusiasm that\u00a0the U.S. would if Mexico, Canada, and a newly independent Texas joined a Russian-led military alliance. Of particular concern to Russia is the possibility of Ukraine, another huge chunk of the former Soviet Union, becoming part of NATO.<\/p>\n

NATO is also looking farther afield, to the entire planet. It just released \u201cNATO 2030<\/a>,\u201d which describes an \u201can ambitious agenda to make sure NATO remains ready, strong and united for a new era of global competition. \u2026 NATO needs to adopt a more global approach to tackle global challenges to Atlantic security.\u201d The head of NATO recently discussed this<\/a> need with Lloyd Austin, the new U.S. secretary of defense.<\/p>\n

Oddly, it turns out that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization\u2019s \u201cAtlantic security\u201d now is largely about China, a country famously located on the Pacific. After Tuesday\u2019s summit, NATO released its formal communiqu\u00e9<\/a>, which said, among other things, that \u201cChina\u2019s stated ambitions and assertive behaviour present systemic challenges to the rules-based international order and to areas relevant to Alliance security.\u201d<\/p>\n

It now seems quite possible that NATO will accomplish in the near future what it did 70 years ago \u2014 that is, push countries outside it into their own alliance in what they perceive as necessary self-defense. Thus just as NATO helped create the Cold War then, it\u2019s well on its way to creating a sequel now.<\/p>\n

Ominously, there is essentially no discussion about this in the U.S. and Europe. As Biden said, the small number of elites who are involved in these discussions see NATO as \u201csacred.\u201d Similarly, when advocating for the creation of NATO, then-British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin said<\/a> it was necessary for \u201cthe salvation of the west.\u201d As strange as it may seem for normal people, NATO is an institution of religious fervor for Western elites and therefore cannot be debated, any more than the Pope is open to debate about the Holy Trinity. And we all know how religions can lead to war.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Jon Schwarz – <\/a>jon.schwarz@\u200btheintercept.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Go to Original – theintercept.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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