[DEBATE] : (Fwd) Wallerstein on S.Ossetia and Nato

[Patrick Bond]

Commentary No. 240, Sept. 1, 2008

"Can NATO Survive Georgia?"


Amidst all the journalistic brouhaha about a new cold war, most analysts 
are missing out on the real crisis that has been crystallized by 
Saakashvili's imprudent excursion into South Ossetia. The very existence 
of NATO has been put into question.

To understand that, we have to go back to the beginning of NATO as an 
institution and a concept.

The story began in 1947 when the United Kingdom and France signed the 
Treaty of Dunkirk, pledging mutual assistance in case of a revival of 
German military aggression. In 1948, this grouping was expanded to 
include the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxemburg in the Treaty of 
Brussels, in a move still designed to defend against Germany. Later that 
year, the five nations set up the Western Union Defence Organization, 
with a combined chiefs of staff committee. There are two things to note 
about these treaties. The United States was not part of them, and they 
were aimed primarily at Germany, not the Soviet Union.

The founding of NATO in 1949 came in the wake of the Berlin Blockade of 
1948. NATO in effect nullified the Western Union defense treaties. It 
was focused not on the dangers of renewed German militarism but on the 
cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union. From the point 
of view of the United States, NATO served several purposes. It was a 
message to the Soviet Union that the United States was committed to 
maintaining the existing boundaries of the division of power in Europe, 
which had seemed threatened by the Berlin Blockade. It was a method of 
reconciling the French and the British to the rearmament of West 
Germany. And it was a way of controlling the military operations of the 
allies by undoing their nascent military structure and subordinating 
their troops to a U.S. command.

The political leaders and the majority of the population of western 
European countries were initially quite favorable to the concept of 
NATO. For them, it guaranteed that the United States would indeed defend 
them should the Soviet Union come to think it could violate the Yalta 
arrangements. And France was now ready to accept West German rearmament 
as a part of their historic reconciliation. France, however, chafed at 
the third objective - keeping French troops under U.S. command, which is 
what led Charles De Gaulle in 1966 to withdraw from the NATO command 
structure and require its headquarters to move from Paris to Brussels.

Beginning in the 1970s, western Europe had not only gotten over its 
worries about Germany but had begun to think that the Soviet Union no 
longer posed an imminent menace of invasion. Various countries, and not 
only France, began to think of how they could bring a tamer, 
post-Stalinist Soviet Union into more intensive cooperation with western 
Europe. This was notably the case with West Germany's Ostpolitik. And 
when, in the 1980's, the idea was broached of a gas pipeline from the 
Soviet Union to western Europe, this was favorably received even by the 
United Kingdom under Margaret Thatcher.

The United States was dismayed by these developments. It unsuccessfully 
opposed the gas pipeline. It sought to discourage all talk of reviving a 
European army that was not part of NATO. In general, it became 
considerably less friendly to the idea of Europe as Europe, one that was 
separate from a North Atlantic community.

The strain was intensified with the collapse of the communisms in 1989 
and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Since NATO had been 
created as a structure to defend western Europe against a Soviet Union 
governed by a Communist party, what function did NATO now have? The 
United States was determined to maintain NATO, and sought a new 
definition of its role. It was also determined not to permit the 
emergence of an autonomous European structure, delinked from the United 
States, and worse still, possibly creating the "common European home" 
that would include Russia, and which Mikhail Gorbachev had proposed.

The immediate structural question for NATO was the issue of expansion - 
to include or not the former Soviet satellites, which were now 
emancipated from their links with the Soviet Union/Russia. The United 
States pushed hard, almost immediately, for their incorporation into 
NATO. The western Europeans were less enthusiastic. The former 
satellites saw their incorporation as their link to the United States, 
as protection against Russia, and as a gateway to economic betterment. 
The United States saw their incorporation as a constraint on Russia's 
possible resurgence but even more as a guarantee that "Europe" would not 
be able to delink from its U.S. close alliance, since these countries 
would oppose it. And western Europe was less enthusiastic precisely 
because they understood what the United States was doing.

The Iraq war exacerbated the situation greatly. Donald Rumsfeld gloated 
over two Europes - "old" Europe, which was effete and uncooperative, and 
"new" Europe, which was committed to the same world objectives as the 
United States. Actually, in the immediate situation of the 2003 U.S. 
invasion of Iraq, there were three Europes: Rumsfeld's "new" Europe 
(that is, the former Soviet satellites); those that refused to join the 
"coalition of the willing" (notably France and Germany); and those 
western European countries that in 2003 supported the U.S. invasion of 
Iraq (notably the United Kingdom, Spain, and Italy). France and Germany 
pulled closer, politically, to Putin's Russia in their common opposition 
to the United States at the United Nations.

The strain continued. When the United States pushed this year for the 
launching of the process to include Ukraine and Georgia in NATO, they 
met strong opposition not only from France and Germany but from the 
United Kingdom, Spain, and Italy as well. Indeed they had strong support 
in only four of the eastern European states - Poland and the three 
Baltic states. The other eastern European states were reticent as well.

Then came Saakashvili's march into South Ossetia and Russia's vigorous 
and successful riposte. Poland and the three Baltic states immediately 
gave full support to Georgia, and the United States a bit less rapidly 
raised its rhetorical level, and sent in warships with humanitarian aid.

What did western Europe do? Immediately, and without consulting anyone, 
President Sarkozy of France negotiated a truce in the fighting, and then 
got the European Union to endorse this fait accompli. Chancellor Merkel 
of Germany then got into the act with further negotiations with Russia. 
Even Silvio Berlusconi of Italy was telephoning Putin. All this while, 
Condoleezza Rice was out of the real diplomatic picture.

Did the diplomacy work? Only of course up to a point, as controversy 
continues about where Russian troops are presently stationed and 
Russia's definitive recognition of the independence of South Ossetia and 
Abkhazia. But western European statesmen keep making statements about 
how one should be careful not to cut off ties with Russia. And it seems 
the most the western European press can do is to scold Russia that it is 
they who are breaking friendly relations with western Europe. Most 
revealing of all is the report in the New York Times that Poland, the 
Czech Republic, and the Baltic states are calling not Rice but Angela 
Merkel, asking her to use her influence to help resolve the situation. 
Angela Merkel has made it clear that Germany will not be rushed into 
approving Georgian membership in NATO.

Most remarkable of all is an op-ed in the Financial Times by Kishore 
Mahbubani, a senior academic in profoundly pro-Western Singapore. 
Mahbubani says that 10% of the world is united in condemning Russia, and 
the other 90% "is bemused by western moralising on Georgia." He says Mao 
Zedong was right in one thing - the distinction between the primary 
contradiction and the secondary contradictions with which one must 
always compromise. "Russia is not close to becoming the primary 
contradiction the west faces." He ends by saying that it is Western 
"flawed (strategic) thinking" that is causing the world to be a more 
dangerous place.

The United States is not yet ready to listen to the sage counsel of its 
own friends in the non-Western world. Western Europe is grappling its 
way to understanding what's at stake for them. NATO cannot survive the 
irrelevance of its strategic activity in what Mahbubani calls the "post 
cold-war era."

by Immanuel Wallerstein

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