March 28, 2000
NATO
is past its sell by date
FROM
THE MOUTHS OF BLAIRS
It
is not often that a politician tells the truth, and with Tony Blair,
it is even more notable. So when he said on the now
infamous BBC2
documentary (made by the NATO
apologist Alan Little) that to not have occupied Kosovo
"would
have dealt a devastating blow to the credibility of NATO"
he was extremely revealing. What he said, after going through the
false platitudes of stopping (nonexistent) genocide or (de) stabilising
Europe was that one of the Kosovo mission’s purposes was to keep
NATO together. The question is, does NATO need to be saved?
BUT
WHAT IS NATO FOR?
NATO’s
original
purpose was clear. It was designed to defend European countries
against an aggressive Soviet power, and it did this by a public
warning that to breach the borders of one of the signatories was
to breach the borders of all. That was the North Atlantic Treaty.
The O, or Organisation, that completed NATO was merely a way of
making sure that the armies worked well together if the dreaded
invasion came. Surely that need has passed? Not if you listen to
Mr. Blair, NATO had to be saved and not just NATO but its credibility.
And they were willing
to lose 2000 soldiers a day. Why?
THE
LAW OF BUREAUCRATIC SURVIVAL
There
is a reason for the survival of NATO, which is that it suits the
bureaucrats who work there. They are paid at the highest national
rate and so in almost all cases they are paid more than they would
be on regular duty, in some cases a multiple of their regular pay.
It must be a waste of money, any organisation whose original purpose
no longer exists is a definition of a waste of money. However,
if it were merely a matter of a waste of our money I would say that
perhaps there are other bigger bits of waste to attack. Nevertheless,
the issue is more important than that, much more important.
WHO
DECIDES?
The
idea of a security pact is just about consistent with parliamentary
sovereignty. The response to an invasion of another country may
be automatic, but the legislators, and ultimately the voters, have
the right to decide just which countries their sons will be fighting
to defend. An offensive alliance has no such safeguards. We will
not know the time nor the place. Where will NATO next decide to
attack? We really do not know whether it will be Serbia, or Kosovo
or even Russia. In
Britain, many people are rightly getting steamed up about the inability
to decide their own interest rates or taxation policies.
What few are seeing is the right to make the crucial decisions of
the state, the very right to make war or peace, has been taken away
already. It was taken away the moment that NATO decided that it
could attack a sovereign country.
THE
AMERICAN DIMENSION
We
now need a quick detour to explain the European Army (EDSI). Many
people have got a dreadfully bad picture of what the European Army
will actually mean. It is a takeover
by the (military virgins) of the European Commission of the decision
making in NATO. This is not solely about a European pillar
of NATO; it is even less an American disengagement from Europe itself.
What it is is a decision-making mechanism, which decides which powers
NATO should fight. Many British Eurosceptics worry that it will
mean American troops will go home. They are wrong. American troops
will stay here. The Europeans alone wish to decide who they fight.
America in short will underwrite, with her money and her men, the
ambitions of the European commission. The Europeans even want
to cut their military spending. This is bigger than misplaced
cigars or betraying Ulster, it is even bigger than allowing China
access to twenty-year-old missile technology. What President Clinton
has done is given the European Commission effective command over
American troops. That is treachery in anyone’s book.
INVENT-A-THREAT
Many
of us see the arrogant way in which NATO struts around the world,
and despair at the casual way in which enemies are made. The casual
creation
of so many enemies may look like (indeed it probably is)
carelessness, but consider just who benefits. The NATOcrats do not
do too badly from new and exotic threats. It does not matter to
them that hegemony does not last forever, and that many of those
we alienate will wait for a more advantageous time to attack us.
However, remember that the enemies we have made have not just been
Iraq, Serbia and other "rogue" states. The enemies that
we are making are a
humiliated Russia, an infuriated China and a resentful India.
I know it may be odd to bring in the history of Astronomy, but Copernicus
when he proved that the Sun did not revolve around the earth. At
some time in the future we may find that we are revolving around
a Sino-Russian axis that we created. It may be that America and
Britain are the rogue states in this very new world order.
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