nuclear-news

If Everybody’s Going to Join NATO, Then Why Have the United Nations?

 Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. by VJ Prashad, 20 July 23

The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) held its annual summit on 11–12 July in Vilnius, Lithuania. The communiqué released after the first day’s proceedings claimed that ‘NATO is a defensive alliance’, a statement that encapsulates why many struggle to grasp its true essence. A look at the latest military spending figures shows, to the contrary, that NATO countries, and countries closely allied to NATO, account for nearly three-quarters of the total annual global expenditure on weapons.

untries closely allied to NATO, account for nearly three-quarters of the total annual global expenditure on weapons. Many of these countries possess state-of-the-art weapons systems, which are qualitatively more destructive than those held by the militaries of most non-NATO countries. Over the past quarter century, NATO has used its military might to destroy several states, such as Afghanistan (2001) and Libya (2011), shattering societies with the raw muscle of its aggressive alliance, and end the status of Yugoslavia (1999) as a unified state. It is difficult, given this record, to sustain the view that NATO is a ‘defensive alliance’.

………………………………………………. NATO’s increasing membership has doubled down on its ambition to use its military power, through Article 5, to subdue anyone who challenges the ‘Atlantic Alliance’.

The ‘Atlantic Alliance’, a phrase that is part of NATO’s name, was part of a wider network of military treaties secured by the US against the USSR and, after October 1949, against the People’s Republic of China.

This network included the Manila Pact of September 1954, which created the Southeast Asian Treaty Organisation (SEATO), and the Baghdad Pact of February 1955, which created the Central Treaty Organisation (CENTO). Turkey and Pakistan signed a military agreement in April 1954 which brought them together in an alliance against the USSR and anchored this network through NATO’s southernmost member (Turkey) and SEATO’s westernmost member (Pakistan). The US signed a military deal with each of the members of CENTO and SEATO and ensured that it had a seat at the table in these structures.

At the Asian-African Conference held in Bandung, Indonesia in April 1955, India’s Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru reacted strongly to the creation of these military alliances, which exported tensions between the US and the USSR across Asia. The concept of NATO, he said, ‘has extended itself in two ways’: first, NATO ‘has gone far away from the Atlantic and has reached other oceans and seas’ and second, ‘NATO today is one of the most powerful protectors of colonialism’.

 As an example, Nehru pointed to Goa, which was still held by fascist Portugal and whose grip had been validated by NATO members – an act, Nehru said, of ‘gross impertinence’. This characterisation of NATO as a global belligerent and defender of colonialism remains intact, with some modifications.

SEATO was disbanded in 1977, partly due to the defeat of the US in Vietnam, and CENTO was shuttered in 1979, precisely due to the Iranian Revolution that year. US military strategy shifted its focus from wielding these kinds of pacts to establishing a direct military presence with the founding of US Central Command in 1983 and the revitalisation of the US Pacific Command that same year.

The US expanded the power of its own global military footprint, including its ability to strike anywhere on the planet due to its structure of military bases and armed flotillas (which were no longer restricted once the 1930 Second London Naval Treaty expired in 1939). Although NATO has always had global ambitions, the alliance was given material reality through the US military’s force projection and its creation of new structures that further tied allied states into its orbit (with programmes such as ‘Partnership for Peace’, set up in 1994, and concepts such as ‘global NATO partner’ and ‘non-NATO ally’, as exemplified by Japan and South Korea).  In its 1991 Strategic Concept, NATO wrote that it would ‘contribute to global stability and peace by providing forces for United Nations missions’, which was realised with deadly force in Yugoslavia (1999), Afghanistan (2003), and Libya (2011)……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

The war in Ukraine provided new life to the Atlantic Alliance, driving several hesitant European countries – such as Sweden – into its ranks. Yet, even amongst people living within NATO countries there are groups who are sceptical of the alliance’s aims, with the Vilnius summit marked by anti-NATO protests. The Vilnius Summit Communiqué underlined Ukraine’s path into NATO and sharpened NATO’s self-defined universalism. The communiqué declares, for instance, that China challenges ‘our interests, security, and values’, with the word ‘our’ claiming to represent not only NATO countries but the entire international order. 

 Slowly, NATO is positioning itself as a substitute for the UN, suggesting that it – and not the actual international community – is the arbiter and guardian of the world’s ‘interests, security, and values’. This view is contested by the vast majority of the world’s peoples, seven billion of whom do not even reside in NATO’s member countries (whose total population is less than one billion). Those billions wonder why it is that NATO wants to supplant the United Nations.  https://thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/nato-united-nations/

July 24, 2023 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, politics international