[A-List] Europe/US rivalry: The end of NATO?

["Keaney Michael" <Michael.Keaney@xxxxxx>]

Yes, this looks right. I've already forwarded articles, including one by
a couple of US insiders (inc. Brzezinski Jr.?), that seem to indicate a
sudden acceleration of NATO expansion dictated by the US, with Europe
reeling at the speed of it all, and no doubt left to be occupied with
making sure it all actually works ex post facto. Now we are seeing just
how much US hegemony is being ratcheted up globally.


Bush comes to shove

Nato was being counted out a few months ago. Now the US is using it to
control the new Europe

Simon Tisdall
Thursday March 28, 2002
The Guardian

While Britain and other member states ponderously plod towards agreement
on the EU's eastern enlargement, the Bush administration is steaming
full speed ahead with the reunification of Europe - under US auspices,
on US terms, and primarily for US purposes.

This worrying extension of American power and influence is happening
almost without debate in western European capitals, under the noses of
leaders in France and Germany preoccupied with elections and of others,
in Britain, Italy and Spain, too willing to do Washington's bidding. Yet
the US plan, now being pursued by high-level envoys, has enormous
political, military and commercial implications.

Such US expansionism across Europe, proceeding in tandem with its
equally unabashed move into central Asia, may represent the true
dawning, after a decade of false starts, of the age of the solo
superpower. It is probably irreversible. And it poses fundamental
questions for European integrationists and nation-staters alike.

The chosen vehicle for this grand American putsch, this new,
US-orchestrated concert of Europe, is the traditionally US-led Nato
alliance; the catalyst was September 11; and the crunch will come at
next November's heads-of-government Nato summit in Prague. Up to seven
eastern European countries - Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Slovenia,
Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania will be invited to join Nato in Prague.
Others such as Croatia, Macedonia and Albania will remain in line,
hoping their turn will come soon. Yet others, such as Ukraine and
Georgia, will edge closer. And if all that were not enough, Russia
itself will by then in all probability have been drawn into a sort of
associate membership, too. At that point, Nato could girdle the entire
northern hemisphere.

In other words, a post-cold-war transformation that is both amazing and
permanent is in prospect right across Europe. Once security and military
ties are formalised, US economic investment, aid, arms and trade deals
will surely follow.

Speaking in Bucharest this week, at a Nato meeting entitled The Spring
of New Allies, the US deputy secretary of state, Richard Armitage, told
10 Nato aspirants that "we're looking to the widest possible accession"
in November. In a message sent to the meeting, President George Bush
made his objective unambiguously clear: "In Prague our nations will take
a historic step toward removing the last divisions of Europe." In
London, and Paris, and Berlin, however, at this salient juncture in the
continent's affairs, the silence is palpable and telling. For this is
principally a US gig, American-driven and American-organised, with EU
countries mostly tagging on behind.

It almost did not happen. Nato's post-cold-war role has been the subject
of fierce debate. US-European rows over the Kosovo campaign, defence
budgets and the EU's rapid reaction force made matters worse. When the
alliance was effectively sidelined after September 11 as the US largely
went it alone militarily in Afghanistan, it looked like curtains for the
iron-curtain-era partnership.

But as the dust settled in New York and Washington, the Bush
administration started looking for ways, in radically altered
circumstances, to make Nato the effective instrument of a now more
assertive and single-minded US global policy. In theory, the aspiration
was already in place. Bush vowed in Warsaw in June last year to assure
freedom and security for "all of Europe's democracies, from the Baltics
to the Black sea". But now, the US has found new uses for Nato - and
expansion is key.

The US, as ever, primarily seeks to bolster Nato to bolster its own
security - which it now believes to be under unprecedented threat. Thus
bringing in new members to assist the "war against terrorism" is
suddenly much more attractive. This applies in particular to Bulgaria
and Romania, on Nato's southern flank. Both are already providing bases
for US forces flying into Afghanistan and peacekeepers in Kabul and the
Balkans. And neither appears to blanch (unlike Nato member Turkey) at
the prospect of new wars across the Black sea in Iraq or even in Iran or
the Caucasus. As Solomon Pasi, Bulgaria's foreign minister, candidly
said this week, the two countries "are making the best use of this
tragic opportunity".

The Bush administration clearly sees an opportunity, only vaguely
glimpsed by a befogged, dawdling EU, to advance its security, commercial
and energy interests in eastern Europe and beyond. To this end Nato
appears destined to become a far more "political" organisation than in
the past with the criteria for membership emphasising such issues as
adherence to democratic governance more than military capability.

This rapid, biggest-ever expansion of Nato under proactive US leadership
sends an unmistakable message to those Europeans who, decrying their
"vassal status", would repel America's supposed global hegemony through
greater, self-propelled integration - or, sadder still, cling to the
fiction of an independent sovereign existence. Washington's message is
plain: through an expanding, US-directed Nato, Europe will be reunited
despite the Europeans. They are in danger of becoming spectators at
their own wedding.

Full article at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,675197,00.html

Michael Keaney
Mercuria Business School
Martinlaaksontie 36
01620 Vantaa
Finland

michael.keaney@xxxxxx