Trump Was
Right: NATO Should Be Obsolete
By Medea Benjamin
December
02, 2019 "Information
Clearing House"
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The three smartest
words that
Donald Trump
uttered during
his presidential campaign are “NATO is
obsolete.” His adversary,
Hillary Clinton,
retorted that
NATO was “the strongest military alliance in the
history of the world.” Now that Trump has been
in power, the White House
parrots the
same worn line that NATO is “the most successful
Alliance in history, guaranteeing the security,
prosperity, and freedom of its members.” But
Trump was right the first time around: Rather
than being a strong alliance with a clear
purpose, this 70-year-old organization that is
meeting in London on December 4 is a stale
military holdover from the Cold War days that
should have gracefully retired many years ago.
NATO was originally
founded by the United States and 11 other
Western nations as an attempt to curb the rise
of communism in 1949. Six years later, Communist
nations founded the Warsaw Pact and through
these two multilateral institutions, the entire
globe became a Cold War battleground. When the
USSR collapsed in 1991, the Warsaw Pact
disbanded but NATO expanded, growing from its
original 12 members to 29 member countries.
North Macedonia, set to join next year, will
bring the number to 30. NATO has also expanded
well beyond the North Atlantic,
adding a
partnership with Colombia in 2017. Donald Trump
recently
suggested that
Brazil could one day become a full member.
NATO’s post-Cold
War expansion toward Russia’s borders, despite
earlier promises not to move eastward, has led
to rising tensions between Western powers and
Russia, including multiple close calls between
military forces. It has also contributed to a
new arms race, including upgrades in nuclear
arsenals, and the
largest NATO
“war games” since the Cold War.
While
claiming to “preserve peace,” NATO has a history
of bombing civilians and committing war crimes.
In 1999, NATO engaged in military operations
without UN approval in Yugoslavia. Its illegal
airstrikes during the Kosovo War left hundreds
of civilians dead. And far from the “North
Atlantic,” NATO joined the United States in
invading Afghanistan in 2001, where it is still
bogged down two decades later. In 2011, NATO
forces illegally invaded Libya, creating a
failed state that caused masses of people to
flee. Rather than take responsibility for these
refugees, NATO countries have turned back
desperate migrants on the Mediterranean Sea,
letting thousands die.
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In London,
NATO wants to show it is ready to fight new
wars. It will showcase its readiness initiative
– the ability to deploy 30 battalions by land,
30 air squadrons and 30 naval vessels in just 30
days, and to confront future threats from China
and Russia, including with hypersonic missiles
and cyberwarfare. But far from being a lean,
mean war machine, NATO is actually riddled with
divisions and contradictions. Here are some of
them:
-
French
President Emmanuel Macron questions the U.S.
commitment to fight for Europe, has called
NATO “brain dead” and has proposed a
European Army under the nuclear umbrella of
France.
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Turkey
has enraged NATO members with its incursion
into Syria to attack the Kurds, who have
been Western allies in the fight against
ISIS. And Turkey has threatened to veto a
Baltic defense plan until allies support its
controversial incursion into Syria. Turkey
has also infuriated NATO members, especially
Trump, by purchasing Russia’s S-400 missile
system.
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Trump
wants NATO to push back against China’s
growing influence, including the use of
Chinese companies for the construction of 5G
mobile networks–something many NATO
countries are unwilling to do.
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Is Russia
really NATO’s adversary? France’s Macron has
reached out to Russia, inviting Putin to
discuss ways in which the European Union can
put the Crimean invasion behind it. Donald
Trump has publicly attacked Germany over its
Nord Stream 2 project
to pipe in Russian gas, but a recent German
poll saw 66 percent wanting closer ties with
Russia.
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The UK has
bigger problems. Britain has been convulsed
over the Brexit conflict and is holding
contentious national election on December
12. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson,
knowing that Trump is wildly unpopular, is
reluctant to be seen as close to him. Also,
Johnson’s major contender, Jeremy Corbyn, is
a reluctant supporter of NATO. While his
Labour Party is committed to NATO, over his
career as an anti-war champion, Corbyn has
called NATO
“a danger to world peace and a danger to
world security.” The last time Britain
hosted NATO leaders in 2014, Corbyn
told an
anti-NATO rally that the end of the Cold War
“should have been the time for NATO to shut
up shop, give up, go home and go away.”
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A
further complication is Scotland, which is
home to a very unpopular Trident nuclear
submarine base as part of NATO’s nuclear
deterrent. A new Labour government would
need the support of the Scottish National
Party. But its leader, Nicola Sturgeon,
insists that a precondition for her party’s
support is a commitment to close the base.
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Europeans can’t
stand Trump (a recent poll found he is
trusted by
only 4 percent of Europeans!) and their
leaders can’t rely on him. Allied leaders
learn of presidential decisions that affect
their interests via Twitter. The lack of
coordination was clear in October, when
Trump ignored NATO allies when he ordered
U.S. special forces out of northern Syria,
where they had been operating alongside
French and British commandos against Islamic
State militants.
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The US
unreliability has led the European
Commission to draw up plans for a European
“defense union” that will coordinate
military spending and procurement. The next
step may be to coordinate military actions
separate from NATO. The Pentagon has
complained about EU countries purchasing
military equipment from each other instead
of from the United States, and
has called
this defense union “a dramatic reversal of
the last three decades of increased
integration of the transatlantic defence
sector.”
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Do Americans
really want to go to war for Estonia?
Article 5 of the Treaty states that an
attack against one member “shall be
considered an attack against them all,”
meaning that the treaty obligates the US to
go to war on behalf of 28 nations–something
most likely opposed by war-weary Americans
who
want a less
aggressive foreign policy that focuses on
peace, diplomacy, and economic engagement
instead of military force.
An
additional major bone of contention is who will
pay for NATO. The last time NATO leaders met,
President Trump derailed the agenda by berating
NATO countries for not paying their fair share
and at the London meeting, Trump is expected to
announce symbolic US cuts to NATO’s operations
budget.
Trump’s main
concern is that member states step up to the
NATO target of spending 2 percent of their gross
domestic products on defense by 2024, a goal
that is unpopular among Europeans, who
prefer that
their taxdollars to go for nonmilitary items.
Nevertheless,
NATO
Secretary-General
Jens Stoltenberg
will brag that Europe and Canada have added $100
billion to their military budgets since
2016–something Donald Trump will take credit
for–and that more NATO officials are meeting the
2 percent goal, even though a 2019 NATO report
shows only seven members have done so: the U.S.,
Greece, Estonia, the UK, Romania, Poland and
Latvia.
In an age
where people around the world want to avoid war
and to focus instead on the climate chaos that
threatens future life on earth, NATO is an
anachronism. It now accounts for about
three-quarters of military spending and weapons
dealing around the globe. Instead of preventing
war, it promotes militarism, exacerbates global
tensions and makes war more likely. This Cold
War relic shouldn’t be reconfigured to maintain
U.S. domination in Europe, or to mobilize
against Russia or China, or to launch new wars
in space. It should not be expanded, but
disbanded. Seventy years of militarism is more
than enough.
Medea Benjamin is cofounder of
CODEPINK for Peace,
and author of several books, including
Inside Iran: The Real History and
Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
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