IS PENTAGON'S PRESENCE GOOD FOR AFRICA ?

 " We entered the region in force. We were looking, in particular, at how the U.S. strategy toward the Sahel is working. That's a strategy that we put in place about a year ago to try to bring more coherence to our efforts to support increased security," ( Victoria Nuland, 2022 )

After the start of the "war against terrorism", the Pentagon also appeared in Africa, managed until then by Europeans. The "results" were not long in coming: in the last 15 years, there have been 7 coups, led by local officers trained in the United States by the Pentagon (in Mali, Mauritania and Burkina Faso),eight if we include the recent military coup from Niger.

" Technically, the United States is not at war in Africa. But the practice and terminology of the US-led War on Terror has changed, making the US military’s involvement more difficult to trace. In the past 15 years, the US government has quietly expanded its military footprint across the African continent, engaging in “special operations” with African troops in the name of security. Since the 2007 establishment of the Africa Command (AFRICOM), the defense department’s regional combatant command for Africa, the US has adopted a military-first approach to securing its interests on the continent. This has had disastrous effects. Whether it’s the seemingly endless (undeclared) war against the militant group Al-Shabaab in Somalia or the wave of coups (in many cases led by US-trained officers), AFRICOM has contributed to the very instability it claims to address." ( Samar al-Bulushi)

In other words,  according to Nuland, all the coups mentioned above - directed against democratically elected governments - have had the objective of "bringing more coherence" in supporting "security efforts" in the Sahel region. In reality, the US military presence by proxy in Africa was the root cause for the spread of military anarchy in  Sahel.

An Agenda for NATO's 2024 Washington Summit

"The most serious danger to the security of the world right now ? The United States itself. The United States has become the most profound source of instability and an uncertain exemplar of democracy." (Richard Haass, former President, Council on Foreign Relations, July 2023)

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It is not by accident that I decided to write this post on the national day of France. 

Since NATO's foundation, the French have always been ill-at-ease with the US' leadership style of the alliance. In 1949, 13 American senators were also opposed to its foundation. Senator Robert A Taft, the son of the 27th American president, William Taft, refused to vote in favour because 

: “If we undertake to arm all the nations around Russia from Norway on the north to Turkey on the south, and Russia sees itself ringed about gradually by so-called defensive arms from Norway and … Denmark to Turkey and Greece, it may form a different opinion. It may decide that the arming of western Europe, regardless of its present purpose, looks to an attack upon Russia. Its view may be unreasonable, and I think it is. But from the Russian standpoint it may not seem unreasonable…. How would we feel if Russia undertook to arm a country on our border; Mexico, for instance?”

To be sure, NATO's recent enlargement around the Baltic Sea cannot obscure the fact that this alliance has outlived its usefulness by some two decades and that it has, unfortunately, become the main war provocateur and a menace to global peace. 

No European expert or politician of note really believes that EU nations are under threat of invasion from Russia. By contrast, Russia has rightfully complained for years about NATO's expansion from Central Europe eastwards, to no avail. Its misgivings were proven prescient, as NATO has expanded right up to Russia's borders.

Since 1999, NATO has become an offensive alliance, as the wars in Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq and the bombing campaigns in Syria and Libya have demonstrated. Gone are the days when NATO tasked itself with preserving peace in Europe. Nowadays there is even talk of dragging European NATO allies into the Indo-Pacific, presumably to deter China from invading Taiwan. American policymakers cannot truly hope to enlist NATO's European allies to participate in a conflict with China: in 2003 the US was unable to convince them to take part in the invasion of Iraq - a much less dangerous adversary.

These are only a few reasons why the upcoming NATO 2024 summit in Washington should have only one item on its agenda: the peaceful dissolution of this alliance. It can no longer justify its existence in geostrategic terms, and it has become toxic to its European allies. NATO officials should forget about building expensive new headquarters in Europe, opening liaison offices in Japan or pressing its members to increase their military spending. The US is no longer in a position to be the global hegemon, since it now lacks a strong industrial base and its budget deficits have become unbearable for the average American taxpayers. Putting its fiscal house in order should be the main priority for the US. Nowadays it can ill-afford to maintain its 750 military bases worldwide and to simultaneously finance NATO's European allies' defence, as well as Ukraine.

As in our nuclear age the dismantling of NATO is the only rational choice, the entire US political class should give their full support to the executive branch and back a decision to curtail the agony of an alliance which lacks a solid geostrategic justification for its existence. In other words, NATO's main preoccupation in 2024 should not be Ukraine or Russia, but how to fold its war tents from Europe as peacefully as the Soviets did in 1991.

A Eulogy for the White World

 The sheer stupidity of NATO leaders gathered in Vilnius is such that they do not realise they are hastening the final demise of their world. 

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Do you know any more stupid race than the white one ? If so, please point it out to me, because I, as a historian, do not know of any other ! 

The story of the white world's impending demise from preeminence (think here Russia, Europe and North America) began 2500 years ago in Ancient Greece. 

In order to be able to vanquish the invading Persians, Athens focused all its diplomatic skill to build the impressive Delian League, which included most Greek city-states. Unfortunately, after their alliance's victory against the Persians, Athenians rather unwisely transformed the League into an alliance dedicated to perpetuating their hegemony over the entire Greek world. This was anathema to Sparta, which fought Athens during the fratricide Peloponnesian war and, in the process, provoked the total destruction of the Greek civilisation, the most advanced in the world at the time.

Athens' brilliant achievements during Pericles's era in the 5th century B.C. were mirrored by Europe in the 19th century. As a result of the industrial revolution and colonial expansionism, the continent - home to the bulk of the white race - reached its zenith.

To the bitter disappointment of the intellectuals of the time, the 20th century proved to be an unmitigated disaster for the white world. The drive to achieve hegemony over it, pitching Germans against an alliance between Great Britain, France and Russia, provoked tens of millions of victims on the continent. This "war to end all wars" was in fact the greatly magnified version of the Peloponnesian war that destroyed Greece during Antiquity. 

The second world war followed within a generation, proving to be at least as destructive as the first. It mortally wounded a white world that completely lost its solidarity, which had hitherto generally been the norm for hundreds of years.

Built on the ruins of WWII, the NATO military and political alliance was formed by the United States, which succeeded in keeping the peace on the European continent for almost 60 years. After the implosion of the USSR, the US unwisely decided - like Athens did - to repurpose NATO as an instrument of hegemonic domination over the entire European continent, Russia excluded. This new Nato has as a result become an offensive alliance which, sadly, needed a new enemy. It therefore designated the Russian Federation, as the successor to its old Soviet foe of the Cold War years.

Back at the height of its economic and military power, as the 19th century drew to a close, the white world decided it was strong enough to conquer and partition China. In the 21st century, the objectives of the Nato alliance are currently more modest. It is now aiming at destroying and partitioning Russia only. Thus the type of conflict engineered by the US in Ukraine can be characterised as a kind of civil war, pitching the white nations of Europe - using Ukrainians as their proxy - against Russia.

This ill-inspired drive against a kin country like Russia, however, could only end up in a total disaster for the whole of the white world. The war now being stoked in Ukraine could be the catalyst to "the End of History" Fukuyama peddled during the '90's. Sadly, however, the history of the white world will not end with the universal triumph of liberal democracy, but in a nuclear holocaust instead. 

If this is not the ultimate expression of stupidity, what is ?