NATO jubilee party ends up in a jumble

They came for the party, quarrelled and even called names. That’s how the 70th jubilee party of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, the world’s strongest military alliance, began and ended. The 29-member military alliance, which held its platinum jubilee summit this week in London, is in disarray.  Its member states struggle to strike a balance between their individual national interests and the alliance’s collective interest, which often happens to be the United States’ geostrategic interest. 

Despite the bad blood and the squabbles over personality and policy, the London summit found three reasons why NATO should still exist -- Terrorism, Russia, and, for the first time, China.  the inclusion of China gives further credence to the claim that NATO exists to do the United States’ bidding. Analysts believe that Washington is said to have convinced its NATO allies to name China as a threat. In bringing in China, the Trump administration, it appears, is trying to give NATO some purpose to exist although Trump himself in the past has questioned its relevance.

Even before taking office in January 2017, he described NATO as “obsolete and a relic of the Cold War. Then once in office, he accused the NATO allies of being stingy and expecting the US to pay for their defence. He was particularly harsh on Germany.

“Germany owes vast sums of money to NATO, and the United States must be paid more for the powerful, and very expensive, defence it provides to Germany,” The businessman president said and insisted every NATO member should set aside at least two percent of their national budget for defence. 

Despite these early Trump attacks, there appears to be some new found enthusiasm on the part of the US to re-launch NATO on a new trajectory. So there, Trump was slamming French President Emmanuel Macron this week for undermining NATO. In recent comments, Macron said NATO was suffering from “brain death” in part due to a lack of US leadership under Trump. He also described the alliance as a “burden we share.” Trump hit out by saying Macron’s comments were “nasty” and “insulting.” 

Facing at home the worst crisis of his political career, with the House of Representatives closing in on an impeachment motion, Trump did not find the much-needed respite at the London summit. On the contrary, the summit air was filled with ill-feelings. Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was caught on video mocking Trump’s rambling media appearances. Later Trump called Trudeau “two-faced” and cancelled his final news briefing.

The bitterness among NATO members did not happen in a vacuum. It began no sooner the Cold War ended in 1991.  As the Soviet-led Warsaw military alliance disbanded itself soon after the end of the Cold War, there emerged a strong call for the disbanding of the NATO, which was formed in October 1949 to counter the Soviet military threat to the so-called “free world”. 

In the early post-Cold War period, France and Germany pondered the formation of a European military force, but such an arrangement did not see the light of day because the US opposed it. To put it in another way, the US used NATO to achieve its geostrategic objectives. It happened in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq.
Then there were attempts by Washington to expand NATO to Russia’s backyard. 

Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia -- nations which emerged from the former Soviet Union –joined the NATO when Russia was weak in the early years of the post-Cold War period. But later, when Russia emerged stronger under the leadership of Vladimir Putin, NATO’s move to woo Georgia led to Russia’s military action in that country. 

Today, both Russia and NATO have deployed advanced missiles to counter threats from each other. Such a tit-for-tat military buildup comes amidst contradictory signals from the Trump administration with regard to Russia, a country that is alleged to have put Trump in the White House through hacking and Facebook adverts. In many statements, Trump has indicated he has a soft spot for Russia and its authoritarian leader. However in recent months, the US has ended a key nuclear treaty with Russia. Adding to confusion, Trump last week called for a new nuclear missile treaty with Russia. Trump’s policies do not make clear whether Russia is a friend or foe. 
On the Asian front, however, the US is unhappy over NATO allies’ lackadaisical response to China’s growing military power. Many NATO nations have close economic ties with China. Hence their reluctance to toe the US line and name China as a threat. 

The inclusion of China in the final declaration, analysts believe, must have come from the US, which is worried about rapidly improving China-Europe trade ties which are set to receive a further boost through the Belt and Road Initiative. Worried about China’s lead in the 5G technology, which is set to bring revolutionary changes to the world and people’s lifestyles, the US appears to be determined to scuttle China’s advance. 

Addressing the summit, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg urged the alliance to take the Chinese threat more seriously, describing it as “coming closer to us.”
“We see them in the Arctic, we see them in Africa, we see them investing heavily in European infrastructure and of course investing in cyberspace,” Stoltenberg said. He however clarified that he was not calling on NATO to move into the South China Sea.

It is against the backdrop of these political shenanigans, that NATO leaders cobbled together a London declaration, covering up the squabbles and disagreements over the two percent defence budget, Turkey’s purchase of Russian missiles and the war in Syria. 

“In challenging times, we are stronger as an alliance, and our people safer. Our bond and mutual commitment have guaranteed our freedoms, our values, and our security for 70 years, said the declaration. 
As the jubilee party ended with the world more unsafe than before the summit due to NATO getting a new enemy, China, the Western military alliance should focus more on world peace instead of honing its capabilities to face more conflicts.

The Death of US and UK Neo-Colonialism

MARTIN SIEFF 

The colossal project to re-colonialize the world started with United States President Ronald Reagan eagerly backed by United Kingdom Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1981 and over the next 20 years seemed to sweep all before it.

But we can now see that the creation of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the 9/11 attacks in 2001 marked the turn of the tide.

 Since then one super-ambitious project of nation destruction and rebuilding after another generated by Washington and eagerly embraced by its main Western European allies has collapsed spectacularly.

As if living out one of Aesop’s Fables, the hammer of US kinetic power so eagerly embraced at the urging of neo-conservatives and neoliberals alike following the collapse of communism exhausted the Western welders of the weapon instead of their targets.

The reckless resort to indiscriminate military power in the US-dominated invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the following campaigns to topple the governments of Syria and Libya created unexpected consequences comparable to Isaac Newton’s Third Law of Motion – Every Action has an Equal and Opposite Reaction.

Nevertheless, US and Western confidence in the triumph of liberal, free trade and democratic ideals around the world has remained almost totally impervious to the sobering lessons of recalcitrant global realities. The great reawakening of Western imperial and capitalist resolve heralded by Reagan and championed by his loyal spear carriers, Thatcher and her successors as prime ministers of the United Kingdom continued unabated: Until 2016.

Two epochal events happened that year: The British people, to the astonishment most of all of their own leaders, pundits and self-selected Platonic guides and “betters’ voted for Brexit: They opted by a narrow but decisive vote of 48 percent to 52 percent to leave the 28-nation European Union. The disruptions and chaos set in motion by that fateful outcome have still only begun to work their way through the political and economic systems of Europe.

Second, Donald Trump, even more amazingly was elected president of the United States to the limitless fury of the American “Deep State” which continues unabated in its relentless and frantic efforts to topple him.

However, the motives of the scores of millions of Americans who voted for Trump were perfectly clear: They were opting for American nationalism instead of American Empire. They were sickened by the clear results of 70 years of post-World War II global imperium that had arrogantly and casually allowed US domestic industry and society to wither on the vine for the supposed Greater Good of Global Leadership.

A decade and a half of endless, fruitless, ultra-expensive global wars entered into by the feckless and stupid George W. Bush and continued by the complacent and superficial Barack Obama advanced this process of weariness and rejection.

Two years after the election of Trump and the British people’s vote for Brexit, the great surge of the West that outlasted the Soviet Union is clearly on the ebb: Now the United States is exhausted, the EU is falling apart and NATO is an empty shell – a paper tiger if you will. Why is this happening and can it be reversed?

Free Trade was never the universal panacea it has been ludicrously claimed to be now for more than 240 years since Adam Smith published his Wealth of Nations. On the contrary, the cold, remorseless facts of economic history clearly show that protective tariffs to safeguard domestic manufactures and advantageous export-driven balance of payment surpluses are the true path to economic growth and sustainable, lasting national power and wealth.

The idea that democracy – at least in the narrow, highly structured, manipulative and patchy form practiced in the United States is some sort of universal guarantee for happiness, national stability and growth has also been repeatedly confounded.

Instead, the Western democratic states have fallen into exactly the same intellectual pit that trapped and eventually wrecked the Soviet Union. They have launched a worldwide ideological crusade and poured wealth and resources into it to ignoring the well-being and advancement of their own domestic economies and populations.

Far from bringing eternal and universal world peace – the alluring Holy Grail of every dangerous idealistic idiot since Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant – these policies only brought failure, frustration and rising military death lists for the countries that pursued them instead.

This year, new hammer blows are following on the Reagan-Thatcher-spawned era of revived Anglo-American global leadership and domination.

The British themselves have palpably failed to cave out any secure or even plausible economic prospects for themselves in the world once they leave the EU. Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Libya all remain wrecked societies shattered by the repeated air strikes that Western compassion and reverence for human rights and democracy have visited upon them.

Now India and Pakistan – two English-speaking democracies and members of the once British-led Commonwealth of Nations, still so dear to Queen Elizabeth II’s aging heart – have opted to bury their existential rivalry and jointly join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization – confirming it as the premier and by far the most powerful security alliance on the planet.

These developments, to echo US President Thomas Jefferson’s telling phrase nearly 200 years ago, are grave warnings. They are firebells in the night. They serve notice to Washington and London that their facilely optimistic “ever onward and upwards” drive to reshape the entire human race in their own image must be abandoned.

Neither the United States nor the United Kingdom is a remotely united society any more. Both of them need to turn inward to resolve their own problems and abandon the fantastic quest to reassert global dominance that Reagan and Thatcher launched nearly 40 years ago.

And they had better move fast. Jefferson’s firebell is tolling and the sands of time are running out.

MARTIN SIEFF

During his 24 years as a senior foreign correspondent for The Washington Times and United Press International, Martin Sieff reported from more than 70 nations and covered 12 wars. He has specialized in US and global economic issues.