By Timofey Bordachev, Program Director of the Valdai Club
History has seen many military alliances. But none has ever had such a clear imbalance as NATO. When it comes to the security of the bloc’s strongest country, the capabilities of other members are of negligible importance.
The arrival of nuclear weapons has freed the powers with significant atomic stockpiles from seeing coalition partners as a necessity rather than a choice. This ultimately defines the dynamic of any alliance they lead.
NATO – which has just celebrated its 75th anniversary at a summit in Washington – was created for two reasons. The first was to prevent serious internal political changes in its member states and the spread of communism in the countries of Western Europe and Turkey. After the end of the Cold War, membership of the bloc was seen as a safety net for the new authorities in Eastern Europe and the Baltics. Ukrainian nationalists viewed joining NATO as the best way to permanently deprive the country’s Russian-speaking population of the ability to determine its own destiny.
Secondly, NATO’s job was to turn Western European countries into an American bridgehead in case of a direct confrontation with the USSR. For this purpose, infrastructure was created and procedures for deploying American forces in Europe were set in place.
NATO has generally been successful at both tasks. This was especially the case when America and its allies were attractive to developing countries that wanted to solve their socio-economic problems by joining the global market economy. The West could offer them investment and technology in exchange for shunning its strategic adversary in Moscow.
But this most cohesive and well armed military bloc is now on the wrong side of history. Domestic problems in most of its major states are being caused by the desire of the outside world to build its own wealth and power. Not for nothing did Henry Kissinger write that the rise of the China was far more significant than the unification of Germany and the end of the Cold War. Following in China’s footsteps, India, while reliant on Western investment and technology, is defiant towards the US. Meanwhile the West has a dozen other countries – whose combined population is much larger than that of North America and Western Europe – breathing down its neck.
The ill-considered expansion of the space under the Alliance’s control has led to the need to confront very difficult questions in the face of the impossibility of mass mobilisation. To balance the books, NATO elites will have to impoverish their own citizens for a long time to come. Some members of the bloc, such as the UK, are moving in this direction quite rapidly. Others are having a harder time selling the new reality. Such as Germany and France.
It seems the inability of the elites to solve basic economic problems will in itself prepare nations for real war hysteria, as has already happened in Finland, which never found a niche in which to thrive after the Cold War.
Until these goals are achieved, the West’s response to the challenges it faces will be reduced to manoeuvring on both the military-diplomatic and domestic fronts. In the first case, there is a lack of resources; in the second, there is a shortage of breakthrough ideas.
The transfer of priorities in the economic and social structure to the military will, of course, help to restore the position of the industrial sector to some extent and even create additional jobs. But it is by no means certain to succeed, because this will require a complete restructuring of the system of income distribution.
For now, the West still has the resources to go with the flow. But there is no knowing how long they will last in the face of increasing outside pressure. The situation is made worse by the fact that NATO countries have to find answers to these complex questions under the direction of totally unsuitable leaders. This, many observers rightly believe, is the main threat now emanating from the West.
This article was first published by Profile.ru, translated and edited by the RT team
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