In its 90 points communique at the end of the meeting in Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, NATO, claimed that it “is a defensive alliance… unique, essential and indispensable transatlantic forum to consult, coordinate and act on all matters related to our individual and collective security.” The 31-member military alliance, looking forward to welcome Sweden shortly, as its 32nd member claimed further it “will continue to ensure our collective defense from all threats, no matter where they stem from…”
A cold war relic and dinosaur, the US led Western military alliance has no real or actual threat, except the one it manufactures and invokes by itself and in seeking justification of why it continues to exist even when the historical reason for its existence no longer suffice, it has always invented “threats.”
With the collapse of the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) its main historical adversary and the dissolution of the then Soviet-led Warsaw military pact, any ominous “threat” for which NATO exists to contend, evaporated. USSR, chief successor state, the Russian Federation even made spirited attempts to join NATO, so that the military alliance could mutate into more broadly security framework to advance wider consultation, but Washington aims to use the alliance as a tool of global hegemony stood in the way.
Not contented with the “geographical catastrophe” of the collapse of the USSR in 1991, Washington instigated an array of virulent anti-Russia “coloured” revolutions across many member union of the former USSR, who suddenly became sovereign states and further set about the notorious eastwards expansion of NATO. To consummate the strategy of strengthening and expanding the military alliance, Russia has to be defined as the “threat” despite Moscow’s strenuous effort to integrate into mainstream Euro Atlantic community through several outreaches.
In 2014, Washington-led eastward expedition birthed in Kiev, when the elected government of Victor Yanukovych was toppled in a coup and extremist anti-Russia regime was installed. The Kiev regime set out on cleansing of ethnic Russians in the Donbass region of Eastern Ukraine and consequently precipitated a civil war. A negotiated settlement of the conflict on the basis of Minsk I and II agreement was signed and overseen by key Western powers, who would later confess that the settlement of the conflict was never intended rather the period of lull in the conflict offered by the Minsk I&II agreements was actually designed to arm Ukraine’s regime, a ploy that came a full circle when Moscow declared its special military operation to purge Kiev of excess militarization and cleanse it of NAZI toxins.
NATO strategy of luring Kiev into the alliance is to ostensibly have a direct firing line at Moscow and bludgeon her to acquiescence in a larger plot to balkanize the vast territory of the Russian federation. From a dream of this potential scenario, NATO has stumbled into a nightmare of what Mr. Robert F. Kennedy, a US presidential candidate called a “futile geopolitical fantasy,” in reference to Washington-led NATO declared aim to defeat the Russian federation in the current conflict with Ukraine.
Mr. Kennedy charged that “rather than acknowledged failure, after the America’s foreign policy establishment has manipulated Ukraine into war,” the Biden administration might be readying for a direct war with Russia, a recipe for the end of humanity. The Ukraine’s NATO quagmire in which Kiev is bogged down highlights the limited reach of NATO despite its ambitions. It would be inauspicious and even irresponsible should Moscow be snoring away while encircles it, with the Kiev regime acting the role of the NATO arrow head to contain it. It would be practically unthinkable for Washington to be flipping pages of international law and the charter of the United Nations, while the Moscow-led Warsaw military alliance prods Mexico to join it, deploys its arsenal in the US Southern neighbor and putting Washington in its direct firing line.
NATO’s reinvention of Russia as its strategic adversary, despite that the country is in many ways different from the former USSR and the context of the contemporary international system is vastly different from the icy cold War which the Washington-led alliance was founded and largely thrived is curious.
Despite its essential geographical and political definition as a transatlantic alliance, and defying the contemporary trends of emerging multi-polarism and the practice of multi-literalism, NATO is busily inventing new “threats” and extending its tentacles to the pacific, middle-eastern and even Africa regions. In 2011, NATO orchestrated the melt down of Libya after overseeing the gruesome murder of its president.
The collapse of Libya unleashed a chain of instability in the region, feeding the budding extremist insurgency in Nigeria and the Sahel. The Boko Haram murderous insurgency in Nigeria was directly aided by the wash of weapons and personnel from the Libya’s heavy armor. Without NATO open meddling in Libya and the spread of weapons which emboldened insurgency in the region, the devastation which have morphed to assorted kinds of criminality would not have gripped the region and especially Nigeria. This is how the dinosaur from the cold war have left a trail of destruction in any region it operated.
At its Vilnius Summit, it had in attendance Australia, Japan, New Zealand and Republic of Korea. The strategic aim for this outreach is crystal clear; to encircle the People’s Republic of China as it did against the Russian federation with the Eastern Europe expansion. Claiming that “strategic competition, pervasive instability and recurrent shocks define our broader security environment, it further formulated that “The People’s Republic of China’s stated ambitions and coercive policies challenge our interests, security and values…” adding that the “deepening strategic partnership between the PRC and Russia and their mutually reinforcing attempts to undercut the rules- based international order run counter to our values and interest.”
In a world of multiple values and civilizations that should ordinarily interact in mutual dialogue and respects for each other, NATO’s claim of values and interests to be pursued in hostile exclusion of others is a recipe for global chaos and disorder conducive to the type of “threats,” NATO manufacturers. However, while the NATO bureaucracy and it’s out of touch political elite ensconced themselves an any of the capitals they choose to meet and engage themselves in rhetoric flourish, the one billion citizens they purportedly speak for, are clearly unravelling in an economic crunch hardly known to their generations.
In the UK senior doctors’ consultant physician went on their first strike, with banners demanding for increased wages and better working conditions. Germany, France, Netherlands and across the Atlantic, working people are staging protest at the prohibitive cost of living and poor wages and working conditions that could hardly cope with it. The irrepressible Hungarian Prime minister Mr. Victor Orban said recently that the world is facing its biggest power shift in decades and the US is poised to lose its leading position to China.
He warned that Washington must accept that it cannot remain the preeminent power “forever.” In his words “China has become a manufacturing power house and is now overtaking America,” and added that “in just 30 years, China has undergone the industrial revolution that took the West around three centuries,” and warned that major nations have to “accept that, today, instead of American dominance, there are two suns in the sky”.
Nevertheless, this is not exactly how the Chinese frame it. China sees the emerging trends of multilateralism leading to the building of community of shared future for mankind in the framework of international intercourse driven by extensive consultations, joint contributions and their shared benefits.” It is doubtful if the Chinese want to be the only sun in the sky or a part of two exclusive suns in the sky. President Xi Jinping proposed key global initiatives-development, security and civilizations are trained on the broad framework of extensive consultations across the world with a view to advance the vision of a community of shared future for mankind.
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) which has spawned the broadest and most extensive infrastructure construction and connectivity across the world is the practical road map to the destination of a community of shared future for all mankind. China has repeatedly disavowed and repudiated hegemony as its ambition, because history has shown and the current travails of the United States has demonstrated, it is not sustainable and such ambition is incompatible with the evolving trends of the contemporary international system.
Despite how the 31 members Washington-led NATO military alliance want to frame their relevance, the alliance has become a grudge organization, largely to rein-in and contain emerging centers of competing powers but any success in this regard will not depend on the NATO alliance but how the world evolves. Despite the objective constraints to its avowed strategic aim, the alliance still poses considerable threat to emerging multilateral order.
It is establishing outreach office in regions far from its original geographic catchment. In the middle East, it hopes to establish office in Jordan. The region that is recovering form the trauma of Washington “regime change” is expected to come under the gaze of NATO. However, the good news is that the grand reapproachment of the main two regional powers Iran and Saudi Arabia former bitter adversaries, might considerably constrain the NATO manipulations of the region.
NATO military alliance, while still retaining some considerable potency to menace the world is already a historical aberration, destined for its archives and the trend of broad cooperation, emerging global partnership and the strength of Multilateralism look certain to over- come cold war relics of alliances and bloc confrontation
Onunaiju is research director of a Think Tank in Abuja, Nigeria
