The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has undermined its mission to foster stability, turning into a vessel of U.S. energy. Where NATO goes, conflict is most probably – Australia ought to take notice, writes Dr Binoy Kampmark.
SINCE THE finish of the Cold War, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has distinctly strayed from its unique function. It has develop into, virtually shamelessly, the vessel and handmaiden of U.S. energy, whereas its burgeoning growth eastwards has performed wonders to upend the applecart of stability.
From that upending, the Alliance began bungling. It engaged, with out the authorisation of the United Nations Security Council, in a 78-day bombing marketing campaign of Yugoslavia – not less than what was left of it – ostensibly to guard the lives of Kosovar Albanians. Far from dampening the tinderbox, the Kosovo affair continues to be an explosion within the making.
Members of the Alliance additionally expended materials, cash and personnel in Afghanistan over the course of twenty years, propping up a deeply unpopular, corrupt regime in Kabul whereas failing to stifle the Taliban. As with earlier imperial tasks, the enterprise proved to be a catastrophic failure.
In 2011, NATO was once more discovered wanting in its assault on the regime of Libyan chief Muammar Gaddafi. While it was supposed to be an exemplar of the Responsibility to Protect doctrine, the intervention served to finally topple the doomed Colonel Gaddafi, precipitating the de-facto partitioning of Libya and endangering the very civilians the mission was meant to guard.
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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 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 Cable News Network (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 alert during the interview – at one point, confusing Ukraine with Russia – Biden 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 recent July statement:
With these views, conflict lurks.
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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 11 and 12 July, 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 the Republic of Korea – or the AP4 – should have induced much head-scratching. But the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), 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.
Cautioned Stoltenberg:
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 Elysee Palace official:
With a headmaster’s tone, the official went on to give journalists an elementary lesson:
The centrality of Articles 5 and 6 of the Alliance was “geographic” in nature.
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In 2021, Macron made it clear that NATO’s increasingly obsessed approach with China as a dangerous belligerent entailed a confusion of goals:
Said Macron:
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, Keating condemned Stoltenberg as ‘the supreme fool’ of ‘the international stage’.
Declared Keating:
In thinking that “China should be superintended by the West and strategically circumscribed”, the NATO official had apparently overlooked an obvious point.
China, Keating said,
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.
Dr Binoy Kampmark was a Cambridge Scholar and is a lecturer at RMIT University. You can follow Dr Kampmark on Twitter @BKampmark.