Whither NATO?
The long-delayed conclusion to the discussion of NATO's future
This is part 2 of a two-part article on the future of NATO; part 1 is here. However, although I never really mentioned it, it is really part 3 of a three-part article, and part 2 is here. I deliberately didn’t mention Pax Americana during the first part because its meaning had shifted over time, but when Ameek Ponda and Terry Logan immediately brought it up in response to part 1, I decided to fully address it as well instead of leaving it open as I had originally planned to do.
One point that I’d like to make before beginning this part 3: despite the unequivocal terms used herein, I don’t have any intimate connection with the truth. All of these comments are merely my opinions. Like most people, I believe in my opinions — after all, they are mine, and if I thought something else was more correct, I’d change them (which seems to be unusual under our current cultural standards) — but, as someone else recently wrote, “daring to think out loud means daring to be wrong”. Please feel free to let me know if you disagree with what I’ve written here.
The NATO revival in the post-Soviet era
When we last discussed NATO, we had looked through the plan to merge the Schuman Plan and the Plevin Plan into a European Political Community, with the Schuman Plan handling the administrative issues in uniting the continent and the Plevin Plan handling the military issues. The Schuman Plan was accepted and formed the basis of the European Union. The Plevin Plan was rejected, and NATO became the de facto common military organization for the countries in the European Union. But that was never the intent of NATO; it was simply intended to oppose communism (and the Soviet Union) and keep the U.S. and Canada connected to Europe.
The EU grew to encompass the goals of a politically-unified Europe and by itself assume the role of the European Political Community (leading to Brexit, since the European Political Community had been conceived as a rival to Britain, not its superior), and NATO became a mere relic of the Cold War after the Soviet Union broke up in 1991. But, as it was still the military organization that almost all of the EU belonged to, it eventually ended up finding a role to play. The final stage of the Yugoslav Civil War — Serbia’s ethnic-cleansing operation against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo — was brought to a halt by NATO, not the United Nations, in 1998-99, first by negotiating a truce and then by intervening against Serbia when it broke that truce. (Due to the historic bonds between Russia and Serbia, the U.N. found itself paralyzed by this dispute.)
And that revival of NATO led to a flood of former Iron Curtain countries wanting to join NATO, just in case a future Russian government wanted to “put the band back together” and recreate the U.S.S.R. NATO membership, coupled with the treaty’s Article 5 security guarantee that an attack on one NATO member was an attack on all, became a way for the former Soviet puppet states to show their allegiance to the western alliance instead of to Mother Russia.
Between 1999 and 2020, the following formerly communist states (with Russian puppet governments at the time) joined NATO: Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Albania, Montenegro, and North Macedonia. Other than Russia itself, there are only six formerly communist states in Europe that are not in NATO: two states from the former Yugoslavia (Bosnia & Herzegovia, which has sought NATO membership, and Serbia) and four states from the former Soviet Union (Ukraine and Georgia (partly in Europe but mostly in Asia), which have both sought NATO membership, plus Moldova and Belarus; Belarus is Russia’s closest ally, and Moldova was a Russian ally until 2020 but then elected a government that is abandoning that position).
As of 2022, three of the former Soviet non-members of NATO (Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova) have breakaway Russian puppet states within their borders, and all of those puppet states have Russian troops within them to defend them. Unfortunately, that fact clearly answers the question of whether Vladimir Putin and the current Russian government is seeking to “put the band back together” in the affirmative.
The EU/NATO difference
One of the requirements for NATO membership is that a country has to have a democratic government with the military under civilian control. But that is also a requirement for EU membership. So what is the real difference between NATO and the EU these days? Was there ever a real difference? And is NATO only needed as long as Russia and Belarus remain threats to the rest of Europe, after which it will pass away? To answer that question, we need to see where NATO has played a role outside of relations with Russia, if anywhere.
Considering the almost-constant state of warfare in Europe during the previous 500 years, it is stunning to realize that, in over 75 years, the only shooting wars in Europe (other than the civil wars in Cyprus, Yugoslavia, Moldova, and Georgia) have all had Russia as the aggressor: the Russo-Georgian War of 2008, the Russo-Ukrainian War of 2014, and the Russo-Ukrainian War of 2022. And the best example of how NATO has contributed to that peace — if it has — is the civil war in Cyprus, the small Mediterranean island with about a million residents.
A recent history of Cyprus
Both Greece and Turkey became NATO members in 1952 due to the Soviet threat. But at the time Cyprus was made up of about two-thirds ethnic Greeks and one-third ethnic Turks, and they have longstanding ethnic hatreds. in the 1950s, the island was yet another British Middle Eastern colony. Greek Cypriots wanted to gain independence from Britain and unite the island with Greece (known to the Greeks as enosis). Turkish Cypriots wanted either to remain under British rule or to partition the island (known to the Turks as taksim). A constitution was negotiated between the British, Greeks, and Turks that kept the island united but provided extensive rights to the minority Turks — and also designated two military bases that would remain as part of the United Kingdom and be treated as British overseas territories. With that in mind, the U.K. granted Cyprus independence in 1960.
But things fell apart fast, perhaps because an ethnically-Greek archbishop who had previously supported enosis was running the island. In November 1963, he proposed 13 constitutional changes that generally benefitted the Greek majority, and this led to rioting that ran through the Christmas season, with the minority Turks getting the worst of it. After than, UN peacekeeping troops were sent to Cyprus, and the archbishop generally tried to avoid any action that would trigger a renewed outbreak of communal violence. Aside from a small flare-up in 1967 tied to a revolution in Greece, with the civilian government there being toppled by a military dictatorship, the archbishop managed to get the country through the next ten years with few incidents but continuing tension.
Enosis
But the Greek military dictatorship wanted the triumph of enosis, and it will willing to overthrow the archbishop to achieve that, which it finally did on 15 July 1974, announcing (falsely) that the archbishop was dead (in actuality, he narrowly escaped and went to the British for safety) — and then seeking to purge his supporters to pave the way for the merger. In response, just five days later, on 20 July 1974, Turkey invaded Cyprus and quickly established a foothold on the island. The archbishop returned to power as the Greek military dictatorship fell and was replaced by a civilian government, which chose not to go to war with Turkey.
This led to peace talks — but then, just after a 48-hour break in the talks had been called to let the Greek and Turkish negotiators talk to their home governments, Turkey attacked again and took over about 37% of the island in those two days, including the northern regions of Cyprus’s capital, Nicosia. The Greek Cypriots assassinated the American ambassador to Cyprus in retaliation, but the new front became an informal north-south line of division between the two sides, and it has remained the border for the 48 years since then. So the end result of the Greek bid for enosis was instead taksim.
Taksim or not?
As in the partition of India and Pakistan, Greek Cypriots located north of the border relocated south, and Turkish Cypriots located south of the border relocated north. However, although the Turkish Cypriots soon declared their area to be a separate country, the only country that has ever recognized it as such is Turkey. And under Greek pressure, but opposed by Turkey, the Republic of Cyprus was admitted to the EU in 2003, while a UN plan proposed by Secretary-General Kofi Annan (in five successively different versions to address objections from each side) to reunify the island was put to a vote in both communities in 2004, attracting turnouts of over 85% in each. The EU expected that the plan would pass, but, of course, the partisans on each side urged rejection of the plan, saying that it favored the other side.
And the plan did fail, to the EU’s disappointment. Interestingly, 65% of the voters on the Turkish side voted for the plan to create the “United Republic of Cyprus”, rejecting taksim, but only 24% of the voters on the Greek side did. To date, that has been the last serious effort to resolve the conflict, which has become more intractable as Turkey’s own bid for EU membership ran into staunch Greek opposition. And the implementation of EU rules on “occupied territory” has condemned North Cyprus to international isolation, as it is exempted from the benefits of Cyprus’s EU membership. Accordingly, since at least 2020, both Turkey and Northern Cyprus now argue that a “two-state” solution is the only possible solution regarding Cyprus.
NATO and Cyprus
So what role did NATO play in this drama that has run for about 75 years? Absolutely none. Zero. Zip. Nada. And yet this has never turned into a shooting war between two NATO members (although Greece suspended its NATO participation between 1974 and 1980 over it), and it also hasn’t turned into a shooting war between proxy forces since 1974. As Greece has battled with political instability and default, and as Turkey has become an authoritarian Islamic state in recent years (as opposed to its officially secular status in the 1950s), Greece and Turkey have nevertheless remained NATO allies with a common border . . . and still cooperate in NATO. Over 40 years now.
And that by itself is the real difference between NATO and the EU. This difference couldn’t be papered over in the EU, as we saw above. Turkey is still not in the EU. Greece and Cyprus are. But Turkey and Greece are both in NATO, and Cyprus isn’t — nor does it need to be, since both Turkey and Greece would defend it if necessary.
In terms of France’s one-time goal of a European Political Union, Greece and Turkey couldn’t be more different. In fact, the only thing Greece and Turkey currently have in common is a commitment to maintaining the postwar Pax Americana. Even despite cooperation between Turkey and Russia in Syria and other places separate from NATO, Turkey has not abandoned that NATO support. Turkey has also maintained foreign policy objectives quite different from Russia in the 2020 Armenia-Azerbaijan dispute, and that divergence has now carried over to Syria, with Turkey supporting NATO (and Ukraine).
NATO’s actual remaining purposes
In 2022, there are only two main purposes of NATO membership. One is deterring renewed Russian aggression, which may seem paramount at the time being as the Russo-Ukrainian War creates devastation. But the other is illustrating a national commitment to maintaining the existing world order and the Pax Americana. Russia and China, among others, are explicitly trying to overthrow Pax Americana, as illustrated in the Kremlin propaganda article “The New World Order” (which was supposed to be published in official Russian media after Putin’s blitzkrieg victory in Ukraine but slipped out despite that failure, as discussed in my prior article).
There are 30 countries currently in NATO and 27 currently in the EU. To join either alliance, every current member has to support your admission; one negative vote is a true blackball. 21 countries are in both; but the list of countries in one or the other shows the difference between the economic-political orientation of the EU and the military, Pax Americana orientation of NATO:
In both: Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain, Denmark, Greece, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia.
In EU only: Austria, Ireland, Finland, Sweden, Malta, Cyprus.
In NATO only: U.S., Canada, U.K., Iceland, Norway, Turkey, Albania, Montenegro, North Macedonia.
With the exception of Cyprus (not in NATO because of the Greece-Turkey issues discussed above), the countries in the EU but not in NATO are committed to a position of neutrality in world affairs, similar to Switzerland. Although they may benefit from Pax Americana, they haven’t wanted to abandon that neutrality and go on record in favor of it. But Russian aggression has been pushing Sweden and Finland, at least, to expressly abandon that position, and there is little doubt that both would receive fast-track approval into NATO.
It’s worth wondering whether their willingness to take this step now, as opposed to their unwillingness to take this step previously, reflects the change in American goals under Pax Americana from an imperialistic world peace to a more cooperative world peace in the decades since Vietnam. In that regard, despite all of former U.S. president George W. Bush’s foreign policy mistakes (including with Putin), the fact that the U.S. didn’t actually try the imperialistic tactic (that so many in Europe believed would happen) of simply taking ownership of Iraqi oil production after the Iraq War and instead turned it over entirely to the post-Saddam government might have played a key role, as actions always speak louder than words.
Does the U.S. still support Pax Americana?
One thing the NATO treaty did not do was specify a level of defense spending for NATO members. Iceland, for example, has no standing army, and its only real “defense forces” are its coast guard. In the late 1970s, NATO members agreed to a 3% per annum increase in defense spending, but that goal was never met. Until Vladimir Putin upped the level of Russian aggression, there were no real consequences for NATO members who failed to increase or even cut their defense spending, which left NATO with a classic free-rider problem, which was exacerbated by NATO members cutting spending in line with “peace dividends” in the 1990s and 2000s.
That changed in 2014, with Russia’s attack on Ukraine and seizure of Crimea and part of the Donbas region. In response, NATO members promised that year to increase their defense spending to 2% of their gross domestic product by 2024. That pledge then became a cudgel for the most anti-NATO U.S. president in NATO’s history to use against it: The Former Guy, who stated during his run for office in 2016 that he considered NATO “very obsolete”.
In all honesty, the target was more valuable as a way of showing internal European audiences whether their governments were truly committed to maintaining Pax Americana, especially because it was so easy to criticize American leadership and accept the blandishments promised by China as part of its effort to subvert Pax Americana, the “Belt and Road Initiative”. This pledge — which had far more symbolic value than practical value — was adopted during the Obama administration, and for it Obama and his then-Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel (and then-Deputy Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, who was in overall charge of the 2014 response to the Russian invasion for the Obama administration) deserve unqualified credit.
But TFG viewed it as proof that Europe was freeloading and relying too much on the U.S. In 2017, when TFG began his chaotic term, only five NATO members were meeting the agreed 2% guideline (which, by agreement, wouldn’t take effect for another seven years): the U.S., the U.K., Estonia, Poland, and Greece. And TFG, according to his post-presidential bragging, threatened to not honor the Article 5 guarantee in the NATO treaty for countries that weren’t contributing at least 2%. Now that might well fly for a volunteer fire department in rural America: pay your assessment or we won’t put out a fire at your house in the future. But to threaten to disregard an international treaty currently in effect because countries aren’t meeting a guideline that isn’t even in effect yet? It was no wonder that Europeans largely considered TFG as an out-of-control loose cannon who could not be relied upon to honor American commitments.
One of the consequences of that policy was that European commitment to Pax Americana became notably weaker. Most notably, Germany and Italy became key Chinese allies, in almost a direct response to TFG’s belligerence. And the problem with that soon became apparent, as China began to make its own demands, including a revision in the world order, while American voters narrowly rejected a second term for TFG, despite his celebrity. Reports indicate that TFG had been planning to use his second term to withdraw from NATO and also withdraw U.S. support for South Korea, moves which would have ended Pax Americana and been as unpopular in Europe as they would have been welcome in Moscow and Beijing. Once freed of the chaos being spread by TFG, European leaders found themselves at a crossroads, and they ultimately opted to remain under Pax Americana.
Thus, even if the ultimate outcome of the Russo-Ukrainian War of 2022 is a Russian defeat that ends the current period of Russian aggression, NATO will still serve a purpose. NATO membership has a significance beyond the necessity to deter Russian aggression, because it signifies national support for the current world order (Pax Americana) and opposition to changes in it that are made militarily or through aggression. In fact, NATO represents the “peace pact” that many in the 1940s thought that the United Nations would become. Instead, just two years after TFG, it is the United Nations that is impotent and obsolete, and NATO that is rising.
The 2022 Russo-Ukrainian War and TFG
One of the points often made by TFG’s remaining supporters is that Russia would never have attacked Ukraine had TFG still been president. I tend to agree with them, but for a very different reason than they offer. They believe that Vladimir Putin would not have wanted to challenge someone as strong as TFG. From here, that looks like pure unadulterated nonsense. Rather, the question is whether Putin, whose main objective seems to be the end of Pax Americana and the resultant rise in power for Russia and China, would have ever taken an action that would have stopped TFG from accomplishing that objective for him? The evidence seems clear that he would not have.
Despite the oft-repeated claims from the Hillary Clinton campaign, its hidden array of paid agents, and the mainstream media, it seems apparent that TFG was not acting as an agent of or under compulsion from Putin to further the interests of Russia. Rather, he appeared to be pursuing a brand of American nationalism that ignored the interrelationship of the rest of the world with those goals — an interrelationship that is inevitable when your country is the linchpin of Pax Mundi. But useful idiots can also help accomplish your goals, as Lenin supposedly noted.
Although I am using the term “useful idiot” to apply to TFG due to his efforts to accomplish Putin’s goals, I am not calling TFG an idiot. Con man, yes. Idiot, no. However, his pursuit of goals that were not in keeping with American national interests was an idiotic pursuit for an American president. American presidents should be seeking to promote America, but claiming that you’re promoting America while working to promote anti-American ends is more often the work of a quisling than a patriot. No wonder it was so easy to paint TFG as a surreptitious Russian proxy.
Even with all of Joe Biden’s economic and political blunders, I’m very glad that TFG didn’t win the second term that would have permitted him to end Pax Americana. The end of Pax Americana would signal the beginning of a dystopian future that Americans should not leap into without serious debate, but TFG apparently intended to do it without any pre-election signaling.
The Russo-Ukrainian War as a test of NATO
When Russia announced a full invasion of Ukraine in February, basically everyone expected the Russian army to roll over the Ukrainian defenders. Included in that group were Vladimir Putin, who had the article celebrating Russia’s victory slated to run in RIA Novosti on Saturday morning, even though the invasion wasn’t announced until Wednesday night, and Joe Biden and U.S. officials, who offered to helicopter Volodymyr Zelenskyy out of the country and received the classic reply, “I need ammunition, not a ride.” The U.S. evacuated its Ukrainian embassy in Kyiv, first moving it to Lviv and then withdrawing the personnel from the country entirely.
Had Ukraine fallen as expected, it would have become part of Putin’s dream of a rebuilt Russian Empire, with a subservient and enslaved Little ‘Rus (Ukraine) rejoining Great ‘Rus (Russia) and White ‘Rus (Belarus). In the west, all of the politicians and diplomats would have engaged in hand-wringing and sympathy for Ukraine, but the result would have been seen as a fait accompli that NATO was powerless to change. And Moldova might have been gobbled up by now as well.
But none of that happened. Instead, the Ukrainian defenders stopped the attack on Kyiv, and the Russians, without adequate supply lines, eventually had to withdraw, leaving behind ample evidence of their war crimes. And the war has now gone on for two months, with the Russians trying to destroy as much of Ukraine as they can to force a Ukrainian surrender . . . while also intimating that Moldova may be next on the Kremlin’s list.
Although NATO troops are not directly participating in the war (at least, not as of this writing), and Ukraine is not a NATO member, Russian foreign minister/propagandist Sergei Lavrov was, for once, telling the truth when he claimed that Russia and NATO were in a “proxy war” in Ukraine, because NATO was supplying Ukraine with weapons, although not with troops. Former U.S. secretary of defense Leon Panetta had made the same claim a month ago. So is there some reason Russia is agreeing now?
The nuclear threat
Well, yes. Lavrov further went on to threaten the use of nuclear weapons unless NATO desisted. But considering that the U.S. Secretaries of State (Anthony Blinken) and Defense (Lloyd Austin) visited Kyiv over the weekend to meet with Zelenskyy, and Blinken announced afterward that U.S. embassy officials would be returning to Ukrainian soil, Lavrov’s threat seemed to have little impact. Nor should it.
At this point, there is only one acceptable outcome for NATO: a Russian defeat, probably including a rollback of the Russian occupation of part of the Donbas in 2014. (Despite Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s proclamations otherwise, a Ukrainian retaking of Crimea would be a much more difficult proposition, because of the significant support for Russia therein.). To accomplish that, the U.S. and the rest of NATO cannot afford to let their interest in the battle wane, despite all the other demands for attention and money that may come their way. Fortunately, the U.S.’s Blinken, who, as noted, has been involved with this since 2014, seems unlikely to make that mistake, but I can’t help wondering if President Biden and Vice-President Harris have the same level of engagement in the real issues here.
It is possible that a desperate Putin resorts to using a nuclear weapon. But if he does, he won’t get to enjoy the remainder of his life and wealth in the company of his longtime much-younger Olympic-medalist-gymnast girlfriend, who is reputedly the mother of three of Putin’s children.
Am I being blasé about the possible advent of nuclear war, especially with Russia’s national holiday of May 9 (the anniversary of its triumph in WWII) approaching? I admit that I am, because it seems to me that the use of a nuclear arsenal is something you threaten to use but don’t actually use, because the supposed Russian concept of “escalating to de-escalate” is nonsense. Escalating by use of a nuclear weapon will not cause NATO to back down one bit, and anything short of a Russian surrender would then be viewed as a Russian victory.
And if Putin is insane enough to believe in a concept as specious as “escalate to de-escalate”, no NATO action will be without risk except for surrendering to Russia. But I doubt that many Americans are willing to learn Russian so that they can address their new overlords. So the only sensible approach right now is to supply Ukraine with enough weapons to repel Russian troops from Ukrainian soil.
Be seeing you.
