Nato: hidden fist of globalisation
[Workers Power Britain, October 2000]
Thomas Friedman, one of the main columnists of the New York Times said in March this year that the USA is the country that benefits most from globalisation of trade and investment.
As a result it has to take the main responsibility for sustaining it, even if not in the manner of "old-fashioned imperialism when one country physically occupies another".
Now, it’s a matter of maintaining “an abstract globalisation system”. But how? Putting it bluntly:
“The hidden hand of the market will never work without the hidden fist … McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.”
The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) is this “hidden fist”. Originally formed in 1948 as an alliance of the United States and European powers, it was designed to deter a supposedly “bellicose” USSR from attacking member states. But with the Cold War won in the late 1980s, what was Nato to do?
If Europe no longer depended upon the USA to defend it against Russia then how could the USA insist upon its military presence and leadership in Europe?
At first Nato diplomacy issued soothing noises to the pro-capitalist leadership emerging in Russia, who were in need of support by imperialism against the Stalinist forces within. They even declared: “We have no aggressive intentions and we commit ourselves to the peaceful resolution of all disputes. We will never in any circumstances be the first to use force.”
This strand of post-Cold War Nato thinking led eventually to a number of initiatives in the 1990s designed to try to mollify Russia's pro-imperialist rulers and convince them that Nato was not a threat to them.
The Organisation on Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) was launched in December 1994, grouping the members of Nato and the ex-Warsaw Pact together with the other European states as a body to reach pan-European collective security agreements along lines favoured by Moscow.
But the OSCE was never intended to replace Nato. Indeed, during the early part of the first Clinton administration (1992-94) when the anti-western nationalists and Stalinists appeared to strengthen their hand against Yeltsin, Clinton decided that Nato must be rebranded and rearmed to secure US interests.
Saddam Hussein had already provided an excuse for this in August 1990 when, as if on cue, he invaded Kuwait. Thus was born the first of several “rogue states” that could threaten the West’s vital interests, and whom only the USA had enough power to defeat. It was during the Gulf War early in 1991 that George Bush proclaimed the advent of a “new world order” maintained and controlled by Washington.
At its Rome summit in November 1991 Nato decided officially to stop restricting itself to the defensive posture laid out in Article 5 of the Washington Treaty (1949). It sanctioned “out of area” interventions when the USA decided it was necessary to secure its interests.
In consequence, the Rome declaration announced that the conventional armed forces of Nato member countries were going to “be given increased mobility to enable them to react to a wide range of contingencies, and will be organised for flexible build-up, when necessary, for crisis management as well as defence.”
The Danish foreign minister outlined the tasks which the CJTF might be called upon to deal with: “Historically based mistrust and friction between ethnic, religious or national groupings, aggressive nationalism, social disruption and uncertainty in light of fundamental economic reforms, illegal migration, drug trafficking and organised crime, and environmental and ecological threats.”
The rhetoric of “rogue states” was useful when it came to justifying the USA keeping Nato together. But the usefulness of Nato to the USA lay elsewhere. The redefined goals of US policy were spelt out straightforwardly in a 46-page Pentagon document entitled Defense Planning Guidance of 1992.
The Pentagon paper stated that: “Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival…First, the US must show the leadership necessary to establish and protect a new order that holds the promise of convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests.
“We must account sufficiently for the interests of the advanced industrial nations to discourage them from challenging our leadership . . . Finally, we must maintain the mechanism for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.
“It is of fundamental importance to preserve Nato as the primary instrument of Western defence and security as well as the channel for US influence and participation in European security affairs…We must seek to prevent the emergence of European-only security arrangements which would undermine Nato.”
Ex-National Security advisor ZbigniewBrzezinski put it more starkly: “For America, the chief geo-political prize is Eurasia". The three pronged strategy for securing US interests involves: “To prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries
pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together.”
The scenarios seen as most dangerous, to be averted at all costs in this titanic programme to divide and rule, are “a grand coalition of China, Russia, and perhaps Iran”, “a Sino-Japanese axis” and “either a German-Russian collusion or a Franco-Russian entente”.
The vassals to be kept dependent are the European and Japanese allies. Europe is “America‘s essential geopolitical bridgehead on the Eurasian continent”; Japan, lastly, is a “world-class power being simultaneously a protectorate”. It should not be pressed to assume a larger geopolitical and security role, but confined to the status of “a much more powerful and globally influential equivalent of Canada.”
The barbarians who have to be prevented from coming together are Russia and China.
The series of Balkan wars between 1992-99 provided another catalyst for the reshaping of Nato. Clinton adviser Kaplan was frank about what was at stake:
“With the Middle East increasingly fragile, we will need bases and fly-over rights in the Balkans to protect Caspian Sea oil. But we will not have those bases in the future if the Russians reconquer south-east Europe by criminal stealth.”
In short, the US oil multinationals want to control the flow of oil to the big European market.
The simple way to get Caspian oil is via a pipeline southward through Iran or further north through Russia. But both options would evade US control.
The preferred US route, a pipeline from Azerbaijan to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan has been rejected as too costly. Turkey has vetoed massive oil-tanker traffic through the Bosporus on ecological grounds.
That leaves the Balkans. The US administration would like to build a pipeline across the Balkans. Bechtel, a major US construction firm, would be first in the queue for the contracts and for this reason former Bechtel executive and Reagan administration Defense Secretary,
Caspar Weinberger, was a leading supporter of Nato intervention into Kosova last year. Bechtel has already obtained major contracts in Tudjman’s Croatia.
Naturally, the wars in the Balkans could not be conducted under the banner of naked economic interest. Other, “humanitarian” reasons were discovered. The ideology of the humanitarian war did not emerge for the first time in Kosova last year. It had been an ideology long in preparation in the post-Cold war era.
The idea of a humanitarian intervention arose in the 1990s out of the increasing involvement of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Third World crises. Medéçins Sans Frontieres, founded in the wake of Biafra crisis in Nigeria in the 1970s, originated a more aggressive and politicised style of intervention compared to the practices of Western governmental and international aid agencies.
Its founder, Bernard Kouchner, initially a member of the French Communist Party, became in the 1970s a key figure in the group of
disillusioned ex-leftists, who rallied to the
Mitterrand's Socialist Party. Kouchner himself served as a minister under both Mitterrand and Jospin, before, appropriately enough, being appointed the West’s proconsul in Kosova after the war.
In the 1980s the NGOs used a succession of disasters, chiefly in Africa, to compete for public support. The NGOs’ dependence on media – and especially TV – coverage to secure attention encouraged a depoliticised interpretation of the causes and solutions of humanitarian crises.
And the need to show results in order to prove their worth to Western public and private donors led the NGOs to assert what came to be known as the “Kouchner Doctrine”, according to which their right of access to disaster areas overrode the sovereignty of the state in question, and to demand military protection for their activities.
In the l990s, the Western powers began to take up the idea, leading to forcible intervention in a state’s territory, violating sovereignty under the authority of the UN Security Council, avowedly in pursuit of humanitarian aims. First came the establishment of “safe havens” for the Kurds of northern Iraq in 1991.
Somalia was a UN-sanctioned but US-led operation purportedly to defend relief convoys in a country wracked by civil war. Operation Restore Hope, launched during the dying days of the Bush administration in December 1992, rapidly developed into a war with the Somali warlord, General Aidid.
The Somalian operation was a disaster for Washington because 18 American soldiers died. But the concept of humanitarian intervention was established. Pioneered mainly in disintegrating African states, it was then exported to Europe to legitimise first UN and then Nato military involvement in the wars that accompanied the break-up of Yugoslavia.
The Kosova War of 1999 was the occasion for humanitarian imperialism led by Nato to emerge fully clothed. Whereas during the Gulf crisis of 1990-91 the specific justification for the war on the USA’s side was the violation of Kuwait’s sovereignty by the Iraqi invasion of August 1990, Nato’s war against Serbia, overrode Yugoslavia's territorial sovereignty on humanitarian grounds – namely, securing the physical safety and political rights of the Kosovan Albanians.
This justification for the war played an important role in securing the support of many on the Western left. “Nato’s war”, was Blair insisted, “a just war, based not on any territorial ambitions but on values”.
All this ideological rebranding of Nato by the US was inevitable in the aftermath of the Cold War. But it remains a deceit. The Kosova War was not a humanitarian war.
It precipitated the humanitarian catastrophe – the flight of the Kosovars – that it was supposed to prevent. Moreover, the war that began by failing to prevent the ethnic cleansing of the Kosova Albanians ended with the ethnic cleansing of the Kosova Serbs.
Nato is first and foremost the global military arm of American political and economic power. Its command structure and top personnel remain dominated by the United States.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union the US redefined its foreign policy objectives. The path was open for imperialism to tighten its grip over semi-colonial states in the “second” and Third World that had achieved a measure of economic and political independence during the Cold War years.
The United States and its European allies have arrogated to themselves the role of “world policeman”. The reactionary consequences have been demonstrated in the 1990s in Iraq, Somalia, Haiti, in Sudan and Afghanistan and in Bosnia with the implementation of the 1995 Dayton Accords.
Despite Friedman’s belief that only abstract globalisation is being defended now by Nato, not the old colonial imperialism with its territorial acquisitions, Bosnia and Kosova are ruled today by Nato in much the same way as the Viceroys of India acted on behalf of British imperialism until 1948.
The purpose of every one of these interventions is to ensure that the rulers of these weak states – whether long term semi-colonies or
former degenerate workers’ states in the process of restoring capitalism – carry out the political and economic diktats of imperialism.
That means complete subordination to the profit-making of North American, western European and Japanese multinationals. The US government is pledged to tear down every trade and investment barrier in the path of US multinationals. It is determined to guarantee access to oil and raw material reserves, especially in the Middle East and Central Asian republics of the ex-USSR.
The political, economic and military agencies (the United Nations, the IMF and World Bank, Nato) exist to enforce compliance or deal with the dire consequences of economic impoverishment and to weaken or destroy
Russian influence and control over its ex-Empire.
The 1999 war against Serbia was the fourth US-led attack on a sovereign state in the 1990s. These are justified in the name of democracy and the need to strike against tyranny.
But if this was their real concern Israel, Indonesia and Turkey would have seen bombs rain down on them decades ago. Israel has brutalised successive generations of Palestinians, stolen their homeland, expelled countless thousands from their homes, denied their national identity and refused their right to return.
The reaction of the US and Nato? To arm Israel, support its economy with billions of dollars, and to collude with its security forces against Arab states and the opponents of Israel living around the world. They have passed over in silence the constant mockery and defiance with which Israel has greeted each and every resolution of the United Nations against this tyranny.
The same goes for the murderous Indonesian regime that has butchered hundreds of thousands of the people of East Timor since its invasion in 1975. And Turkey’s slaughter of 30,000 Kurds living in its country has been sanctioned by its Nato partners.
One does not need to be a rocket scientist to understand Nato and the UN’s alternative willingness and refusal to act. Turkey, Israel and Indonesia are regional allies of the US military and big business. Each and every abuse of human rights, case of torture and mass execution can be disregarded as a result.
Nato may have added a sophisticated PR battalion to its war machine in the 1990s, but it remains a vile tool of imperialism and the big business interests that stand behind the governments in office.
It is a debt-collector for the IMF and World Bank when threats of exclusion from the financial markets fail to achieve compliance from the Third World, and trade sanctions fail to make no-compliant regimes bend the knee to Uncle Sam.
No more than the institutions that it serves, Nato cannot be reformed – neither peacefully disarmed nor transformed into a democratically accountable peace-maker. It must be smashed and dismantled along with the power of the big corporations.
