SPOKESMAN BOOKS
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Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation
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Catalogue
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How to Lose a War
The Spokesman, 90
Nato:
Expanding or Exploding?
Gabriel
Kolko
Washington
finally realizes after its chronic troop shortage in Iraq and elsewhere that
Washington
now favours a rapprochement with ‘old Europe’ and the nations it dismissed
after September 11, 2001, and it wants to build a ‘strategic consensus’
and to expand Nato’s role notwithstanding its resolution after the 1999 war
in the former Yugoslavia to never again allow Nato’s consensual voting
procedures to constrain American actions – as, indeed, it has not. Its
belief in the sufficiency of ‘coalitions of the willing,’ to cite
Rumsfeld’s words, has proven to be a chimera. In this regard, the Bush
Administration now tacitly admits that its view after 2001 that it could
pursue its global role alone was a colossal failure. The immense pressures to
send troops to Afghanistan it imposed on The Netherlands reflects this desire
to resuscitate and expand the Nato system.
The
United States’ ‘ambitious agenda’ was outlined by the US ambassador to
Nato (and former aide to Cheney) Victoria Nuland’s interview in the January
24 Financial Times.
The
US wants a ‘globally deployable military force’ that will operate
everywhere – from Africa to the Middle East and beyond. It will include
Japan and Australia as well as the Nato nations. ‘It’s a totally different
animal,’ to quote her, whose ultimate role will be subject to United States
desires and adventures. Nato must have a ‘…common collective deployment at
strategic distances.’ Troops to Afghanistan are largely symbolic, a
secondary issue to the much more important question of Nato’s future in
American calculations over coming years. Nato, which was originally to be a
European focused alliance, would now become global in scope.
The
official Munich conference on security policy in early February 2006 – which
Rumsfeld attended along with Brent Scowcroft, former Defense Secretary William
Cohen, and other advocates of the traditional Atlantic alliance – reflected
the American desire to transform Nato so it will again be a useful weapon in
its sheath of military choices – particularly its manpower. This is all the
more essential because his plans for reforming the entire military will lead
to a 20 per cent reduction of manoeuvre battalions in favour of larger
headquarters and more high tech weapons, and soldiers on the ground will be
scarcer than ever. It also wants the Nato states to spend more on their
military forces, thereby relieving the United States from increasing its
already huge budget deficit.
The
Bush Administration’s ambitions for Nato are based on more ideological
neo-con fantasies which must not be encouraged. The same American leaders have
ignored their own intelligence to pursue ambitions which have traumatized
Afghanistan and the Middle East, and today threaten the peace elsewhere. If
its schemes for Nato that Nuland outlines gain the support of European states,
then the United States is likely to commit more follies and create unforeseen
miseries to fulfil its illusions.
American
objectives – beyond fighting a war on ‘terror’ – are inherently
indefinable as to length and location, but certain to be very ambitious. Fear
is the adhesive that creates alliances and keeps them together, and the fear
of Communism and the Soviet Union that led to Nato’s creation has been
replaced by the fear of Muslim fundamentalism, terrorism, and the like. But
just as the dangers of Communism proved illusory, so, too, will American
threats of universal terror and chaos also prove to be a myth. The problem is
what the United States will do before its allies grow tired of its paranoid
politics. It has already said it wants Nato to send more troops to Kosovo so
that it can ship 1700 American soldiers there to Iraq. The Netherlands has
agreed to its demand on sending forces to Afghanistan, but it and all Nato
members have to prepare for more troop requests in the future as part of
‘ambitious’ unilateralist Washington goals everywhere. That is the central
issue that the Nato members must now confront.
The
Nato contingents now in Afghanistan will not succeed where the Americans have
already failed after four years to build a state no longer controlled by
warlords, drug lords, and various Islamic fundamentalists. They will be shot
at and killed, and the publics of the Nato states will become increasingly
anti-war and vote out of office those who have obeyed American advice. They
have already done so in Spain, they may do the same in Italy, and while
Washington may win in the short run, ultimately there is a very good chance
that its successes will produce a crisis in Nato – and perhaps the end of
this organizational artifact of the Cold War.
In
a word, we are at the beginning, not the end, of a profound crisis in US
relations with The Netherlands and other Nato members. European nations may
now articulate a political identity that is both in their national interests
and conforms to their values – the very thing that the United States hoped
Nato would prevent from occurring when it created it over a half-century ago.
The Bush Administration may very well compel them to become more independent.
That is to be welcomed.
ISBN 0 85124 724 5 - £5.00
