From time to time it can be said that the wheel of history turns, or at least increases the speed of its rotation, by virtue of words, or statements. The idea of the collective defense of Western democracies is a matter of words.
He was born aboard a British warship, in August 1941, during a meeting between British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and US President Franklin Roosevelt. The words written aboard the Prince of Wales, to the sound of the church anthem “Come on, Christian soldiers!”, Were given the name “Atlantic Treaty.”
In August 1941 Prime Minister Winston Churchill and President Roosevelt met on HMS Prince of Wales and set out a vision for a post-war world in the Atlantic Charter.
The Allied Powers signed up to these principles at another meeting in London. pic.twitter.com/3xLxxfeiK5
– UK Prime Minister (@10DowningStreet) September 20, 2021
It was obvious. First of all, they were connected in the Atlantic Ocean, and they established an alliance between the two great Atlantic powers of their time. At the heart of the treaty was the liberation of mainland Europe from Hitler. Five months or less after the signing, the United States entered World War II.
In 1947, US President Harry Truman proclaimed the “Doctrine of Braking.” The enemy charged with containment was the Soviet Union. Truman’s statement was rather pessimistic. It did not promise to liberate the European countries that had fallen to the Soviets. It would have required a third world war. It promised, however, to protect the peace of countries that the Soviet Union had not yet achieved. She was up to the task.
In 1949 the meat was added to the bones. Twelve countries joined together to form the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO. The words “North Atlantic” still put the United States and Britain at the center, alongside France. But it also included countries far from the Atlantic such as Italy, Turkey and Greece.
A new “strategic conception”
NATO has undergone many incarnations since then. 35 years ago it seemed to have taken on the flavor of its existence. Six years ago, Donald Trump, then only claiming his party’s presidential candidacy, declared NATO “obsolete.” During his presidency, senior advisers feared he was about to announce a US withdrawal from NATO.
This week in Madrid, the summit of NATO leaders heralds a new incarnation. The North Atlantic Alliance is becoming a global defense organization. Leaders from East Asia and the Pacific were invited to its summit for the first time. Japan, South Korea and Australia may not join, at least not for the time being, but they are now sheltered in the shadow of a huge umbrella of a new “strategic conception”. NATO-plus, or plus-plus, expands its defensive definition far to the east, not by choice.
The previous strategic concept was approved in 2010. At the time, NATO leaders expressed the desire to establish a “true strategic partnership” with Russia. The choice of words was questionable even then, given that only two years earlier Russia had gone to war against Georgia, ripped off two of its terrorists, and recognized their “independence.” But those were the hopeful days of Barack Obama’s booty, which he hoped to appease Russia, in part through a unilateral disarmament. It was another of the strategic misunderstandings that Obama’s foreign policy was rife with.
Four years later, Russia invaded Ukraine, ripping off three of its terrorists. One (Crimea) she annexed, and two others (Donetsk and Luhansk) declared their “independence.” The West imposed particularly painful sanctions, and later also began to arm Ukraine here and there, though not to the extent that it came close to worrying Vladimir Putin. He began his progress towards a complete, perhaps final, solution of the Ukrainian question.
An American colonel who served for many years at the NATO Center was quoted in the Wall Street Journal this week as saying: “NATO has been a social club for the past 30 years. Suddenly it becomes a military alliance again. ‘
From the gates of the Red Sea to the southern islands
At the forefront of NATO’s minds, of course, is Russia. But NATO is now increasingly concerned about the process of China’s intensification.
Russia is a military rival, capable of destroying the planet an unknown number of times (and also bothers to mention that it can). But it has limited political and economic weight. She makes a living from exporting minerals and minerals. China, on the other hand, is spreading hundreds of billions of dollars across the globe in a seemingly constructive way: it is building “belts and roads,” roads, ports, and bridges. But it is also interested in military bases, from the gates of the Red Sea, through the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean, to the Bay of Bengal and all the way to the islands of the South Pacific.
The immediate fear is of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, which stems from the potential for direct war between China and the United States. But China is trying to expand the boundaries of its political, economic and military influence away from its shores, out of intense competition with the West and by the way a systematic reduction of hostility and contempt towards it. It is enough to read the rhetoric of diplomats and Chinese journalists on Western social media.
Russia does show impressive artillery capability, destroying cities, towns and villages in Ukraine to the core. But China is already trying out hyper-Sunni missiles in outer space, and has now launched its first nuclear aircraft carrier. The West is close to losing in technological competition with China. The United States’ share of global research and development has declined in the past 60 years from 69% to 30%.
This week, the leaders of the Group of Seven (G7) of Industrial Democrats announced that they will invest $ 600 billion in building infrastructure all over the world, in direct competition with China. This amount, at this time, is indeed questionable. Not all economists admire massive inflows, at a time of global inflation, from the coffers of countries that have accumulated significant deficits in recent years. But in the proclamation of the seventh one should see in particular a declaration of intent.
The last 125 days
It is therefore a week of declarations in Europe, in the circumstances of an almost unprecedented global crisis. NATO announced this week that it would increase its force in Europe by 7.5 times. It is remarkable to recall that on the eve of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, at the end of February, only 4,000 troops surrendered under the direct authority of NATO command. Within a few days, that number had grown to 40,000. Now it will rise to 300,000.
NATO is preparing for a different kind of war, which will be conducted through cyber. But the slaughter fields of Ukraine prove that the classical war did not pass from the world. Who would have thought that Howitzer cannons would be the main weapon in the war, which takes place a hundred years or more after the First World War.
Candidates in the test are a series of long-standing assumptions about the nature of the next war. For example, a constant expectation during the Cold War was that a Soviet attack on Western Europe would be so crushing and rapid that a general retreat would be inevitable before the Alliance could launch a counterattack. This assumption also extended to the strategic thinking of our time. According to a series of reports, NATO is now adopting a new approach: fighting every inch.
On March 1, the president of the European Commission said that “Europe’s security has changed more in the last six days than it has in the last 20 years.” What can be said about the changes of the last 125 days? They result in unprecedented systems robbery since the signing of the NATO Charter, 73 years ago. In a sense, the West is once again defining its willingness to defend itself.
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