On the G8 and NATO

 In the spring of 1997 during my lobbying activity to foreign chancelleries, I was very preoccupied with the need to create an appropriate institutional framework for the transition from a bipolar to a multipolar world. American neoconservatives and NATO had other plans, however. If they wanted Russia as an enemy, well ... now they got it.

In the spring of 1997, I came up with the idea of ​​recommending to the Clinton administration the inclusion of Russia in the G7, a proposal that was accepted by the Americans. Thus, in June 1997 the G7 became G8 with Russia as a member.

My geopolitical suggestion was based on solid economic reasons, but also on the fact that Russia felt immense frustration with its international status after the disappearance of the bipolar world. Between 1995 and 1997 I participated in a series of international conferences organized by EuroForum or IBC (two London companies) in Bucharest, Prague and London on the transition of Eastern European states to a market economy and the necessary reforms. On those occasions, I was able to see the dissatisfaction of the Russians with the way this process was evolving in their country, but also with the uncertain status of the new Russia internationally.

Unfortunately  at the time , the West had not yet framed a coherent post-1989 foreign policy, so as to give the Russians the feeling that they had not become a third-hand power, as many US or EU political actors would have liked. The fact that my proposal was accepted proves that at that time the Clinton administration had not yet come to be dominated by neoconservatives, the artisans behind American unipolarity, that was inaugurated by President GW Bush after the 2001 terrorist attack.

In the end, Russia was arbitrarily reduced - at the instigation of the neoconservatives - to the status of a big state with an oil pump ( Nina Khrushcheva ) and was removed from the G8 in 2014, after it annexed the Crimean peninsula.

In the summer of 1997, I also sent a lobby letter to then-US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in support of Romania's NATO membership. My motivation was by no means anti-Russian. At that time, the country was in a dire economic situation, failing to attract - like the Czech Republic, Hungary or Poland - foreign investors to take over large bankrupt companies in Romania. It was only years later that I realised that the military goal of the alliance had really become that of encircling Russia, and it never crossed my mind in 1997 that NATO would accept the Baltic states in 2004 as members of the alliance. ..

Certainly at that time, I did not grasp that I was trying to gain Romania's accession to a politico-military alliance, NATO, which would become responsible two decades later for the outbreak of hostilities heralding World War III, because this is the phase which we are all in after the events of 2014 in Ukraine. Mea maxima culpa !

WHO WiLL TAKE OVER NATO'S TOP JOB ?

 The mature Western liberal democracies are lately in the habit of promoting representatives of some Lilliputian states, devoid of any military importance within the alliance, to fill NATO's top job.

This explains the fact that President Obama, himself a representative of a minority, promoted a Danish citizen as Secretary General of NATO in 2009, namely Anders Fogh Rasmussen, representing a minority of small states within the alliance.

In 2014, the same Barack Obama promoted Jens Stoltenberg, the representative of a state of only 5 million people, as Secretary General. (This may also be related to the decline of NATO's importance as a politico-military organization after the demise of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact.)

Compare this situation with the one before 2003, when the job of NATO Secretary General was occupied by the representatives of the great European nations: Britain (Lord Ismay, Lord Carrington or George Robertson), Germany (Manfred Worner) , Spain (Javier Solana), or Italy (Manlio Brosio), with two or three Belgians or Dutch among them when tensions during the Cold War were lower in intensity.

If the appointments of new NATO Secretaries-General continue in the same tradition, we can expect Estonians, Lithuanians or Latvians to be appointed to this post. They have in common with their Danish and Norwegian predecessors the fact that their states, although tiny and insignificant militarily, are close to Russia or have a common border with it. This is because NATO's number one enemy is no longer the USSR, but Russia.

The Failed Presidents of Eastern Europe

  With each passing day, I am more and more convinced that the Ukrainians have fallen into the same political trap as Romanian voters did when they elected Iohannis as president in 2014.

To be sure, Iohannis did not have the necessary national political experience : until his election, he was the mayor of a Transylvanian city atypical for Romania, nor was he a member of the Liberal Party (he had been active in the German Forum). No, he was elected because Romanian voters thought that by endorsing a Saxon they would get a better treatment in Brussels and that they would be accepted faster in the Schengen area by the EU:

"The election of Iohannis is undoubtedly linked to high expectations and hopes. But these alone do not fundamentally change the political situation in Romania,"  a leading German CDU MP said. "Doubts about Romania's accession to the Schengen Area persist (...) (Romania) will not achieve this goal in 2015," he added. The reaction of the chairman of the Bundestag Committee on Internal Affairs comes in the context in which, recently, the president Klaus Iohannis declared in the German press that he will make efforts for Romania's accession to Schengen to take place in 2015. "( Adevarul newspaper from 2015)

In turn, Zelensky was elected president without any previous political experience. In my opinion, the Ukrainians voted for him because of the supposed connections that someone of his ethnicity might have in Washington. Ukrainians seem to have believed - wrongly, as it comes out - that the mere choice of Zelensky as president would secure their admission into NATO. ( Unfortunately, neoconservatives of Jewish origin's perceived domination of US State Department structures had created a vulnerability for the United States, which is currently being exploited by the likes of Zelensky. )

Both Iohannis and Zelensky were also elected with a mandate to end corruption, which has not happened. Instead, Iohannis became - ironically for a descendant of Hitler's allies in Transylvania - a vocal champion of campaigns to combat anti-Semitism in Romania ...

The two presidents both belong to microscopic ethnic minorities from Romania or Ukraine, which unfortunately do not have a history of harmonious coexistence with the majorities of the two states. This fact makes their selection for their state's top job  even more inexcusable.

The consequences of choosing the two presidents are worrying, to say the least. Romania's domestic political instability has become chronic over the past year, while Zelensky has managed to endanger peace across Eastern Europe through his uninspired neighborhood policy.

It is obvious today that at the instigation of domestic and / or foreign services, both peoples made a colossal electoral error. I am curious to see, however, how all this will play out in the end.

THE CRISIS OF DIPLOMACY II : " MAKE LOVE, NOT WAR " ☺

 

With each passing day, Western states are taking resolute steps towards becoming  irrelevant.

Woke ideology, left-wing feminism, critical race theory  are all undermining a civilization that seems determined to shed its  past achievements and give up the pre-eminent role it has played until recently.

States that are much less economically developed or that are more primitive from a social or political point of view are, as a result, becoming much more insolent and confident that they will soon take over the world.

A last-minute trend in the demise of the West is the so-called " feminist foreign policy, " which is sure to strike a blow at the diplomatic profession,  already badly affected  by the changes of the past 30 years.

Feminists who fancy themselves  as diplomats do not seem to understand that the essential role of diplomats is to sign peace treaties, to settle conflicts between states, not to catalyze them. Feminist assumptions about diplomacy being mistaken, their "contributions"  are useless. It's enough to consider the performance in office  of Madeleine Albright, Hillary Clinton or  Victoria Nuland and one gets the picture.

Thus, if  Albright had tempered the Baltic states' desire to become NATO members, for example, Russia would not have a casus belli today against the West. She was also responsible for botching the peace negotiations with Milosevic and for the bombings in Bosnia and Serbia from 1999. There are a few American IR specialists who have deplored the way NATO turned out after 1989. Thus from a military alliance tasked with keeping the peace in Europe, NATO has emerged as an aggressive organisation which started quite a few wars since 1999. In no small measure, this shocking shift in NATO's mission is the legacy of the first woman to become Secretary of State in the history of the US, and not that of  any "toxic" NATO general.

We should also remember the disaster in Libya patronized by the then head of American diplomacy, Hillary Clinton. Counter to the advice of the Defence Department , which was opposed to military action against Gaddafi, Hillary Clinton convinced Obama to authorize the bombing campaign in Libya, with devastating consequences .

One should not forget the "contribution" to peace in Ukraine made by Nuland , who personally oversaw the overthrow of the Yanukovych regime in Kiev...

So far, therefore, the presence of women in diplomacy has not shown that they are better negotiators, less aggressive than men, or better trained professionally. So where are the exaggerated claims of German feminists coming from?

A Possible Blueprint for Preserving Peace in Europe

 August 2, 2017

Remember Montesquieu and his “doux commerce” ? “L’effet naturel du commerce est de porter à la paix. Deux nations qui négocient ensemble, se rendent réciproquement dépendantes: si l’une a intérêt d’acheter, l’autre a intérêt de vendre; et toutes les unions sont fondées sur des besoins mutuelles. Mais si l’esprit de commerce unit les nations, il n’unit pas de même les particuliers.”

Over the past few hundred years, this belief has become an integral part of the liberal credo and it animates the economic thinking of globalists to this day. Alas, the promise of trade as a peace-promoting activity among nations has never been fulfilled to date. The recent adoption of additional sanctions against Russia by the US senate amply proves that geopolitical tensions among nations and blocks of nations can thwart the beneficial effects of trade among them. One of the problems is that Russia and the United States are essentially alike tradewise. Both countries rely heavily for their export earnings on commodities (oil & gas) and sales of military hardware to their allies…

In many ways, the European Union is caught in the current crossfire between the former cold war enemies. A new and more dangerous version of the first cold war between the Americans and the Russians has emerged, one that is commonly called cold war 2.0. It has occurred as a direct result of the relentless expansion of NATO eastwards since the turn of the millennium and it is now seriously affecting international trade.

Nevertheless, restoring peaceful relations between the EU, US and Russia is an essential precondition of resuming normal trade relationships. But how to achieve this?

First, the Western alliance should recognize that the presence of NATO in the countries bordering Russia is viewed in Moscow as a huge security threat. Thus, not only should its expansion into Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia be halted, but additional confidence-building steps should be undertaken in order to defuse the current tensions.

Second, the Baltic countries should themselves revert to a neutral status, even as they retain EU membership.

Third, a newly-formed neutral zone between NATO and Russia should be created. This would include Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia, whose security should be guaranteed by multilateral treaties between NATO powers and Russia.

Past experience has proven that in case of conflict, in all these countries with sizeable Russian minorities, their allegiance naturally tilts towards Moscow. This makes these states, at the best of times, unreliable NATO allies or candidates. Furthermore, history has also shown that states like Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia achieve a relatively higher level of internal stability when led by pro-Russian leaders.

Putting a stop to NATO’s expansion and taking a step back from the Russian borders would restore peaceful relations with Russia and improve trade ties. Just as important, it would prove that NATO is not bent on expansion at the expense of trade, but stays true to its original mandate of preserving peace on the continent.

NATO and the Baltics' Geopolitical Predicament

May 6, 2016

During the 90’s, the uncontested dean of American diplomacy, the late George Kennan, fulminated against NATO’s expansion eastwards, which he considered both unnecessary and potentially dangerous for the security of the United States. The Clinton and Bush administrations did not heed sound professional advice and now the Baltics’ inclusion into NATO is creating major headaches for the alliance’s military planners.

The planned deployment of a few NATO battalions in the Baltics has already irked the Russian military, who decided to deploy three divisions in order to counter the perceived danger on their northwestern border. Most Western military analysts have recently highlighted the fact that NATO is in no position to really protect Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in case the Russians do decide to attack, which they obviously do not intend to at this point in time.

Objectively speaking, small coastal states – like the Baltics – cannot be defended indefinitely against a much more powerful neighbour in search of access to the sea. Here is what the founder of American geopolitics, Nicholas Spykman, had to say in 1938 about it :

“The fate of the newly-created coastal states (…), the three Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia is still to be determined, but to the geographer they appear as distinct anachronisms in the evolution of geographic state types, and it is hard for any student of history to study a map of Europe without a strong conviction that Russia will some day force her way to the Baltic and swallow them a second time” (“Geography and Foreign Policy II”, pp.219-220)

The size and geographical location of the Baltics, therefore, will render their defense against Russia useless in the long run. This does not mean that Vladimir Putin – or even his successor in the Kremlin – has any current invasion plans concerning these three republics. NATO military planners, however, are duty-bound to take these geopolitical realities into consideration and avoid the risk of exposing the alliance to military conflict with Russia.

Granted, over the past few decades Western politicians have chosen to ignore solid geopolitical advice and to act in the name of certain ideals that are at odds with geography and sound foreign policy principles. This ignorance of geopolitics has been the source of many a policy error in Europe and the Middle East, to mention but two geographical regions currently in turmoil.

The upheavals in the Middle East and North Africa and the shaky internal situation in Turkey, on the other hand, mean that the United States – and the West generally – needs Russia’s cooperation more than it ever did in the past. Accordingly, by making an unnecessary troop deployment decision in the Baltics, NATO risks being embroiled in facing alone the Islamist threat in the Middle East and possibly even the unraveling of the political order in Turkey. As matters currently stand, the president of Turkey has already proven his willingness to stoke up an open military conflict with Russia, which of course his country cannot hope to win.

Both the small Baltic republics and Turkey, therefore, have the potential to drag the other NATO members into direct confrontation with the Russian army, a development that no NATO commander seriously contemplates though. Still, the ugly European experience during WWI illustrates the fact that small countries, like the Baltic republics, or desperate political leaders like Erdogan are quite able to ignite a generalized military conflict, paid for with the lives of their much larger and peaceful neighbours that can be induced to sleepwalk their way into such a conflict.

Consequently, the political leaders of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania should be well advised by NATO’s major military powers to tone down their anti-Russian rhetoric and try to find ways to cohabitate peacefully with their neighbour. ( Incidentally, this is the same type of advice I have given in 2008 to the Estonian Ambassador to France during a seminar on these matters that took place at Sciences po in Toulouse).

As for Turkey, the NATO high command should make it clear to the country’s military that shooting down Russian aircraft for minor violations of the country’s airspace will not constitute the casus belli that could automatically trigger the full involvement of NATO into conflict, as stipulated by Article 5 of the alliance’s treaty. To be sure, this provision in the treaty is activated only when one of NATO’s member states is subject to fully fledged armed intervention by a hostile power.

How NATO is Failing the EU

 December 3, 2015

The untrained observer could be forgiven for believing that NATO is still acting as a military and political organization dedicated to protecting the security of its members. Enlarging the organization with a less-than-significant member (militarily speaking) like Montenegro cannot, however, obscure NATO’s huge failure to adapt to today’s radically changed geopolitical and strategic landscape.
Headed in the past few years by Russia-obsessed officials hailing from European northern kingdoms (Rasmussen from Denmark or Stoltenberg from Norway), the alliance has failed to recognize that these days the biggest threat to the security of all NATO countries is represented by existing or emerging Islamic countries from the Middle East instead.
Nor did NATO reckon with the fact that, since 2002, the secular regime in Turkey was replaced by an Islamic one. This mega transformation of Turkish society – which is still ongoing – has ended up creating a serious security threat for the European Union as a whole, as illustrated by this year’s refugee crisis. Indeed, not only has Turkey failed to live up to its obligations as a NATO member, such as sealing its border with Syria, but over the past four years it has allowed tens of thousands of jihadi fighters from all over the world to cross the country and join ISIS. This year it has decided to allow hundreds of thousands of refugees on its territory to practically invade EU countries unhindered. One of Erdogan’s advisers, Burhan Kuzu, has even hailed Turkey’s latest exercise in extortion as a success for the AKP regime:

“The EU finally got Turkey’s message and opened its purse strings. What did we say? ‘We’ll open our borders and unleash all the Syrian refugees on you.”

For a number of years after 2002, I too believed that a moderate Islamic government in power in Turkey could make the country more politically stable and economically prosperous. Not anymore. The assistance – overt or covert – extended by the AKP regime to Islamists in Syria and elsewhere, the scandal of appointing Erdogan’s son-in-law as energy minister and his son as the head of another energy company ( as if Turkey was an oil-producing powerhouse), the savage repression of journalists, of the free press and of Turkish officials who are trying to uphold the rule of law within the country, have all finally contributed to convincing me that the AKP regime has outlived its usefulness for Turkey and for the NATO alliance, as well.
Undaunted, the current NATO leadership, with some behind the scenes assistance from American neo-cons, is trying to recycle expired Cold War policies and continue to depict Russia as the main enemy of the West. In so doing, the organization conclusively proves that it has become obsolete and useless when it comes to addressing major security threats affecting its members.
It is my belief that Turkey wouldn’t have dared shoot down a Russian aircraft – a jamais vu event in the Alliance’s history – if the country’s leaders had not been certain that anti-Russian bias at the top levels of NATO would prevail.

Still, instead of discussing Russia, NATO ministers would be well-advised to hold a special session dedicated to assessing Turkey’s continuing usefulness for the Alliance in the current strategic circumstances. In the light of this year’s developments, Turkey – NATO’s only Muslim member – has emerged as a dangerous ally and a questionable friend. In other words, instead of trying to evict Greece – Turkey’s main victim in the refugee crisis – from the Schengen area, it would definitely prove more useful to consider the suspension of Turkey from NATO command structures until such time as the AKP leadership could come clean on the issues of unchecked refugee migration to Europe, jihadi movements to and from Syria, shady oil dealings and the supply of weaponry to Islamic insurgents.

The "New Europe" NATO Summit in Bucharest

November 6, 2015

The fact that the EU is undergoing its most profound existential crisis ever is by now an open secret. The Greek debt crisis had produced a North-South divide in Europe, whereas the migrant crisis has prompted a rebellion against the EU leadership from Eastern bloc members. Nowadays, NATO itself is contributing to the existing divisions by bringing back to life the “Old Europe – New Europe” division of the Bush Jr. era.

Thus, on the 3rd and 4th of November, NATO has organized a “ Presidents’ Summit “ which took place behind closed doors in Bucharest. The meeting was attended by nine presidents of EU member countries from Central and Eastern Europe, and resulted in a declaration which could rightly be called an anti-Juncker document. The final document stressed the need to strengthen ties with the United States and stand united against “Russian aggressiveness”.

It is an undisputed fact that the EU’s eastern and southern borders are far from secure as a result of the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. Both conflicts were ignited by American covert operations or outright military intervention in those regions, which have very little to do – if at all – with EU foreign or neighbourhood policies’ objectives.

Still, the EU is paying the price for American foreign policy amateurism, which is what has prompted Juncker and Merkel’s recent overtures towards Russia and Turkey. To be sure, Juncker’s declaration concerning Russia and Merkel’s visit to Turkey are by and large part of a PR exercise meant to soothe the leadership in Moscow and Ankara and maybe pave the way for a reset of the EU’s relations with the two countries.

The summit in Bucharest went largely ignored in the international media because of the current street protests in the Romanian capital. By reviving Rumsfeld’s “New Europe” concept, however, and by trying to pitch the leaders of Central and Eastern European countries against the president of the European Commission, the Americans are contributing plenty towards aggravating the rifts that threaten the very existence of the EU. Whilst this might not be their ultimate intention, the outcome of the latest NATO strategy in Europe is going to hurt transatlantic ties more than it would stunt Juncker and Merkel’s efforts to patch up relations with Russia or Turkey.