An Accident Waiting to Happen: NATO Looks to Asia
Since the end of the Cold War, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation has distinctly strayed from its original purpose. It has become, almost shamelessly, the vessel and handmaiden of US power, while its burgeoning expansion eastwards has done wonders to upend the applecart of stability.
From that upending, the alliance started bungling. It engaged, without the authorisation of the UN Security Council, in a 78-day bombing campaign of Yugoslavia – at least what was left of it – ostensibly to protect the lives of Kosovar Albanians. Far from dampening the tinderbox, the Kosovo affair continues to be an explosion in the making.
Members of the alliance also expended material, money and personnel in Afghanistan over the course of two decades, propping up a deeply unpopular, corrupt regime in Kabul while failing to stifle the Taliban. As with previous imperial projects, the venture proved to be a catastrophic failure.
In 2011, NATO again was found wanting in its attack on the regime of Muammar Gaddafi. While it was intended to be an exemplar of the Responsibility to Protect Doctrine, the intervention served to eventually topple the doomed Colonel Gaddafi, precipitating the de-facto partitioning of Libya and endangering the very civilians the mission was meant to protect. A continent was thereby destabilised. The true beneficiaries proved to be the tapestry of warring rebel groups characterised by sectarian impulses and a voracious appetite for human rights abuses and war crimes.
The Ukraine War has been another crude lesson in the failings of the NATO project. The constant teasing and wooing of Kyiv as a potential future member never sat well with Moscow and while much can be made of the Russian invasion, no realistic assessment of the war’s origins can excise NATO from playing a deep, compromised role.
The alliance is also proving dissonant among its members. Not all are exactly jumping at the chance of admitting Ukraine. German diplomats have revealed that they will block any current moves to join the alliance. Even that old provoking power, the United States, is not entirely sure whether doors should be open to Kyiv. On CNN, President Joe Biden expressed the view that he did not “think it’s ready for membership of NATO.” To qualify, Ukraine would have to meet a number of “qualifications” from “democratisation to a whole range of other issues.” While hardly proving very alert during the interview (at one point, he confused Ukraine with Russia) he did draw the logical conclusion that bringing Kyiv into an alliance of obligatory collective defence during current hostilities would automatically put NATO at war with Moscow.
With such a spotty, blood speckled record marked by stumbles and bungles, any suggestions of further engagement by the alliance in other areas of the globe should be treated with abundant wariness. The latest talk of further Asian engagement should also be greeted with a sense of dread. According to a July 7 statement, “The Indo-Pacific is important for the Alliance, given that developments in that region can directly affect Euro-Atlantic security. Moreover, NATO and its partners in the region share a common goal of working together to strengthen the rules-based international order.” With these views, conflict lurks.
The form of that engagement is being suggested by such ideas as opening a liaison office in Japan, intended as the first outpost in Asia. It also promises to feature in the NATO summit to take place in Vilnius on July 11 and 12, which will again repeat the attendance format of the Madrid summit held in 2022. That new format – featuring the presence of Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea, or the AP4, should have induced much head scratching. But the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Washington’s beady eyes in Canberra, celebrated this “shift to taking a truly global approach to strategic competition.”
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg is also much in favour of such competition, warning member states of Beijing’s ambitions. “We should not make the same mistake with China and other authoritarian regimes,” he suggested, alluding to a dangerous and flawed comparison between Ukraine and Taiwan. “What is happening in Europe today could happen in Asia tomorrow.”
One of the prominent headscratchers at this erroneous reasoning is French President Emmanuel Macron. Taking issue with setting up the Japan liaison office, Macron has expressed opposition to such expansion by an alliance which, at least in terms of treaty obligations, has a strict geographical limit. In the words of an Elysée Palace official, “As far as the office is concerned, the Japanese authorities themselves have told us that they are not extremely attached to it.” With a headmaster’s tone, the official went on to give journalists an elementary lesson. “NATO means North Atlantic Treaty Organization.” The centrality of Articles 5 and 6 of the alliance were “geographic” in nature.
In 2021, Macron made it clear that NATO’s increasingly obsessed approach with China as a dangerous belligerent entailed a confusion of goals. “NATO is a military organisation, the issue of our relationship with China isn’t just a military issue. NATO is an organisation that concerns the North Atlantic, China has little to do with the North Atlantic.”
Such views have also pleased former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating, whose waspish ire has also been trained on the NATO Secretary-General. In his latest statement, Stoltenberg was condemned as “the supreme fool” of “the international stage”. “Stoltenberg by instinct and policy, is simply an accident on its way to happen.” In thinking that “China should be superintended by the West and strategically circumscribed,” the NATO official had overlooked the obvious point that the country “represents twenty percent of humanity and now possesses the largest economy in the world … and has no record for attacking other states, unlike the United States, whose bidding Stoltenberg is happy to do.”
The record of this ceramic breaking bloc speaks for itself. In its post-Cold War visage, the alliance has undermined its own mission to foster stability, becoming Washington’s axe, spear and spade. Where NATO goes, war is most likely. Countries of the Indo-Pacific, take note.
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6 comments
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ajogrady
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Andrew Smith
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Harry Lime
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New England Cocky
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Williambtm
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Clakka
Return to home pageThe Australian public has been conned, once again, into pouring billions into another endless war.
The playbook the pimps of war use to lure us into one military fiasco after another, including Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and now Ukraine, does not change. Freedom and democracy are threatened. Evil must be vanquished. Human rights must be protected. The fate of Europe and NATO, along with a “rules based international order” is at stake. Victory is assured.
The results are also the same. The justifications and narratives are exposed as lies. The cheery prognosis is false. Those on whose behalf we are supposedly fighting are as venal as those we are fighting against.
The invasion of Ukraine was one that was provoked by NATO expansion and by the United States backing of the 2014 “Maidan” coup which ousted the democratically elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. Yanukovych wanted economic integration with the European Union, but not at the expense of economic and political ties with Russia. The war will only be solved through negotiations that allow ethnic Russians in Ukraine to have autonomy and
Moscow’s protection, as well as Ukrainian neutrality, which means the country cannot join NATO. The longer these negotiations are delayed the more Ukrainians will suffer and die. Their cities and infrastructure will continue to be pounded into rubble.
But this proxy war in Ukraine is designed to serve U.S. interests. It enriches the weapons manufacturers, weakens the Russian military and isolates Russia from Europe. What happens to Ukraine is irrelevant.
Until Albanese realises that
NATO is a military organisation, not a civil one and an organisation focused on Europe and the Atlantic the quicker he will stay in Australia and work on problems effecting Australians.
NATO’s continued existence after and at the end of the Cold War has already denied peaceful unity to the broader Europe, the promise of which the end of the Cold War held open. And besides, the Europeans have been fighting each other for the better part of three hundred years, including giving the rest of us two World Wars in the last hundred.
Albanese’s courting of NATO is as fraught with danger, as AUKUS is. Like a shiver looking for a backbone the Austal- American war pimp Albanese is a clear and present danger to Australians security, financially and militarily.
Interesting as always, but… two issues on Kosovo and NATO.
‘Far from dampening the tinderbox, the Kosovo affair continues to be an explosion in the making.’
Disagree, blaming NATO but Bosnian Serb Dodik, Serbia’s Vucic, (some) Serbs in Nth. Kosovo, Hungary’s Orban, Russia’s Putin and Turkey’s Erdogan have all been interfering directly or indirectly with (their) state funding and support of Serb separatists, then their media present NATO & EU as the culprits and enemy.
and
‘The Ukraine War has been another crude lesson in the failings of the NATO project. The constant teasing and wooing of Kyiv as a potential future member never sat well with Moscow and while much can be made of the Russian invasion, no realistic assessment of the war’s origins can excise NATO from playing a deep, compromised role.’
That’s the same excuse offered up by Anglo faux anti-imperialist ‘tankies’ running protection for Putin, also supported by Tucker Carlson and right wing libertarians, but recently contradicted by Wagner’s Prigozhin?
The whole NATO is evil or provocative thing can be tested the other way, why do so many small and medium nations in Europe &/or EU want to be a member of NATO? Maybe ask e.g. the Baltic States, Sweden, Finland, Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Romania etc. (but excluding the friend of local ultra-conservatives, Hungary of PM ‘mini Putin’ Orban)?
It is somewhat disturbing,that meanwhile our own Albo is in Germany signing ‘defence’ deals that will create ‘1000’jobs for our economy.,supplying instruments of war i.e. death dealing machines…what could possibly be wrong? Are we giving our imprimatur to George H W Bush’s’make work’, by waving through the wishes of NE Industrial complex of the megadeath industry? And the mouth frothing cohort in the Pentagon?
Or have we now officially become the 51st State of the US?
Maybe the string pullers of successive administrations have recognised the weakness of their ‘close allies leaders”
Sorry Albo,you’ve been seriously pantsed.Besides, who needs to worry about climate change or homeless people,and arrant bullshit doesn’t cover it.
NATO is the American consumption arm of the NE Military Industrial Complex (NEMIC) that has benefited hugely from the false/faulty ”intelligence” from American security agencies in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and next on to PRC China, hopefully only in their imaginations.
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The on-going benefits for the NEMIC is replenishing the store of aged and outdated war materiels for contributing countries keen to play imperialists on the 21st century. The USA (United States of Apartheid) has expended their surplus stocks into Ukraine and only now offer banned cluster bombs, Australia has parted out WWII APC troop carriers plus new APCs & other ”allies” have provided other arms & training.
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Australia is announced tonight (100723) as a beneficiary of a German order for 125 new vehicles while the NEMIC continue to benefit from supplying the Israeli defence force occupying Palestine and other civil ward around the world.
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The reason for wars has as much to do with generating profits in a black hole market as anything allegedly to do with ideologies, personal empire building that usually requires government or at least industry backing or revolution when the voters decide that they have had enough of privileged minority groups pursuing personal pecuniary interests rather than policies favouring the voters.
How is it that the Albanese led Labor party has been overwhelmingly inspired by the USA, to take the same stance as the war dog nation of America?
At my age nearing 75 years, I am a witness to the evils extant from the era of all the (false-claims & the lies) arising from within the USA.
Thus the Vietnam war had actually been initiated by the USA who were the cause of all their fallen mother’s sons claimed to be fighting for their country.
Furthermore, to later realize that the USA had also slaughtered and maimed around a million Vietnamese individuals.
Dwight D Eisenhower had forewarned the people of America of the spectacular rise in influence by America’s Arms & Weapons manufacturing corporations, into their most powerful national lobby group, nothing has changed from the date that Eisenhower had issued his warning.
Incidentally, I have never been proven incorrect in stating my own observations since my period of service during that murderous Vietnam war & thereafter.
Immediately after the AUKUS announcement I knew that Australia’s newly formed alliance was a one-way street to our perdition through & by the untrustworthy Scott Morrison at the head of Australia’s treacherous Lib/Nat political party government.
How is it that P.M. Albanese had fallen into line so easily with the hoot & the blah, along with the bling & the false narrative underlying the murdering US of A?
So huge in its amount of our multi millions of taxpayer dollars have since been allocated to the USA inspired proxy NATO war in Ukraine.
Wake up Anthony Albanese.
I note that they NATO have back peddled their verbal to calling it only an ‘administrative’ office (or something similar) rather than ‘liaison’ office, whatever both of those really mean. Japan has in the last week been spluttering. It appears NATO already has an office, in-house of the Danish Embassy in Tokyo. And NATO has said it set to defer its decision.
Nothing to see here!
https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Defense/NATO-to-defer-decision-on-Tokyo-liaison-office