What's up with NATO these days?
In 2009,
NATO celebrated its 60th anniversary. With its recent deluge of new member
states, it needed more space and announced it would build a new HD across the
street from the bunker-like 1950s original one.
It was supposed to open in 2015, but in a fitting metaphor for the troubled
organization, it was discovered that the half billion euro project would cost
twice that, and would not be finished till 2017. Just in time, as the new US
president was toying with the idea of dispensing with what he has called an
expensive, obsolete organization, even as it continues to expand, long after
what many considered to be its expiry date.
So it was with a sigh of relief that the 28 European member heads of state
welcomed the abrasive American leader in May 2017 for the dedication of the new
HQ. Trump came, but took the opportunity to lecture his NATO allies for not
spending enough for collective defense, and declined to endorse Article 5 of
the alliance's founding treaty, which states that an attack on any member is an
attack on all. His subtext: Enough of pulling Euro irons out of fires.
The conventional wisdom now is that NATO will endure indefinitely, and the
strange new headquarters, more like a massive ramp on the nearby expressway, or
a cavernous airport, certainly gives that impression. The designers intended
the fluted shell to represent interlocking fingers -- symbolizing Allied unity
and cooperation, but it could just as easily symbolize its fractured, brittle,
disjointed character.
After 1991, NATO changed from Cold War defense pact to something much more
ambitious. Its supporters argue because it is composed of "likeminded
liberal democracies with shared interests" and is "a community of
values", it will endure. Expansion is justified as "a tool for
democracy promotion", the building of liberal democracy in the former
communist countries, and crisis management in Europe and the world, responding
to "new" threats of terrorism and proliferating weapons of mass
destruction.
It is an instrument of collective security with new "cooperative"
security institutions, including the Partnership for Peace and the special
consultative forums with Russia (now, long gone) and Ukraine, for crisis
management and peacekeeping operations beyond NATO territory. Strengthening
existing networks and developing new ones "will create a genuine global
rule of law without centralized global institutions." (Read: who needs the
UN?)
This acceptance of the transformation of NATO from a "temporary Cold War
creation to fight the Soviet Union to a strategic partnership" which
"transcended the common or any other specific threat--based on common
values and interests" was far from certain when the Soviet Union
collapsed. People just assumed NATO would disband along with the Warsaw Pact.
French president Francois Mitterand coined the slogan "US out and Russia
in", meaning, of course, Europe. Czech Foreign Minister Jiri Dienstbier in
1990 proposed replacing NATO and the Warsaw Pact with the OSCE European
Security Commission but clearly the new Czech leaders were given a talking-to
and in 1991 a Czech Foreign Ministry official reversed Mitterand's call:
"We wanted it the other way around."
Ronald Asmus, a Cold War Hungarian dissident now at the German Marshall Fund of
the United States, and a so-called 'liberal' hawk ('liberal' on domestic policy
and hawkish on foreign policy), was a key player under Clinton to end talk of
shutting NATO down, and instead sought to expand it as quickly as possible. He
set out the new program in the Council on Foreign Relation's Foreign Affairs,
portraying the new member-hopefuls as a pro-US political elite eager and
willing to do whatever the US wants, and exhorting France to "abandon its
exaggerated fear of American hegemony". He predicted that future massacres
such as occurred in Bosnia will be prevented by a rapid reaction force.
There was also a split in the US establishment over expanding NATO. Unlike the
Euro-split, which was really a disagreement over US world hegemony, the US
debate was, on the contrary, whether being saddled with a string of poor, unprepared,
untried statelets would advance or hinder this (US) hegemony, making NATO a
confused, ungovernable, fractious debating forum (like the expanded EU), or a
functional alliance, bringing the new entries up to western military standards
quickly and cementing them in the western alliance of nations.
Democrat defense doyen Sam Nunn was against expansion: yes, defend Eastern
Europe against Russia, but Russia would see expansion as aimed at it. Realists
like Nunn realized that Russia would not submit, that enlargement was very
expensive, that expansion was probably not really useful to US imperialism, and
control of nuclear weapons was a more important objective and one that would
not antagonize Russia. But Republicans and 'liberal' hawk Democrats like Asmus
won the day with their policy of expansion, and approved of the NATO bombing of
Bosnia in 1995 and Serbia in 1999. This marked the end of Yugoslavia as a
'modern' state, which conducted its own foreign policy. Among postmodern
states, the use of force is now unthinkable, but it is fine when dealing with
premodern states (Afghanistan, Iraq), or the remaining modern states (Russia,
China).
Trump has hinted loudly that he is not interested in the US as world policeman,
that he wants to improve relations with Russia, and that he sees NATO as that
confused debating club disdained by the anti-NATO crowd. But he still acts as
if the US is the world hegemon in Syria and Iraq, and with daggers drawn
against him in Washington, he has softened his tone on NATO, so it is
impossible to predict where he will take us (and NATO).
How do you analyze the effects of joining NATO on the political interdependence
of the Balkan countries?
This postmodern imperialism--on the surface--is the voluntary, multilateral
global economy, kept in place by the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO, and, of
course, NATO. The postmodern EU offers a vision of cooperative empire:
"The age-old laws of international relations have been repealed. Europeans
have stepped out of the Hobbesian world of anarchy into the Kantian world of
perpetual peace." (Robert Kagan, Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe
in the New World Order, 2003.) After the Yugoslav civil war in the 1990s, the
Balkans entered this brave, new world. But what is it underneath? What is it in
reality?
The transformation of countries to postmodern status is really a form of
castration, of their subordination to the US agenda. Kagan's "perpetual
peace" is more like the peace of the grave. The US, by invading the
remains of Yugoslavia, Iraq and Afghanistan, and by pressuring and subverting
Iran, Syria and others, is in reality trying to reduce--to carve up--these
countries into similarly harmless but crippled third world versions of the more
fortunate postmodern western European states. Thus, the attraction of joining
the NATO club (before it 'joins' you). Much better to concede defeat before you
are invaded and reduced to rubble. Just ask the Serbians, Afghanis, Iraqis,
Libyans or Syrians.
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