ENLARGEMENT MASKS NATO'S FAILURE

It should be obvious by now that NATO cannot survive the Ukrainian episode in its current form. It is likely to be reorganised as a maritime alliance of Eurasian peripheric or littoral states and coordinated from Washington instead of Brussels.

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The countdown has begun to the long-delayed dissolution of NATO, which should have taken place 20 years ago .

If it had folded at the right time in history, NATO would have remained in our collective memory as the only politico-military alliance that managed to maintain peace in Europe for 50 years.

Since 2000, however, when it fell into the hands of neoconservatives, NATO has turned into an offensive alliance, imitating the Delian league model of 2,500 years ago. The organization's relentless propaganda and its military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, however, have failed to impress Russia, which decided to end its expansion inbordering regions which were formerly part of the Soviet state, such as Georgia or Ukraine. China is not afraid of NATO either, although the leaders of the organization have recently announced that it will from now on involve itself in possible conflicts in the Indo-Pacific area.

Essentially an alliance whose core consists of US-led maritime and peripheral powers relative to  Eurasia, NATO has decided to hide its failure in Ukraine by expanding into Finland and Sweden. It should be noted that both these countries and member states such as Greece - whose existence the Americans have suddenly started to acknowledge in the last 2 years - are in turn situated in peripheral and coastal areas of Europe, on the Baltic Sea and the Ionian & Aegean seas respectively. (Toynbee considers them representatives of wilted civilizations).

After the dismantling of NATO in its current form, which after what happened in Ukraine is no longer hypothetical but more and more of a certainty, the Anglosphere will try to conclude substitution alliances - as Boris Johnson has already done recently - with other peripheral and/or coastal states of Eurasia, according to the "birds of a feather" principle.

Such an alliance policy direction was suggested by the geopolitician Spykman in 1938 and is called the "Rimland theory". One can only wish them well.

A Blatant Case of Groupthink

 

"Participants in those critical decisions, Janis found, had failed to consider the full range of alternatives or consult experts who could offer different perspectives. They rejected outside information and opinion unless it supported their preferred policy. And the harsher the preferred policy -- the more likely it was to involve moral dilemma -- the more zealously members clung to their consensus " (Kathrin Lassila,Yale University)

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Nato's latest folly is its readiness to accept 2 new members, Finland and Sweden, from northern Europe. In today's world, it appears American neoconservatives cannot accept the institution of neutrality when it comes to fighting countries like Russia or China. All westernised countries have to line up behind the US, as Nato's leader, and share into its outlandish plans.

This time around the issue is not the invasion of Afghanistan or Iraq, and not even the present war effort in Ukraine. The obsession of the neocons is bringing down the current regime in Russia. This is why another round of Nato expansion is underway, not because it makes any strategic sense whatsoever. It is hoped that by expanding Nato to Sweden and Finland and by encircling Russia completely, the Russian people could be persuaded to oust Vladimir Putin and cease their resistance to American global hegemonism. This, to be sure, is not a military objective but a highly political one. Using Nato to achieve this goal only illustrates how toxic this alliance has become for the world as a whole.

Nato and G7's latest decisions concerning the war in Ukraine clearly indicate that Western decision-making is afflicted by groupthink. Groupthink has been known to lead to serious and sometimes catastrophic policy errors. Given the current strategic situation, trying to use Ukrainians to push back the Russian army and to regain lost territories like Crimea and Donbas is not only unreasonable, but also extremely dangerous from a military point of view. In the groupthink dynamic afflicting western policymaking, especially at Nato level, it's the American neoconservatives imposing the decisions, with all other western political and military leaders having to comply, however dangerous the outcome might be. 

In fact, promoting the fall of the current Kremlin government - taking into account the unresolved situation in Ukraine - would most probably bring to power a military regime in Russia. Such a change would not in any way favour the western alliance, I would say quite on the contrary. In that case, the war in Ukraine could only intensify and there would be a clear danger that the conflict would expand into neighbouring countries currently assisting Kiev with weapons and humanitarian aid. In other words, when it comes to regime change in Moscow, western leaders will be well advised to be careful what they wish for. Their decisions might have exactly the opposite result to what they intended, that is bringing Russia to its knees.

This is not to say that Vladimir Putin cannot do more to bring the war in Ukraine to an end. As no one in the West or in Ukraine has the slightest interest in restoring peace, the ranks of the Russian army fighting in Ukraine should probably be beefed up to the level required in order to bring the military conflict to a successful conclusion. This, in my view, is unavoidable, however regrettable it might be for Russians, Ukrainians and their families.

NATO is the Delian League 2.0

 During the 19th century, the US elites' emulation of classical Athens' slave-owning democracy led to the American Civil War. In the 21st century, the imitation of Athens' military alliance by NATO is about to bring the world to the brink of nuclear war. If things are to improve, Americans should overcome this propensity to emulate political and military models from 2500 years ago.

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Between 479 and 431 BC, the Greek world was militarily and economically dominated by Athens, which during the wars with Persia formed an alliance of Greek city-states, becoming its leader for 50 years.

The members of the alliance were obliged to contribute money, ships or soldiers to the military operations decided by the Athenians. Athens' competitors in the Greek world were those who had joined the Peloponnesian League, led by Sparta. We can more easily understand the conflict between the two leagues if we make an analogy - quite common during the Cold War - with NATO, organized and led by the USA, and the Warsaw Pact, the organization led by Moscow.

Many scholars claim that the real purpose of the formation of the Delos League by the Athenians was in fact the defeat of Sparta and the dissolution of the Peloponnesian League. After 460 BC, Athens' efforts led to its transformation into an informal empire, undeclared as such, a situation comparable to the transformation of the United States into a global hegemon after 2000.

No historical analogy is perfect, but this one applies quite well to postwar American developments. Both Athens and the United States  created politico-military alliances after major conflicts - with Persia in the case of Athens, with Nazi Germany in the case of the United States - namely the League of Delos and NATO, and they maintained and expanded these even after the danger which led to their creation disappeared.

Both states had the same democratic organization of society, the same trade-based economic orientation, the same security needs (the safety of maritime trade routes). In both cases, we are dealing with two informal empires, to which those states who needed military protection joined voluntarily, not through Roman-type conquests. At least initially, the members of both alliances enjoyed economic and military advantages which flowed from them. To enforce compliance, Athens and the US in some cases placed military garrisons or bases in allied states whose allegiance was deemed problematic.

In both the Athenian and the American cases, the hegemon insisted on the adoption of democracy by all members of the alliance and on contributions in troops, ships or money (as now in Ukraine) to joint defense or expansion efforts. Over time, however, the leaders of the alliance became tyrannical, seriously violating the sovereignty or prosperity of member states, which generated centrifugal tendencies. 

The similarities do not end here. In the case of both Athens and the United States, we are dealing with two maritime superpowers, less capable of winning wars against continental states, as illustrated by the defeats of Athens in Egypt or Sicily and of those of the United States in Vietnam or Afghanistan. Both the Athenians and the Americans made a fatal error of over-extending the geographical reach and the membership of their alliances. (Incidentally, UK's Boris Johnson - a great admirer of Pericles - is also a staunch supporter of Nato's expansion in Ukraine.)

The use of the Athenian politico-military alliance model by the US began in full force after 2001, when the leadership of American foreign policy was monopolized by the neoconservatives, led by Blinken, Nuland&Kagan . The latter's father, Donald Kagan, was a history professor at Yale and the author of a 4-volume history of the Peloponnesian War. It seems, therefore, that the father's influence on his son was profound. American neoconservatives became fans of the Delos League model, as well as followers of the theories of the causes of war authored by Thucydides, whose writings were misinterpreted in such a way as to make a military confrontation with China and / or Russia appear inevitable.

Likewise, the Athenian model largely explains NATO's change of strategy after the demise of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact. Just as Athens actively contributed to the disbandment of the Peloponnesian League led by Sparta and then expanded, the United States decided after 1997 to expand and include into NATO former members of the Warsaw Pact in Central and Eastern Europe. Instead of being abolished after 1989, NATO instead became an offensive alliance and an essential military tool in perpetuating American global hegemony.

Classical Athens had a competitor who was capable of defeating it: Sparta. Until recently the US had none. Since 2014, however, the United States has acquired its own "Sparta"...

What Inspired America's "Drang nach Osten" Drive

 Democracy promotion is used by the current US government to hide the crypto-Nazi nature of its policies in Eastern Europe. This policy is actually emulating Athens' Delian League democracy promotion drive within allied city-states from the V-th century BC. In Ukraine, the US is unfortunately protecting a repressive regime with ultranationalists and neo-Nazis calling the shots.

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Arnold Toynbee was right when he argued that civilisations are not destroyed by external forces, but disappear from history by committing suicide. Five hundred years since its emergence, this is exactly the stage that Western civilisation is going through right now.

It is interesting to note that both the rise and fall of this civilisation have been determined by Catholic leaders: the papacy and the kings of Spain and Portugal in the fifteenth century; respectively, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and Boris Johnson today.

It is difficult for many to understand what has happened to the US and UK-led West. Why on earth has it come into conflict with Russia? The misunderstanding is justified. Its latest policy towards Russia is not rational, but pure suicide. To quote a famous American general, the Ukraine conflict is "the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time and with the wrong enemy".

We can begin by recalling that the fundamental characteristic of the Western civilisation has been expansionism, either regional or global. Anyone who opposes such expansionism - economic, military, religious, or political - automatically becomes the sworn enemy of the West's leaders of the moment, whether we are talking here about the Spaniards, the French, the English, the Germans or about Americans today.

The French and Germans had mostly continental expansionist ambitions ("Drang nach Osten" was the official policy of the Third Reich and targeted Russian territories). The Spanish and Portuguese took over specific regions in the New World, Africa or Asia. The British colonised North America, but also Australia and New Zealand, and conquered India. All these past expansionist expeditions were supported in one way or another by the Catholic Church, which exponentially increased its fortunes and the number of believers.

In our own century however, US expansionism has global ambitions, although outside of the Western Hemisphere it has managed to impose itself only to a limited extent economically, but not from a military or political point of view, despite NATO's large membership. Americans have always been expansionists, their geopolitical thinking being dominated by what historians call the "frontier mentality." They managed to impose themselves on the entire North American continent and in Latin America in the 19th century, but the 20th century was not as favorable for them. In Europe, American expansionism was limited by the Soviets to the west and parts of the continent's centre. In Asia, the United States was stopped by China in its expansion into the Korean Peninsula and by Vietnam or Afghanistan in Southeast or Central Asia. 

The disintegration of the USSR and especially the separation of Ukraine and Georgia, unfortunately gave American neoconservatives the false impression that they could revive - in new forms - Nazi Germany's expansionist policy to the East, this time with them in control. This mega-error is now on the verge of destroying the entire Western civilisation, annexed as it is via NATO to the American locomotive. This despite many American political leaders realising that the era of Western expansionism is over and that its current chances of success are zero.

However, as America and Britain are now led by the abovementioned Catholic leaders, the Western alliance is making full use of age-old Catholic statecraft tools. To illustrate this, think of the massive use of private military contractors who currently fight to implement the US's global agenda, just as Spanish royalty used the conquistadores in the territories of the New World. This transfer of knowhow from the 15th century to the 21st cannot be but Catholic-inspired. These days, the American version of the conquistadores are the bosses of American PMC's, such as Blackwater or Titan, active in all theatres of operations, from Iraq and Afghanistan to Ukraine. This industry is now worth  240 billion dollars. The PMC's largely escape the control of US military authorities, being in the employ of the State Department or the CIA . People like Erik Prince, for example, are the modern-day incarnations of Pizarro or Cortes.

It is a tragic development that the West's current leaders prefer civilisational suicide - because that is what is going to happen if the US continues to fight Russia in Ukraine - instead of pursuing a rational policy of retreat to the Americas and of renouncing global ambitions. However, humanity as a whole may ultimately benefit from the downfall of Western civilisation, as ordinary citizens are fed up with the tragedies caused by the successive imperialisms of the West.