[A-List] US imperialism: NATO

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

The (US) case for NATO
By Stephen Blank
Asia Times, February 25 2003

Four years ago I wrote that NATO would ultimately have to intervene in wars
in the Transcaucasus and/or Central Asia in order to pacify these areas and
regulate their conflicts. Naturally, a chorus of critics immediately
denounced this idea as another sign of US imperialism.

But today this forecast has been validated. Indeed, despite the divisions
now tearing at it, there is no organization in the world capable of mounting
a long-term peace support operation in Afghanistan other than the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization. Neither the United Nations, nor the European
Union, itself a seriously divided organization, nor the Organization for
Security and Cooperation in Europe, nor any conceivable regional
organization could even begin to assume this responsibility. And the fact
that NATO is now moving formally to assume this responsibility is an
encouraging sign based on its success in ending the fighting in Bosnia,
Kosovo and Macedonia.

These facts tell us many things of crucial importance in today's world.
First, they remind us of NATO's abiding superiority as a conflict manager
and conductor of peace operations abroad. Its mandate to end fighting and
demilitarize troubled states has proven successful in the former Yugoslavia,
and hopefully will do so in Afghanistan. Second, they show us that NATO, as
well as the other European security agencies, has once and for all given up
the idea that so called "out of area operations" must be forsworn.

The war on terrorism shows all too clearly that failing states in Central
Asia can spawn monstrous threats to the vital interests of Western states.
Although commentators and European public opinion like to profess that
terrorism is no threat to Europe or that the events of September 11, 2001
and the ensuing war against al-Qaeda originated in quarrels unrelated to
Europe, eg the Israel-Palestinian conflict, NATO's assumption of
responsibility here shows that it and its member governments know better
than that. The strikes of September 11 were aimed at America and thus at
Western civilization, not Israel, and thus NATO was correct to invoke its
Article V clause of mutual defense immediately following those attacks. So,
too, is it right to assume this task now.

Third, NATO's new mission confirms the fact that there is no regional agency
capable of shouldering the burden of providing for an internally-managed
pacification of Central Asia. The various Central Asian attempts from
within, Russia's many and continuing efforts to put together a security
organization modeled after the Warsaw Pact down to the idea of an
indissoluble union, ie one that curtails Central Asian sovereignty, were and
are all unsustainable. They are unsustainable because the rivalries within
Central Asia and between those states and Moscow inhibit effective
collective military action along these lines. Likewise, Moscow cannot commit
either sufficient or effective military resources to those tasks, as it well
knows. Hence its promises and threats have remained all too often empty
ones.

So, too, the Shanghai Cooperative Organization - grouping China, Russia,
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan - has proved itself to be
utterly useless as an effective provider of security. Central Asian
governments, not without reason, distrusted Russia and China's hegemonic
pretensions in Central Asia and had already begun to make their own deals
with Washington before September 11. Likewise, China's response, calling for
the UN to mandate American self-defense and demanding compensation in
advance showed Russia that it could not rely on Chinese support for
effective prosecution of the war it felt had to be fought against terrorism.

Thus, not only are there no other capable European security organizations,
there are no other effective Asian ones either. And as for the UN, the less
said about its ability to mount military operations the better for its
record in this field is disastrous, as Bosnia and Rwanda both show us.

But this conclusion leads us to a fourth observation. NATO today faces some
of the most intense divisions ever recorded in its history, partly due to
America's determination to use it to counter what it believes, along with 15
other members, to be clear and present treats of proliferation in Iraq.
France, Germany and Belgium have obstructed this process because they either
disbelieve in the reality or the urgency of the threat, or not least because
France and Germany are among Iraq's biggest suppliers, or because they
oppose the exercise of American power even though they know full well
exactly what kind of proliferation threat Iraq poses. France also clearly
believes that it should dominate the EU and has chastised other members and
candidates for opposing it on this issue and asserting that France does not
speak for Europe.

Whatever the merits of the Franco-German-Belgian case, a program of action
that aims to destroy NATO's effectiveness to gratify France's interests or
obsession with somehow leading Europe through the EU is a call to
international anarchy. As countless studies have shown, virtually no
European country is capable of or willing to spend on defense the sums
needed to make NATO an effective provider of security. And the EU is light
years behind NATO in this regard. This is not only a question of defense
spending, but also, and more crucially, political will. France, as President
Jacques Chirac points out, is by no means a pacifist, yet it will not act to
support NATO and instead, as has been observed, Chirac would destroy NATO,
the UN and EU in the name of the chimera of multilateral action.
Unfortunately, in this world multilateral action has to be organized by
someone and only America has the resources and the will to do so. And in
that case, who then, would effectively provide security to Europe and areas
beyond it?

When he was chief of staff of the US armed forces, now Secretary of State
Colin Powell observed that America did not aspire to be the world's
policeman, yet when crimes were committed, everyone came to it demanding
action. That observation is no less pertinent today. It is because of the
United States' leadership in NATO that it, and no other organization, has
the capability and vision to commit resources to provide security in faraway
theaters of operations. To raise the notion of some other agency like the EU
or the UN to do so is, in today's world, so patently absurd as to preclude
anyone from even posing the question. Indeed, nobody is calling for those
organizations to provide the military resources needed in Afghanistan.
Therefore, to undermine NATO's ability to respond to such calls in the name
of restraining America, especially when nobody can or will supplant its
role, is essentially a call to return to the laws of the jungle.

American policy is hardly immune to criticism and should not be. But we must
remember the lessons of Afghanistan here, for if not for NATO's presence
there, international anarchy and violence would be the outcome. And the
failure to act here would inevitably bring about other wars as other
potential troublemakers would then rightly conclude that nobody would stop
them in their violent plans. And that should lead us to a fifth conclusion
or lesson from Afghanistan.

Namely, if not NATO, who? If not NATO, who will deal with the threats of
Iraqi and Iranian proliferation and of international terrorism conducted as
a war against Western civilization? If Europe shirks its obligations once
again and by doing so prevents America from exercising its power abroad
responsibly, will the result be one of greater peace and democracy, the
broad trend of the past two generations, or will it be a return to the world
and the wars of the past?

Stephen Blank is an analyst of international security affairs residing in
Harrisburg, PA.