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Arts, Books, History, NATO, Society, United States

Book review: Deterring Armageddon

LITERARY REVIEW: A BIOGRAPHY OF NATO

Intro: NATO’s modus operandi is centred around the pledge that an attack on one member is an attack on all. In a provocative new book, however, the author asks: would any nation today really put itself in the firing line to protect another?

DURING the depths of the Cold War, 40 years ago, there were undoubtedly gullible victims in Britain of Moscow propaganda.

Paradoxically, many of these people have now become warmongering Blairites, keen advocates in bombing distant countries. But back in the 1980s, they detested NATO with every human fibre. Houses were plastered with peacenik posters; many camped out at the U.S. Air Force base at Greenham Common, protesting against the presence of American cruise missiles; others still chained themselves to fences and blocked roads leading into the Naval base at Faslane; the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) was rampant among the militants who were disruptive in their aims and actions.

Many of these people were perceived as being deluded as they actively wanted the former Soviet Union to dominate all of Europe. They failed, yes, but actually, only by a narrow margin.

They failed because NATO held together under very great pressure from the Kremlin and from the European Left. The Communist Empire had exhausted itself in one last failed attempt to destroy the Free West, and the Soviet Union sickened and eventually perished.

Many things contributed to that demise, but many military commentators and analysts believe that the battle over cruise missiles, and the resolve of NATO, were decisive.

The NATO alliance, set up in 1949 specifically to prevent a Soviet takeover of Western Europe, still exists almost 33 years after the collapse of the Soviet empire. Yet, an oddity is at play. The alliance was created to deal with that particular menace, which still exists long after that threat melted away.

Even more surprising, NATO has actually got bigger since its arch enemy vanished. An explanation is more than overdue.

We should therefore be very grateful to Peter Apps, a British Army reservist, and Reuters columnist, for writing a comprehensive and full history of NATO since its inception in 1949 to today.

The workings of this book started life under the rather exalted working title “Sacred Obligation”. But are we looking at an organisation that has become the world’s most successful bluff?

Mr Apps spends a great deal of his time chronicling the endless unresolved tension between the mighty, rich, and powerful U.S., NATO’s backbone and muscle, and Europe, its vulnerable and pitifully weak underbelly. It was of course this tension which the USSR ceaselessly sought to exploit.

NATO’s historic and famous promise, that an attack on one would be an attack on all, was and remains a very precarious gamble. History features sad examples of security pacts being called out and exposed as bluffs.

The normally pugnacious Lord Palmerston wriggled out of Britain’s 1860s pledge to defend Denmark against Prussia – when he realised it would get us into a war we would lose.

Neville Chamberlain’s 1939 guarantee to protect Poland from Germany failed to deter Hitler from invading. Even worse, when the invasion came, Britain did nothing.

And we shouldn’t forget, either, how fiercely determined America was in 1939, and for years afterwards, in staying out of European quarrels. Donald Trump means what he says, too.

Washington only went to war against Berlin after Hitler declared war on America, not the other way round. Any careful and studious reader of this book will begin to wonder whether NATO, far from being an enshrined promise of aid in time of trouble, is in fact a good way of avoiding any real obligation to fight.

The much-touted Article 5 of NATO’s charter is not quite the magnificent guarantee of armed support from the strong to the weak that it appears to be. Members of the alliance pledge to assist an attacked nation “by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force”.

Read carefully. This means that if a NATO member does not “deem” armed force to be necessary, it can send a note of protest instead, or make a fierce and angry speech at the United Nations.

America would never have signed or ratified a treaty which obliged it to go to war, which is why the clause is so weak.

All the small, poor ill-armed countries on NATO’s eastern edge would be well advised to take note of that. During its 40-year life cycle, NATO has shown how cautious, limited, and risk-averse it has been. Its recent reinvention as a kind of mini-United Nations task force has been mainly outside its original operational area, in former Yugoslavia, Libya, and Afghanistan.

Its founding membership was carefully restricted to countries already well outside the Soviet sphere of influence.

It stood aside when Russian tanks crushed the 1953 East Berlin rising, the 1956 Budapest revolt, and the 1968 Prague Spring.

It did precious little when Moscow ordered Poland’s Communist rulers to curtail a democratic and Christian rebellion by imposing brutal martial law there from 1981 to 1983.

Where the West did stand up to Soviet power in Europe, mainly in West Berlin, it tended to be the U.S. which did most of the heavy lifting. We should suspect it is still much the same. In an enlightening passage, Apps describes a recent scene at NATO’s Joint Force Command in the Dutch town of Brunssum.  

He writes: “Officials in its 24-hour operations room described their main role as stopping the Ukraine war spreading to alliance territory”. Well, quite. For who knows what stress would be placed on NATO if, thanks to some rash incursion or off-course missile, it faced a direct war with Russia?

As it happens, the task of avoiding the spread of war into NATO territory would be much easier if NATO had not expanded so far east in the past 30 years. Its leaders had been warned.

In 1997, the greatest and toughest anti-Soviet U.S. diplomat of modern times, George Kennan, said shortly before he died: “Expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era.”

Recalling his generation’s successful handling of Soviet power, he sighed: “This has been my life, and it pains me to see it so screwed up in the end.”

– Deterring Armageddon: A Biography of NATO by Peter Apps is published by Wildfire, 624pp

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Britain, Defence, Europe, European Union, Government, Islamic State, Military, National Security, NATO, Politics, Russia, Society, United States

NATO requires direction and purpose…

NATO

The two-day NATO summit in Newport, Wales, represents a key and defining moment in the organisation’s 65-year history. More recently it has become apt to question whether the post-war transatlantic alliance even has a future, particularly when NATO ends combat operations in Afghanistan at the end of the year. Defence budgets among the leading European powers have been severely cut and, coupled with the crippling lack of political will to reach consensus on vital security issues, critics of this Western alliance have been able to make a convincing case that the organisation is in real danger of becoming obsolete.

NATO’s future continuity and preservation as a global entity for good will now depend to a large extent on how leaders of the 28-nation alliance respond to the alarming array of new challenges that threaten not only the security of Europe, but the wider world.

The horrific and gruesome murders of two American journalists by Islamic State terrorists in Iraq, and the imminent possibility that a British hostage could soon suffer a similar fate, has highlighted in graphic and disturbing detail the very serious threat to Western security posed by radical militants associated with the self-proclaimed Islamic State – one that has taken root in lawless areas of northern Syria and Iraq. Then there is Russian President Vladimir Putin’s blatant and ruthless military intervention in Ukraine, actions which have led to Russia brazenly supporting rebel and pro-militia groups loyal to the Kremlin in maintaining the tempo over the challenge to Ukraine’s territorial integrity and encroachment of a sovereign state. The true extent of the rebel support was realised earlier this week when a Russian tank column was identified as being in support of capturing Luhansk airport. As if to confirm his disregard for Western attempts to rein in Mr Putin’s new-found spirit of adventurism, Moscow even boasted that it could take Kiev in just two weeks if it wanted to.

When considering too the continuing threats posed by al-Qaeda, the uncertain fate that awaits Afghanistan when the US-led NATO mission completes its withdrawal later this year, and the endemic lawlessness in other parts of the Middle East and North Africa, it is clear that the West is facing its most difficult period since the end of the Cold War.

NATO’s ability to provide an effective response to these multifarious threats will depend ultimately on whether it can summon the collective political will and leadership to take decisive action against its enemies. For an organisation whose decision-making process requires consensual agreement, attempts to find a common policy amongst all the nations of the alliance have all too often been hampered by deep political divisions. Most recently these have surfaced in the way the major European powers have sought to respond to Russian aggression in Ukraine, with countries such as Germany and Italy unwilling to back the more robust stance favoured by Britain and the U.S. But neither has the NATO cause been helped by President Barack Obama’s reluctance to become involved in overseas conflicts. Mr Obama’s detached approach was evidentially confirmed in the last few days when the president admitted ‘we don’t have a strategy yet’ for dealing with Islamic State militants: this, despite their murderous assaults on American citizens.

There are some encouraging signs that NATO is preparing to rise to Mr Putin’s bellicosity in eastern Europe. Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the outgoing NATO secretary-general, has already announced the establishment of a new, 4,000-strong rapid-reaction force capable of reacting to any future crisis in eastern Europe with just 48 hours’ notice. Many European member states will also come under pressure to honour the NATO commitment of spending 2 per cent of their GDP on defence. The decision to establish new logistics centres along the Russian border to enable the rapid provision and requisition of military equipment in the event of a crisis is also another welcome indication that NATO’s members are not prepared to tolerate any further territorial incursions by the Kremlin. Whilst encouraging that there are signs the alliance has rediscovered a real sense of purpose, effective political leadership is now urgently needed.

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Afghanistan, Britain, Government, Politics, United States

The United States and Britain hold peace talks with the Taliban…

The UK has announced it is set to join peace talks with the Taliban to bring an end to the 12-year conflict in Afghanistan that has cost more than 400 British lives.

Washington announced earlier this week that negotiations with the Taliban will begin as early as today in the Gulf state of Qatar.

David Cameron gave his backing to the peace plan and revealed that the UK has been ‘fully engaged’ in the process for some time.

A number of Conservative MPs warn the talks could lead to a sell-out that hands southern Afghanistan back to the militants who have killed 444 British servicemen since 2001. It has also emerged that Taliban fighters are likely to be released as a ‘confidence-building measure’ as part of the talks.

It is understood that British intelligence officers have been conducting secret negotiations with the Taliban for the past two years to help pave the way for the talks. Intelligence agents and diplomats are likely to join in if the initial exchanges suggest that a deal can be done.

Under the terms of the arrangement, the Taliban has vowed to break its links with Al-Qaeda terrorists in exchange for a role in running Afghanistan when Western combat troops withdraw at the end of next year.

The announcement was made immediately after NATO handed over control for combat operations to Afghan security forces in every region of the country.

The talks in the Qatari capital, Doha, where the Taliban has opened an office, may also include representatives of the Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai.

While the US will have its first formal meeting with the Taliban in several years, it is expected that will be quickly followed up by a meeting between the Taliban and the High Peace Council – the structure that President Karzai has set up for talks of this nature.

The initial meeting with the Taliban is likely to be an ‘exchange of agendas’ in which both sides lay out what issues they want addressed. Prisoner exchanges will be one topic for discussion.

MI6 officers have been engaged on and off for more than two years in an attempt to get Afghans to talk to each other. The intelligence service believes this will lead to a positive outcome.

Mr Cameron has acknowledged that the talks would be ‘difficult’ for many people to accept, but he said we need to match the security response in Afghanistan with a political process to try and make sure that as many people as possible give up violence and join the political process.

The Prime Minister said that we should be very proud of what our Armed Forces have done because the proportion of terror plots against Britain emanating from Afghanistan has ‘radically reduced’ since 2001.

Conservative MP Bob Stewart, who commanded British Forces in Bosnia, has warned that the Taliban holds the ‘whip hand’ and negotiators need to ‘get the talks right’ or British service people would have ‘died in vain.’

General Khodaidad of Afghanistan, the former counter-narcotics minister, said the country’s armed forces would need to be able to prevent the return of Taliban control in the south, including Helmand province where British troops have been fighting.

Khodaidad says that the Afghan National Army will not be able to control Afghanistan for the long term. Like others he believes that some parts of Afghanistan will fall into the hands of the Taliban.

The military have always been clear that there needs to be a political solution. The irony now is that the country is not just handed back to the Taliban, the very regime which was toppled by the West in 2001.

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