by Chris Cumming and Mark Armstrong
For decades Garner Ted Armstrong predicted an economic, political and military giant would rise up out of Europe. He referred to this prophesied Beast power as United Europe or the United States of Europe. We are, seeing this come to pass. In two recent Word from commentaries, I discussed the EU becoming a Superpower and the EuroArmy being developed as a force for war rather than peace. It is an inescapable conclusion that if the EuroArmy is to rise in power, NATO must decline. As reported in the Word from on the EuroArmy:
“In October of last year, Washington requested an
emergency meeting of NATO amid growing fears
in America that the EU’s latest plans for its Euro Army will undermine the
alliance. Nicholas Burns, the US ambassador to NATO, told fellow ambassadors
that the EU’s push for greater military autonomy posed ‘the most significant
threat to NATO’s future.’”
NATO: an alliance in search of itself NATO summit underlines US-European tensions NATO summit in Istanbul highlights conflicts among imperialist allies Salvaging a divided NATO Who Needs NATO?
All but one of these stories originate in the European and world press and all of them published after the NATO conference in Istanbul, Turkey held 28-29 June.
Before we proceed, some background information on NATO from an article in Workers World on the 5th of July:
“The U.S. founded NATO in 1949 to keep socialist revolution away from Western Europe and to threaten the Soviet Union. It also guaranteed a leading role for U.S. foreign policy with regard to its European allies. The NATO structure had U.S. officers at the top, and the weaker imperialist powers in Western Europe subordinated their individual interests to the confrontation with the socialist camp.
“As long as the USSR and the Warsaw Pact existed, NATO made no military attacks. It couldn't.
“The collapse of the USSR in 1989-1991 left the U.S. with a problem regarding NATO. U.S. strategists wanted to take this anti-Soviet pact and turn it into a weapon for intervention in Eastern Europe, Africa and the Middle East. This would leave the U.S. in the driver's seat regarding military intervention, but would enlist the British, French, German and other imperialist rivals in the ground armies taking casualties.
“The first major area of intervention was the Balkans.”
While clearly slanted, the article presents the fact that NATO was the invention of the US and would guarantee their involvement and influence in European affairs. The US is attempting to use NATO as a means to intervene outside the borders of NATO, as the article points out. If the EU is to be autonomous over its own destiny, the influence of the US government must be ousted. The EU is already balking at any intervention by NATO into Iraq and Afghanistan. In June, it was announced the EU forces will replace NATO in the Balkans as reported in our Two Key Prophecies, which monitors troop build-ups and movements around the world.
Doubts About NATO’s Future
In a July 3rd article, “No Respite for NATO” from the Japan Times reporting on the Istanbul meeting:
“Leaders of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization expected their two-day
summit in Istanbul to highlight a renewed sense of unity. Coming on the heels of
one of the most bitter splits in the alliance's history, anything less would
raise serious doubts about the organization's future. And yet they failed.
Rather than demonstrating resolve and a sense of shared purpose, this week's
meeting will be remembered for the failure of NATO members to agree on Iraq's
future or to make a real commitment to aid Afghanistan, despite pleas from that
country's leadership. NATO's credibility, if not its survival, could be at
stake.
When NATO fails, another power will have to step forward in an attempt to solve these international problems. That power is the United States of Europe. We are now coming to understand that the efforts of the US-led Coalition will ultimately fail. The EU will be compelled to take action in the Middle East and elsewhere.
NATO Military Power Declining
The Australian News in their July 5th article, “The Day NATO Came Unstuck, stated:
“LAST week's NATO summit in Istanbul saw the end of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as a serious military alliance.
“Yet if NATO has grown by more than a third this year, its power has shrunk. In military might, it seems able to muster only a glorified police force, if that.”
Part of the reason for this is the emergence of the EuroArmy. As the EU continues in its growth as a mighty Superpower, it will move its resources and commitments into that military force and away from NATO. This fact alone will seal the end for NATO. The political infighting has already begun.
Discord Over US Policies
This discord is apparent in this Frankfurt paper (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) article dated 2 July, “NATO: an alliance in search of itself”:
“The situation is paradoxical: NATO recently celebrated its largest round of expansion ever, and it has troops stationed outside the European-Atlantic region, in Afghanistan, for the first time in the organization's history. But the alliance is entrapped in one of its most serious crises ever. Even die-hard supporters have an uneasy feeling when the talk turns to the future of the alliance where Americans and Europeans joined together in the past to successfully put together their security strategies.
“Naturally, the NATO partners did not always get along in those heady days of unity when the ‘Wall’ created by the Soviet threat gave bricks-and-mortar shape to the Western need for a shared strategy. Today, people are appealing for the alliance to avoid becoming alarmist and declaring the organization as a lost cause simply because the members are arguing among themselves.
“The discord over U.S. policies in Iraq was able to become so corrosive because the old reason for being, the defense against the Soviet Union and its allies, no longer exists, and a new, widely accepted strategy that incorporates the new realities and threats in the world has yet to be found.
“The symptoms of the crisis can be seen everywhere: The U.S. government views NATO, which is an alliance of more or less sovereign and, in any case, equal members, as an instrument.”
The opposition between Europe and the US is growing. Germany and France are rejecting a NATO role in Iraq. In the Istanbul meeting, German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder held to his refusal to send German troops to Iraq despite pleas from President Bush. “We haven’t budged at all from our position,” Schröder told reporters. President Bush has been in four meetings with NATO leaders in just one month and Europe continues to balk.
The Istanbul meeting, which the US hoped would gain support in the Middle East has actually threatened to open more rifts between them and their European allies.
Istanbul Conference Scene of Chaos
MSN in their July 1st article, “Who Needs NATO?" stated:
“Europeans wonder what role NATO should play in global politics as its ranks expand and the United States struggles to get commitments from unwilling EU allies. These tensions were overshadowed in American papers by the surprise handover of power to Iraq, but the summit was heavily covered in Europe.
“The conference itself was a scene of chaos: Tens of thousands of protestors hurled small bombs and Molotov cocktails at more than 24,000 Turkish police as warplanes patrolled the skies above Istanbul. Bombings leading up to the summit only increased anxiety levels, leading one widely published Turkish columnist to bid the NATO leaders farewell with the headline, ‘Thank God, they left safe and sound.’
“The action on the inside was only slightly less intense, with Jacques Chirac refusing to allow NATO troops or insignia on the ground in Iraq. The French president was visibly angry during meetings on Monday after Bush announced the early handover. According to a Le Monde report, ‘Chirac barely disguised his irritation on Monday each time a journalist used the name of the American president … to the point of forgetting every reminder of historic Franco-American ties.’
“The larger questions of NATO's role in the world attracted more attention in European papers covering the summit. An editorial in the London Daily Telegraph noted that ‘fashionable anti-Americanism’ threatens to destroy the special relationship between the United States and Europe.”
This conference will prove to be the fracture that began the last days of NATO. This can best be said in the words of Dimitrios Argirakos, Chairman of the Institute for Foreign and Security Policy in Düsseldorf when he told the a Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reporter, “In reality, NATO was buried on the Bosporus.”
We may well see NATO dissolved as a result of the growing animosities
which have developed between the United States and the big powers in Europe.
Will the U.S. continue to exert global political and military influence in
isolation? Or will America acquiesce to a greatly expanded role to be played by
united Europe?
Go
here for
the latest news stories on this subject. –
News stories added 1 July 2008 Resources: –Who’s Who in NATO –names, positions and photos of all key figures in NATO
Further reading:
News Stories used in this commentary -
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