Academic freedom defenders around the world are rallying around a renowned French political scientist and Arabist who was detained by police Tuesday after voicing “respect and appreciation” for the militant Palestinian resistance group Hamas.
François Burgat, the 75-year-old research director emeritus at the French National Center for Scientific Research, was taken into custody Tuesday morning in the southern city of Aix-en-Provence as part of an investigation into “apology for terrorism,” his lawyer Rafik Chekkat said on social media.
NATO will mark its 75th year at a three day summit in Washington this week. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine is scheduled to attend the proceedings, during which the alliance is expected to offer, in lieu of membership, what has been described by Biden administration officials as a “Bridge to NATO.”
In other words, a promise of accession, not unlike the one proffered by the alliance 16 years ago at the NATO summit in Bucharest.
Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission.
NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is marking its 75th anniversary. Created in 1949 as a defensive alliance against an expansive Soviet Union, the alliance should have ceased to exist when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Instead, it continued to expand to the very border of Russia. Talk of Ukraine and Georgia, former Soviet republics, joining NATO contributed to tensions that led to the Russia-Ukraine War, now in its third destructive and deadly year.
After the Soviet Union collapsed, NATO expanded greatly. The specter of communism remains strong. Since this map was created, Finland and Sweden have joined NATO.
NATO’s resilience (perhaps “endurance” and “inertia” are better words) in the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s collapse demonstrates the power of institutions to sustain themselves long after they’ve lost their reason for being. While President Biden recently claimed to have created NATO, the alliance was really about containing communism in the aftermath of World War II. As European and American leaders openly admitted at the time, NATO kept the U.S. military in Europe while also shoring up U.S. imperial power around the globe. Few Europeans wanted a revived German military after the colossal destruction in part caused by German militarism in World Wars I and II.
“Despite the fact that deterrence remains an article of faith among the ‘realists’ who have orchestrated U.S. strategic policy and who continue to do so, despite its incoherence and instability, much of this faith is lip service only, analogous to deeply religious individuals who profess belief in heaven, yet rarely rejoice when a loved one dies. Thus, if the U.S. government really believed in nuclear deterrence — or in the billions of dollars spent on Ballistic Missile Defense — there wouldn’t be such hyperventilating about the threat posed by a nuclear armed North Korea or possibly by Iran in the future.” ~ David Barash
There’s a webinar coming up on July 9 about nuclear deterrence. I imagine it will be excellent. I’ve also just been reading a fantastic book on the topic called Threats: Intimidation and Its Discontents by David P. Barash. There’s an online book club with the author and free copy of the book coming up for that. Barash’s central thesis is that the idea of nuclear deterrence makes no sense. It’s kind of hard to see why anyone would argue with him.
