Existing regional organizations founded in the old world order have to rethink and redefine their purpose. NATO was founded to protect Western Europe from a Soviet bloc invasion. The collapse of the Soviet Union rendered the traditional European-NATO model obsolete. The 28 member organization, added 12 members, including three former Soviet republics after the Soviet collapse. Now that some of the former Soviet bloc countries are members, NATO had to go out of region or out of business. The wars in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq were a life line.
Richard Nixon was right when he admonished people to study NATO. “Those who yearn for an international body to serve as a framework for key elements of American strategic planning need look no further than NATO, whose credibility, dependability and formidability, far outstrip the United Nations,” the late president said.
NATO has redefined itself after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Its first war in its 50-year history was against Serbian Yugoslavs for their ethnic cleansing of Muslim Kosovars. NATO interfered in the domestic affairs of Yugoslavia because of its outrage at the genocide and ethnic cleansing taking place. NATO, a regional force, dealt with a regional issue because of the impact millions of refugees fleeing Yugoslavia would have on Europe. The civil war in Syria proved NATO right.
Should NATO have gotten involved in Syria’s civil war to prevent the refugee crisis Europe is now facing?
The war in Yugoslavia was a test that NATO met surprisingly well. Bill Clinton, England’s Tony Blair and Gerhard Schroeder of Germany, all former peaceniks, marched shoulder to shoulder. Massimo d’ Alema of Italy, a former communist, pledged to help bring down one of Europe’s last remaining communist dictators. Even Prime Minister Costas Simitis of Greece was quietly on board despite his country’s religious links to Serbia. Central European countries, such as Bulgaria and Romania, quietly did what they could.
After the attacks of 9/11, NATO invoked for the first time the NATO charter’s mutual defense clause, thus giving the U.S. the full military support of its NATO allies in the Afghan and Iraq wars.
NATO’s expanding role in Afghanistan and Iraq has reaffirmed why the 21st century geopolitical challenges dictate the reassessment of regional alliances to meet the new global reality.
I discuss the history of NATO and the conundrum NATO stalwart Turkey poses in Custom Maid Knowledge for New World Disorder.
To build NATO into an effective military force to restrain and repel Russia in Europe and the Baltics, European member states are going to have to increase their annual military budgets and not only meet their original commitments – but increase them! An alternative European military force will never see the light of day.
NATO, redefined, is a must for the New World Disorder. NATO expansion is not.