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25 years ago Australia’s Paul Keating warned against expanding NATO

25 Years ago, I warned expanding NATO ranked with the errors that led to WWI and II

Expanding NATO’s military demarcation point to the very borders of the former Soviet Union was an error which may rank with the strategic miscalculations which prevented Germany from taking its full place in the international system at the beginning of this century.

Paul Keating said these things twenty-five years ago in a major address to the University of New South Wales, 4 September 1997:

“Partly as a result of the reluctance of current members to move faster in expanding EU membership, I believe a great security mistake is being made in Europe with the decision to expand NATO. There is no doubt this was seen by some in Europe as a softer option than EU expansion.

NATO and the Atlantic alliance served the cause of western security well. They helped ensure that the Cold War finally ended in ways which serve open, democratic interests. But NATO is the wrong institution to perform the job it is now being asked to perform.

The decision to expand NATO by inviting Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic to participate and to hold out the prospect to others – in other words to move Europe’s military demarcation point to the very borders of the former Soviet Union – is, I believe, an error which may rank in the end with the strategic miscalculations which prevented Germany from taking its full place in the international system at the beginning of this century.

The great question for Europe is no longer how to embed Germany in Europe – that has been achieved – but how to involve Russia in a way which secures the continent during the next century.

And there was a very obvious absence of statecraft here. The Russians, under Mikhail Gorbachev, conceded that East Germany could remain in NATO as part of a united Germany. But now just half a dozen years later NATO has climbed up to the western border of the Ukraine. This message can be read in only one way: that although Russia has become a democracy, in the consciousness of western Europe it remains the state to be watched, the potential enemy.

The words used to explain NATO’s expansion have been nuanced, and the dangers have been acknowledged. But however careful the words are, whatever the window dressing of the Permanent NATO-Russia Joint Council, everybody knows that Russia is the reason for NATO’s expansion.

The decision is dangerous for several reasons. It will fuel insecurity in Russia and strengthen those strains of Russian thought, including the nationalists and former communists in the parliament, which are opposed to full engagement with the West. It will make more likely the restoration of military links between Russia and some of its former dependencies. It will make arms control, and especially nuclear arms control, more difficult to achieve.

And NATO expansion will do much less to strengthen the new democracies of eastern Europe than would enlargement of the EU.”

The above from Paul Keating was posted earlier in Pearls and Irritations. See extract from an earlier post  John Menadue.

October 9, 2022 Posted by Christina Macpherson | EUROPE, politics international | Leave a comment

Russia’s €200m nuclear exports untouched by EU sanctions

euobserver, By INVESTIGATE EUROPE, BRUSSELS, 8 October 22,

“Russian nuclear terror requires a stronger response from the international community [including] sanctions on the Russian nuclear industry and nuclear fuel.” Those were the words Ukraine’s president Volodomyr Zelensky tweeted in August, after the shelling of a nuclear power plant in the country.

Since the beginning of Russia’s war in Ukraine, the European Union has passed multiple sanctions packages aimed at hurting the Russian economy and reducing its ability to finance the war. Sanctions have included personalities, products of all kinds, and of course, fossil fuels.

But so far, nuclear sanctions were always left out.

On Wednesday 28 September, history repeated itself again. The European Commission proposed another sanction package against Russia, the eighth since the beginning of the invasion. It includes additional trade restrictions and an oil price cap for third countries. But still nothing on nuclear cooperation with Russia and imports of Russian uranium, even if many called for it.……………………..

Europe’s dependency

The reason for this resistance can be explained in one word: dependence. So far, an import ban on uranium or other sanctions on the Russian nuclear energy sector has only been discussed in EU circles, but never formally proposed.

“The European Commission never proposed it because the impact would be stronger for some Eastern member states, that are heavily-dependent on Russian infrastructure and technologies, than for Russia itself,” one diplomatic source told Investigate Europe…………………….

In economic terms, the EU countries paid around €210m for raw uranium imports from Russia in 2021 and another €245m from Kazakhstan, where the uranium mining is controlled by Russian state-owned company Rosatom.

Raw uranium imports from Russia to EU utilities were 2,358 tonnes last year, almost 20 percent of all EU imports. Only Niger (24.3 percent) and Kazakhstan (23.0 percent) were bigger uranium trade partners, according to the 2021 annual report from the EU body, Euratom Supply Agency (ESA)………

France is the EU nation most reliant on nuclear energy…

Europe works closely with Russia for its nuclear energy production……..

The role of France

Many governments, first and foremost the French, have pushed for Germany to break their dependence on Russian natural gas. But its own dependency on Russian uranium is shrouded in silence.

France imports on average around 20 percent of the needed raw uranium from Kazakhstan, where the uranium mining is controlled by Rosatom, according to Le Monde.

Green MEP Michèle Rivasi, a strong opponent of nuclear energy, exemplifies the French-Russian nuclear connection by citing Henri Proglio, the former CEO of EDF, the French semi-public main electricity company, who sits on the international advisory board of Rosatom.

“If Macron had asked Proglio to resign, he would have done so of course,” she told Investigate Europe. French dependence is not only on uranium imports, but also on nuclear waste treatment and many other activities, she said.

MEP Christophe Grudler, of the Renew Europe party, supports the exclusion of nuclear activity from the EU sanctions. In his view, one cannot impose sanctions against Russian gas (there is no embargo planned yet, unlike for crude oil) and then against Russian uranium. Unless we want a general blackout, he says.

“We must not forget that the nuclear business is not only about the power plant,” Grudler told Investigate Europe. “It is also about steam turbines. One of the world’s leading players, if not the leading one, is the French technology [company] Arabelle. However, we should not forget that two thirds of the turbines are sold… to Rosatom.”

According to some French media reports at the start of the year, Rosatom was set to acquire a 20 percent stake in GEAST, the manufacturer of the Arabelle turbine for nuclear power plants………………………………………..

In the meantime, Europe will continue to feed Russia’s finances — while adopting sanctions to drain the Kremlin’s treasury. https://euobserver.com/world/156226

October 7, 2022 Posted by Christina Macpherson | EUROPE, politics international | Leave a comment

NATO in the horns of a dilemma after former Ukrainian regions vote to join Russia

NATO, having overcommitted to Ukraine, now finds itself “on the horns of a dilemma” – if it continues to provide massive material and financial support to Ukraine, it will, in effect, become a direct party to the conflict, something no one in the bloc wants. However, if it backs away from supporting Ukraine, the various Western political leaders and institutions which have made support for Kiev a sacred obligation will be seen as going back on their word.

How NATO opts to proceed has yet to be manifest, but indications are that it will not be in a manner which continues to double down on supporting Ukraine no matter what

 https://www.rt.com/russia/563788-referendums-ukraine-nato-dilemma/–-1 Oct 22,

Moscow is flipping the bloc’s script by moving to absorb Kiev’s lost lands, thus switching the fight to its own turf.

By infusing tens of billions of dollars’ worth of military aid into Ukraine, NATO produced a “game-changing” dynamic designed to throw Russia off balance. By undertaking the referendums in Kherson, Zaporozhye, Donetsk, and Lugansk, Russia changed the game altogether.

The ancient Greeks spoke of lemma as representing a logical premise, a matter taken for granted. This contrasted with a dilemma, or “dual premise”, where one would be presented with an either/or proposition. The Romans furthered this notion, referring to a “double premise” as argumentum cornutum, of the “horned argument,” because by answering one argument, an individual would be impaled by the logic of the second. Thus are the ancient roots of the modern idiom, “on the horns of a dilemma.”

This is the ultimate objective of maneuver warfare, for example: to position your forces in such a manner as to present the enemy with no good option – should they react to one pressing threat, they would find themselves overwhelmed by the other.

The Russian military operation that has been underway in Ukraine for more than seven months now has provided ample examples of the military forces of both sides being confronted with a situation that compelled them to alter their preferred course of action; the Russian “diversion” against Kiev early on in the SMO prevented the Ukrainians from reinforcing their forces in eastern Ukraine, and the recently concluded Ukrainian counteroffensive in Kharkov compelled a hasty Russian withdrawal from a significant swath of previously occupied Ukrainian territory.

Both examples cited presented one side with a lemma, or a single problem, which needed to be addressed. But neither was able to put its opponent “on the horns of a dilemma,” forcing a response which would result in impalement regardless of the option chosen. The reason for this is simple – very rarely will competent military commanders allow themselves to be presented with a military problem for which there is no viable response. War, it seems, is hard work, and dilemmas don’t fall from trees.

Or do they? Ever since Boris Johnston flew to Kiev in April to convince Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky to pull out of peace talks then ongoing with Russia in the Turkish city of Istanbul, NATO has embarked on a program designed to provide Ukraine with tens of billions of dollars in military and financial assistance, including the transfer of modern heavy weapons and the use of facilities on Western soil where tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops could be trained and organized without fear of Russian intervention.

The purpose behind the NATO infusion of weaponry into Ukraine was straightforward – to empower Ukraine to not only lengthen the conflict, but also to undertake offensive military operations designed to evict Russia from what Kiev and its backers consider occupied Ukrainian territory, including the Donbass and Crimea. The counteroffensive in Kharkov in early September underscored the serious consequences of NATO’s actions – even though, given the massive loss of life and material suffered by the attacking Ukrainian forces, made the Kharkov victory Pyrrhic in nature, it was a Ukrainian victory, and one which compelled a Russian retreat.

By transforming the Ukrainian army into a NATO army which was manned by Ukrainians, the US-led bloc had, in fact, changed the nature of the game from a straightforward Russia-versus-Ukraine “special military operation” into a “Russia-versus-the collective West” struggle where the military resources originally allocated by Moscow to the fight were now insufficient to the task.

Russia, however, was not taking the game-changing actions of NATO standing still. Responding to the new reality on the ground in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin opted not to simply up the ante in this new NATO-driven game of increasing military power but change the game altogether. Not only did he order the partial mobilization of some 300,000 Russian reservists to reinforce the troops currently committed to the SMO, Putin also approved referendums in the four territories where Russian forces are presently fighting – Kherson and Zaporozhye (formerly occupied Ukrainian regions), and Donetsk and Lugansk (former regions of Ukraine, de-facto independent since 2014). These referendums asked the citizens of these four territories one simple question: do you wish to become part of Russia?

After five days of voting, the results from all four territories were clear – by an overwhelming majority, the participants in the referendums approved the proposition. Shortly thereafter, they were incorporated into the Russian Federation. What was once Ukraine has now become Mother Russia

Russia didn’t just change the rules of the game – it changed the game itself. Instead of Ukrainian forces fighting Russian forces on the territory of Ukraine, any future combat carried out by Ukraine against Russian forces would represent an attack on the Russian homeland itself.

Where does this leave NATO? The bloc’s leadership has made it clear from day one that it is not seeking direct confrontation with Russia. While its members have poured in tens of billions of dollars of material into Ukraine to help reconstitute its military, and provided critical logistics, intelligence, and communications support to Ukraine, it has repeatedly and insistently stated that it has no desire to fight a war with Russia directly and has made it clear that it would rather have the Ukrainians serve as a de facto NATO proxy in resisting Moscow.

NATO has gone “all in” both economically and politically when it comes to supporting Ukraine, to the extent that some of its members, having stripped their respective military structures of equipment and material, have nothing left to give. Despite this, European political and economic elites continue to articulate their strong support for Ukraine going forward.

This support, however, was predicated on the fundamental assumption that by providing Ukraine with this massive level of support, NATO would not get directly involved in a conflict with Moscow. But Russia, by transforming the battleground from one being fought on Ukrainian soil to one where it’s now defending its own land, has flipped the script.

NATO, having overcommitted to Ukraine, now finds itself “on the horns of a dilemma” – if it continues to provide massive material and financial support to Ukraine, it will, in effect, become a direct party to the conflict, something no one in the bloc wants. However, if it backs away from supporting Ukraine, the various Western political leaders and institutions which have made support for Kiev a sacred obligation will be seen as going back on their word.

How NATO opts to proceed has yet to be manifest, but indications are that it will not be in a manner which continues to double down on supporting Ukraine no matter what. Secretary General Stoltenberg’s tepid speech condemning Russia while showing no enthusiasm for Zelensky’s “accelerated application” for membership is indicative of the less-than-resolute nature of its support for Kiev.

NATO now will find its role diminished by the consequences of the Russian mobilization and referendums. Years from now, when the history of the conflict is finally written, the decision by President Putin to simultaneously mobilize the Russian reserves while absorbing the territory of southern and eastern Ukraine into the Russian Federation will serve as one of the premier modern-history examples of putting an adversary “on the horns of a dilemma.” The effective neutering of NATO by this action will more than likely be seen as a turning point in the conflict, one which sealed the fate of Ukraine in the face of an inevitable Russian victory.

October 2, 2022 Posted by Christina Macpherson | EUROPE, politics international | Leave a comment