With the exception of the Delian League and NATO, no other politico-military alliance has been kept operational after all its objectives were met. It is highly regrettable that the American political elite refuses to see NATO for what it really is: a zombie alliance that has become a menace to European and world peace.
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Ever since the first city-states appeared in ancient times, most countries felt compelled to enter into military and political alliances. The most common reason for doing so was that of deterring conquest by a more powerful state that would force them to lose their military and economic independence. Other alliances sought to maintain their members' political status quo and, especially in the modern era, to prevent the spread of liberalism in their lands (the Holy Alliance between 1815-1822; the Concert of Europe until 1914 ). Some European powers, during the 19th and 20th centuries, entered into alliances aimed at preventing the emergence of a single power as sole hegemon on the Continent.
The 20th century saw its fair share of political and military alliances, starting with the Triple Alliance between imperial Germany, Austro-Hungary and Italy, which was directed against British hegemony. This alliance was followed in 1904 by the Franco-British Entente, aimed at containing Germany's expansionist drive in Europe and Africa, and joined by Russia in 1905. With American help, this coalition of states succeeded in defeating imperial Germany during World War I.
In 1940 a new alliance, the Tripartite Pact, was concluded between Nazi Germany, imperial Japan and fascist Italy, with the objectives of defeating Britain with its European and American allies and of establishing themselves as the new hegemonic world powers. In order to thwart their plans and subsequent military expansionism, the US entered into an alliance with Soviet Russia between 1941-1945, which Great Britain also joined. Known as the Allied Powers, the Americans, the Soviets and the British succeeded in decisively defeating Germany, Japan and Italy.
In the aftermath of World War II, the world became bi-polar and witnessed the ideological confrontation between the USSR with its allies from Central and Eastern Europe and the Western European powers, allied this time under the leadership of the United States.
In order to preserve the ideological status quo in Western and Central Europe and to prevent a potential military invasion by the USSR, the Americans inaugurated the NATO alliance in 1949, in which Germany was also included as a member. Soon thereafter the Soviets created their own alliance coordinated by Moscow, the Warsaw Pact, with all the satellite countries from Central and Eastern Europe which -after 1945 - had been forced to adopt the communist system of government and accept the presence of troops on their territories.
By 1989 the Soviets decided that the military occupation of satellite countries and the enforcement of communist orthodoxy there had become counterproductive. Accordingly, they decided to call back their troops, to give up their political monopoly within the satellite countries of Central and Eastern Europe and to dissolve the Warsaw Pact. Furthermore, in 1991 the USSR imploded and the emerging Russia abandoned its centrally-planned economy, adopting a version of a market-oriented capitalist system.
Finding itself victorious against Soviet communism and having successfully prevented a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, the United States made the bizarre decision, however, to maintain the NATO alliance even after its objectives had been fully met. Moreover, although Russia ceased to be the military threat it had once been to Western Europe, NATO expanded eastwards in 2 waves, in 1997 and 2004, via the inclusion of former Soviet satellites (Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria) or territories (the Baltic States), to the great disquiet of Moscow.
In truth, over the past 3 decades NATO has become a veritable zombie alliance, which is highly detrimental to most of its European allies and -since 2014- a menace to peace in Europe. Its planned expansion to Finland and Sweden cannot hide for long its true character or the need to replace it with a pan-EU security organisation, as consistently requested by France since the Iraq invasion of 2003.
In the 21st century new military and political alliances have appeared. In Eurasia the most important is the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), which includes China, Russia, four of the five Central Asian "stans" and India. The main focus of this alliance is that of preventing or defeating Islamic extremism or terrorism in the region.
A few years ago the Japanese, the US, Australia and India have agreed to create the Quad, an organisation aimed at containing China, which - like CENTO and SEATO before it - would not live up to its objectives.
Finally, the Americans, the Australians and the British decided to form the AUKUS alliance two years ago, aimed at managing the decline of US hegemony and at preventing its members from being attacked or defeated militarily (after the dissolution of NATO it is highly likely that Canada will join it as well). AUKUS is, therefore, one of the few new security alliances that are highly cohesive internally and it has all the chances of becoming one of the leading security organisations of this century.
