[ Una interessante analisi sullo stato della contraddizione tra gli
imperialismi statunitense ed europeo ]
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/jun2004/nato-j10.shtml
NATO expansion and the political crisis in Europe
By Niall Green
Part one
10 June 2004
On April 1 the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) saw the
largest intake of members since the formation of the United States-led
military alliance in 1949, when seven central and eastern European
countries were admitted. The new members, all either former members of
the Warsaw Pact or former republics of the Soviet Union, are Bulgaria,
Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.
It is the second time in recent years that NATO has expanded its
membership in the Central-Eastern European region. Poland, the Czech
Republic and Hungary joined in 1999.
While the accession of these countries to the alliance was greeted with
the usual rounds of congratulations, official celebrations and phrases
about the expansion of freedom and democracy, it was clear that they
were joining a house divided against itself. For all the talk by NATO
Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer about NATO’s expansion bringing
about the end of an era of European division, the seven new members
have entered the alliance at a point where antagonisms between its
principal members have never been greater. The new entrants join NATO
not as independent nations joining a military alliance, but as US
proxies in a Great Power struggle.
Before the ink was dry on the treaty accepting the intake of new
members, the alliance had fallen back into the distinct camps that have
emerged over the past decade. In the days following the April 1
accession, French President Jacques Chirac and Germany’s Chancellor
Gerhard Schroeder had separate bilateral talks with Russian President
Vladimir Putin, whose administration has repeatedly expressed its
disquiet about the eastward expansion of NATO. Alliance members France
and Germany have also been wary about the expansion, from which America
stands to gain most. All of the seven new members except Slovenia have
staunchly pro-US foreign policies.
While publicly the three leaders professed their support for the
expansion of NATO, the very fact that Moscow, Berlin and Paris all
orientated to each other is indicative of the extent to which the
divisions between Washington and these countries, made evident in the
run up to the Iraq invasion, remain. This does not mean that the three
powers will be able to formulate any alternative to Washington’s
agenda. The meeting echoes that held in September 2003 prior to the
moving of the United Nations resolution that handed control of Iraq to
the US, when the Russian, German and French leaders met to agree to
capitulate before Washington’s demands.
A divided Eurasia
The expansion of NATO into the former Warsaw Pact region and the former
Soviet Union has been a crucial aspect of American imperialist policy
following the liquidation of the USSR in 1991. After this date a large
portion of the world, previously off limits, was opened up to American
and West European imperialism.
With EU-based capital emerging as the major inward investor in the
region, the US has exerted its influence primarily by developing its
military ties. The military dominance of America in the region is not
merely a counterweight to the EU, but a means of securing US corporate
interests over the entire Eurasian continent. Using its network of
military bases and bilateral agreements, as well as the structures of
NATO, the US armed forces can now manoeuvre men and equipment in an
almost unbroken corridor that passes through the continent’s major
centres of oil and gas extraction and transportation from the Baltic
coast to the Caspian basin.
American military personnel are to be moved from some of the large US
military bases in Germany eastwards to former Warsaw Pact bases in
Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania. Moves are also afoot for a
possible new US base in Albania. Under the auspices of NATO the US has
also placed its forces in important strategic areas, not least in the
former Yugoslavia where thousands of American troops remain on duty.
The Russian government has expressed its strong disapproval of the
latest NATO expansion, especially into the Baltic States, and fears
that NATO will soon expand to admit the Ukraine, Azerbaijan and
Georgia, which have longstanding relations with America and the
alliance. The inclusion of the Baltic States into NATO has already
caused a deterioration in official relations between them and Russia.
In April Latvia expelled a Russian diplomat for allegedly “attempting
to find out about NATO military infrastructure.” This was the sixth
Russian diplomat to be expelled from the countries, two having been
thrown out of Estonia in March and three from Lithuania in February.
While refusing to officially denounce the April expansion, the Putin
administration has issued a number of statements indicating that there
are growing tensions between Moscow and NATO. Russian Defence Minister
Sergei Ivanov said that a revision of the country’s defence policy
would be necessary as a result of the encroachment of NATO to the
boarders of Russia. “The alliance is gaining greater ability to control
and monitor Russian territory. We cannot turn a blind eye as NATO’s air
and military bases get much closer to cities and defence complexes in
European Russia,” he stated.
There are particular worries about access to the Russian enclave of
Kaliningrad, which is now surrounded by NATO members Poland and
Lithuania. Kaliningrad, once a specially designated military region
that was home to tens of thousands of Soviet army and navy personnel,
remains the base for Russia’s ageing Baltic Fleet. Russian military and
civilian administrations have expressed concern that the expansion has
effectively cut off one of the country’s main military facilities,
while bringing NATO warplanes within five minutes of St. Petersburg.
An example of the way in which NATO is used to advance US interests in
the region can be seen in the new BALTNET common air-defence system for
the Baltic States, based in Lithuania. BALTNET has been put in place
under the supervision of the America military and US armaments giant
Lockheed Martin, but will be supported and given military back-up by
NATO as a whole. Since the early 1990s the US has been the leading
power in the long-term modernisation of the Baltic states’ military.
The US has covered a significant portion of the costs of meeting NATO
requirements in the new NATO countries, especially the Baltic states.
As well as BALTNET three other joint Estonian-Latvian-Lithuanian
military projects have been funded and overseen by the Pentagon:
BALTBAT (a common infantry battalion), BALTRON (a common naval
squadron) and BALTDEFCOL (the Baltic Defence College).
The Russian and continental European elites fear, with justification,
that the expansion of NATO is being carried out at the direct expense
of their influence.
The new alliance members are part of the “new Europe” declared by US
Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in the run up to the 2003 invasion of
Iraq, countries whose governments have been among the most unswerving
supporters of the Bush administration’s supposed “war on terror” and
the campaigns against Afghanistan and Iraq. Most of the new alliance
members contributed armed forces units to the invasion or occupation of
Iraq. Only Slovenia, which is more closely aligned to the European
powers, refused to directly participate. US forces used naval and air
bases in Romania and Bulgaria as key staging posts in the war against
Iraq.
Neither can any independence be tolerated. Despite their subservience
to the “coalition of the willing”, several countries were nevertheless
severely rebuked by the Bush administration for repeating the EU demand
that the United States submit its armed service members to the
jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC). In an
indication of the relationship that exists between the US and the new
NATO members, a senior Latvian diplomat told Human Rights Watch in
December 2003 that Washington had threatened to withhold $2.7 million
in promised funding to support Latvian troops in Iraq as a result of
the Baltic state’s demand that the US respect the authority of the ICC.
For their part, the European powers are just as likely to bully their
eastern neighbours. Last year French President Chirac sharply rebuked
the Romanian and Bulgarian governments, due to join the EU in 2007, for
aligning with America over Iraq, saying that they had missed a “good
opportunity to be quiet.”
For France and Germany the inclusion of so many pro-US countries into
NATO sees their position within the alliance further weakened. Paris
and Berlin are conscious of the fact that the US will utilise its clout
with the new members to increase its weight within NATO and stifle any
criticism of US foreign policy. American strategists can anticipate
that any moves by France and Germany to form a more independent
European military force, especially one that might seek to cooperate
with Russia, would be met with hostility by Washington’s eastern
European pawns.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/jun2004/nato-j11_prn.shtml
Part two
The Atlantic rift
For most of the post-war period the European powers have attempted to
overcome their relative weakness against the US by creating a single
European market, currency and trade bloc, a process that was broadly
encouraged by America as a means of stabilising Western Europe as a
bulwark against the Soviet Union.
During the Cold War the European powers and America, in their common
hostility towards the USSR, were able, despite occasional fallings out,
to achieve a significant amelioration of their antagonistic interests.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) was one of the primary
expressions of this, acting as a powerful and binding US-led
intra-imperialist military organisation.
But despite the fact that NATO was established as an anti-Soviet
alliance, it has never been busier since the liquidation of the Soviet
Union in 1991. Over the proceeding years NATO has been engaged in a
series of active military operations, including, with its presence in
Afghanistan, areas previously considered beyond its theatre of
operations.
The dismantling of the USSR created a power vacuum in the region
previously under the Kremlin bureaucracy’s control, opening up new
vistas for world capitalism. This provided a bonanza for Western big
businesses and banks, which, in conjunction with the local ex-Stalinist
and gangster elites, have ruthlessly bled the region for the past
decade. At the same time, the liquidation of the Soviet Union also
created the conditions for the resurgence of inter-imperialist
conflicts that the post-war institutions such as NATO had sought to
contain.
Throughout the 1990s NATO exerted the economic and geopolitical
interests of its principal members in regions formerly closed to
imperialism, culminating in the NATO bombardment of Serbia in 1999. But
the positions of the NATO powers have increasingly diverged, primarily
due to the increasing unilateralism and belligerence of the US, with
Washington on one side and the weaker powers of France and Germany on
the other.
Of central importance in this renewed power struggle is control of the
vast oil and gas reserves concentrated in the Middle East and Central
Asia. In 1997 Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s National Security
advisor, published an article, “A Geostrategy for Asia” in which he
stated one of the central aims of US foreign policy in the current
period.
“America’s emergence as the sole global superpower,” Brzezinski wrote,
“now makes an integrated and comprehensive strategy for Eurasia
imperative,” a task that would involve extending a “benign American
hegemony” over the weaker European powers that would assist US
dominance of the continent in return for being allowed to play a
secondary role.
For this, Brzezinski suggested, NATO would be maintained as a
ready-made structure of “American political influence and military
power on the Eurasian mainland,” which should be expanded to envelop
the countries of the former Stalinist states and thus enhance the
position of the US.
Brzezinski also proposed that NATO be used to ensure that the attempts
at eastward expansion by the European powers could be kept in check by
a simultaneous expansion of the alliance: “A wider Europe and an
enlarged NATO will serve the short-term and longer-term interests of US
policy. A larger Europe will expand the range of American influence
without simultaneously creating a Europe so politically integrated that
it could challenge the United States.”
This tactic of undermining any extension of European unity capable of
challenging the establishment of US hegemony over Eurasia reached its
highest point with the “old Europe” versus “new Europe” split prior to
the beginning of the 2003 Iraq war. Lined up behind Washington were the
most avowedly pro-NATO members of the EU, especially Britain, with the
gaggle of pro-US Central-Eastern European NATO and EU candidate
countries squawking their support. Washington was able to utilise its
sway over the continent in order to scupper any Franco-German led
effort to ensure that European capital was not too disadvantaged in the
scrabble for control of the Middle East.
Thus NATO has emerged more than had ever been the case during the Cold
War as a means by which America aggressively imposes its power over
Europe. How have the continental European powers responded to this?
France and Germany have made limited efforts to add a military
capability to Europe’s existing structures of economic integration,
through which they hope to more aggressively assert the interests of
European-based capital in their horse-trading with the US. It was
envisaged that this would be done independently of US-dominated
structures of NATO, but this has proved extremely difficult to achieve.
Former French President Mitterrand and German Chancellor Kohl
cautiously sought to develop a European defence organisation, with the
1991 EU Maastricht Treaty preparing the ground for a common European
defence system. Since then has followed a struggle within the EU to
agree on a European military project, with Britain repeatedly acting to
prevent any drift away from NATO.
In 2000, following the NATO war on Serbia, many European commentators
bemoaned the EU’s continuing reliance on America’s armed forces to sort
out problems in its own “backyard”, and European defence ministers
proposed the creation of a 60,000-strong European Rapid Reaction Force.
However, the EU powers have not been able to agree on the role that
this body should play in relation to NATO.
This struggle is currently being played out over the draft European
Union constitution, which sets out to strengthen the EU’s existing
economic structures while establishing a new military command structure
and security apparatus. The document seeks to create new EU
institutions capable of deciding on foreign policy, with a new European
foreign minister, while framing a “common defence policy, which might
lead to common defence.”
Once again Washington is using its regional allies, primarily Britain,
to try to abort the European military project. Blair was forced to call
for a referendum in Britain on the EU constitution by elements within
the US and British ruling class who hope to sabotage moves that would
deepen European independence from America. Even if the European
constitution is ratified by all EU member states, then US-aligned
countries such as Britain, at the head of the “new Europe” faction that
includes the eastern accession countries, will act to weaken the
stature of any European defence force that rivals NATO.
If an independent European military force is established then it is
likely to consist of a “core” of EU members, minus the closest allies
of Washington, drawing primarily on French and German forces. Either
way America will seek to ensure that it retains its role as the
pre-eminent power in Europe with NATO as the continent’s largest
military structure.
Continuing reliance on America
Consequently EU military policy is in something of a shambles. With the
more ambitious French and German plans to establish military structures
independent of NATO failing to get off the ground, they have opted to
participate with Britain in a plan for the establishment by 2007 of
half a dozen 1,500-man European “battle groups” to intervene in areas
considered outside the theatres of US and NATO interest, such as Africa.
Aside from America’s existing overwhelming military superiority, which
it uses to threaten and cajole its rivals, there are two fundamental
reasons for the European powers’ inability to cut themselves free from
NATO’s apron strings.
Firstly, European-based capital continues to look to American
imperialism to lead the way in cracking open every area of the world
for ruthless exploitation. This was shown during the 1990s in the
former Yugoslavia when the Europeans colluded with the US to break up
the country and finally bombard Serbia into submission. When George W.
Bush announced the beginning of the “war on terror”, a euphemism for
neo-colonial adventurism across the globe, every country in Europe
enthusiastically joined the bandwagon, recognising the potential that
the 9/11 attacks had created to aggressively pursue their own interests
in the shadow of the American onslaught.
While the bourgeoisie in Britain is most closely tied to US militarism
in the pursuit of its predatory goals, their German and French
counterparts are not averse to attempting to glean what they can from
the spoils of American neo-colonialism. In October 2003, just months
after Chirac and Schroeder had criticised the US invasion of Iraq, the
two countries signed a UN resolution handing the US official control of
the country as the occupying power. The French and German bourgeoisies
remain divided between taking advantage of the short-term prospect of
being able to scavenge some limited benefits from the occupation of
Iraq and recognising that the US is acting to ensure its hegemony in
direct opposition to European interests.
The second reason why the European bourgeoisie continues its
subservient orbit around US imperialism is that it finds itself sitting
atop a highly volatile social situation at home. The anti-social
programmes of the EU and its member states aimed at attacking the
position of the working class, combined with a massive popular antiwar
sentiment across the continent, have created a situation in which the
European elite feels dangerously exposed. Following the global antiwar
movement that emerged early in 2003, Europe’s governments are acutely
aware that any confrontation with America could set into motion a
further mass movement of the working class and threaten their own
survival.
Additionally, the failure of the US occupation in Iraq at the hands of
an insurgent population would also be a defeat for world imperialism
and a major setback to Europe’s own ambitions to subjugate weaker
countries under its control. In September 2003 Chancellor Schroeder,
addressing the UN General Assembly, held out the hand of cooperation to
the US over Iraq, pointing out that German assistance in the occupation
would be in Washington’s interests. “New threats, over which no state
in the world can become master, require international cooperation more
than ever,” he said, before offering humanitarian, technical and
economic aid, and training for Iraqi police and military officers.
President Chirac, equally concerned that the US was facing a looming
popular rebellion in Iraq, also offered aid to the occupation, saying
that France “very much [wanted] the Americans to succeed.”
This stand continues with the UN debate regarding the June 30
establishment of the interim Iraqi government, with Paris and Berlin
offering advice to the US on how to give a veneer of credibility to the
handover of “sovereignty” to its own hand-picked puppet regime.
Nevertheless, the European powers will continue to look for
opportunities to stake out their own spheres of influence where and
whenever possible, inevitably leading to conflicts with each other and
their larger transatlantic rival.
Copyright 1998-2004
World Socialist Web Site
All rights reserved
imperialismi statunitense ed europeo ]
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/jun2004/nato-j10.shtml
NATO expansion and the political crisis in Europe
By Niall Green
Part one
10 June 2004
On April 1 the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) saw the
largest intake of members since the formation of the United States-led
military alliance in 1949, when seven central and eastern European
countries were admitted. The new members, all either former members of
the Warsaw Pact or former republics of the Soviet Union, are Bulgaria,
Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.
It is the second time in recent years that NATO has expanded its
membership in the Central-Eastern European region. Poland, the Czech
Republic and Hungary joined in 1999.
While the accession of these countries to the alliance was greeted with
the usual rounds of congratulations, official celebrations and phrases
about the expansion of freedom and democracy, it was clear that they
were joining a house divided against itself. For all the talk by NATO
Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer about NATO’s expansion bringing
about the end of an era of European division, the seven new members
have entered the alliance at a point where antagonisms between its
principal members have never been greater. The new entrants join NATO
not as independent nations joining a military alliance, but as US
proxies in a Great Power struggle.
Before the ink was dry on the treaty accepting the intake of new
members, the alliance had fallen back into the distinct camps that have
emerged over the past decade. In the days following the April 1
accession, French President Jacques Chirac and Germany’s Chancellor
Gerhard Schroeder had separate bilateral talks with Russian President
Vladimir Putin, whose administration has repeatedly expressed its
disquiet about the eastward expansion of NATO. Alliance members France
and Germany have also been wary about the expansion, from which America
stands to gain most. All of the seven new members except Slovenia have
staunchly pro-US foreign policies.
While publicly the three leaders professed their support for the
expansion of NATO, the very fact that Moscow, Berlin and Paris all
orientated to each other is indicative of the extent to which the
divisions between Washington and these countries, made evident in the
run up to the Iraq invasion, remain. This does not mean that the three
powers will be able to formulate any alternative to Washington’s
agenda. The meeting echoes that held in September 2003 prior to the
moving of the United Nations resolution that handed control of Iraq to
the US, when the Russian, German and French leaders met to agree to
capitulate before Washington’s demands.
A divided Eurasia
The expansion of NATO into the former Warsaw Pact region and the former
Soviet Union has been a crucial aspect of American imperialist policy
following the liquidation of the USSR in 1991. After this date a large
portion of the world, previously off limits, was opened up to American
and West European imperialism.
With EU-based capital emerging as the major inward investor in the
region, the US has exerted its influence primarily by developing its
military ties. The military dominance of America in the region is not
merely a counterweight to the EU, but a means of securing US corporate
interests over the entire Eurasian continent. Using its network of
military bases and bilateral agreements, as well as the structures of
NATO, the US armed forces can now manoeuvre men and equipment in an
almost unbroken corridor that passes through the continent’s major
centres of oil and gas extraction and transportation from the Baltic
coast to the Caspian basin.
American military personnel are to be moved from some of the large US
military bases in Germany eastwards to former Warsaw Pact bases in
Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania. Moves are also afoot for a
possible new US base in Albania. Under the auspices of NATO the US has
also placed its forces in important strategic areas, not least in the
former Yugoslavia where thousands of American troops remain on duty.
The Russian government has expressed its strong disapproval of the
latest NATO expansion, especially into the Baltic States, and fears
that NATO will soon expand to admit the Ukraine, Azerbaijan and
Georgia, which have longstanding relations with America and the
alliance. The inclusion of the Baltic States into NATO has already
caused a deterioration in official relations between them and Russia.
In April Latvia expelled a Russian diplomat for allegedly “attempting
to find out about NATO military infrastructure.” This was the sixth
Russian diplomat to be expelled from the countries, two having been
thrown out of Estonia in March and three from Lithuania in February.
While refusing to officially denounce the April expansion, the Putin
administration has issued a number of statements indicating that there
are growing tensions between Moscow and NATO. Russian Defence Minister
Sergei Ivanov said that a revision of the country’s defence policy
would be necessary as a result of the encroachment of NATO to the
boarders of Russia. “The alliance is gaining greater ability to control
and monitor Russian territory. We cannot turn a blind eye as NATO’s air
and military bases get much closer to cities and defence complexes in
European Russia,” he stated.
There are particular worries about access to the Russian enclave of
Kaliningrad, which is now surrounded by NATO members Poland and
Lithuania. Kaliningrad, once a specially designated military region
that was home to tens of thousands of Soviet army and navy personnel,
remains the base for Russia’s ageing Baltic Fleet. Russian military and
civilian administrations have expressed concern that the expansion has
effectively cut off one of the country’s main military facilities,
while bringing NATO warplanes within five minutes of St. Petersburg.
An example of the way in which NATO is used to advance US interests in
the region can be seen in the new BALTNET common air-defence system for
the Baltic States, based in Lithuania. BALTNET has been put in place
under the supervision of the America military and US armaments giant
Lockheed Martin, but will be supported and given military back-up by
NATO as a whole. Since the early 1990s the US has been the leading
power in the long-term modernisation of the Baltic states’ military.
The US has covered a significant portion of the costs of meeting NATO
requirements in the new NATO countries, especially the Baltic states.
As well as BALTNET three other joint Estonian-Latvian-Lithuanian
military projects have been funded and overseen by the Pentagon:
BALTBAT (a common infantry battalion), BALTRON (a common naval
squadron) and BALTDEFCOL (the Baltic Defence College).
The Russian and continental European elites fear, with justification,
that the expansion of NATO is being carried out at the direct expense
of their influence.
The new alliance members are part of the “new Europe” declared by US
Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in the run up to the 2003 invasion of
Iraq, countries whose governments have been among the most unswerving
supporters of the Bush administration’s supposed “war on terror” and
the campaigns against Afghanistan and Iraq. Most of the new alliance
members contributed armed forces units to the invasion or occupation of
Iraq. Only Slovenia, which is more closely aligned to the European
powers, refused to directly participate. US forces used naval and air
bases in Romania and Bulgaria as key staging posts in the war against
Iraq.
Neither can any independence be tolerated. Despite their subservience
to the “coalition of the willing”, several countries were nevertheless
severely rebuked by the Bush administration for repeating the EU demand
that the United States submit its armed service members to the
jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC). In an
indication of the relationship that exists between the US and the new
NATO members, a senior Latvian diplomat told Human Rights Watch in
December 2003 that Washington had threatened to withhold $2.7 million
in promised funding to support Latvian troops in Iraq as a result of
the Baltic state’s demand that the US respect the authority of the ICC.
For their part, the European powers are just as likely to bully their
eastern neighbours. Last year French President Chirac sharply rebuked
the Romanian and Bulgarian governments, due to join the EU in 2007, for
aligning with America over Iraq, saying that they had missed a “good
opportunity to be quiet.”
For France and Germany the inclusion of so many pro-US countries into
NATO sees their position within the alliance further weakened. Paris
and Berlin are conscious of the fact that the US will utilise its clout
with the new members to increase its weight within NATO and stifle any
criticism of US foreign policy. American strategists can anticipate
that any moves by France and Germany to form a more independent
European military force, especially one that might seek to cooperate
with Russia, would be met with hostility by Washington’s eastern
European pawns.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/jun2004/nato-j11_prn.shtml
Part two
The Atlantic rift
For most of the post-war period the European powers have attempted to
overcome their relative weakness against the US by creating a single
European market, currency and trade bloc, a process that was broadly
encouraged by America as a means of stabilising Western Europe as a
bulwark against the Soviet Union.
During the Cold War the European powers and America, in their common
hostility towards the USSR, were able, despite occasional fallings out,
to achieve a significant amelioration of their antagonistic interests.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) was one of the primary
expressions of this, acting as a powerful and binding US-led
intra-imperialist military organisation.
But despite the fact that NATO was established as an anti-Soviet
alliance, it has never been busier since the liquidation of the Soviet
Union in 1991. Over the proceeding years NATO has been engaged in a
series of active military operations, including, with its presence in
Afghanistan, areas previously considered beyond its theatre of
operations.
The dismantling of the USSR created a power vacuum in the region
previously under the Kremlin bureaucracy’s control, opening up new
vistas for world capitalism. This provided a bonanza for Western big
businesses and banks, which, in conjunction with the local ex-Stalinist
and gangster elites, have ruthlessly bled the region for the past
decade. At the same time, the liquidation of the Soviet Union also
created the conditions for the resurgence of inter-imperialist
conflicts that the post-war institutions such as NATO had sought to
contain.
Throughout the 1990s NATO exerted the economic and geopolitical
interests of its principal members in regions formerly closed to
imperialism, culminating in the NATO bombardment of Serbia in 1999. But
the positions of the NATO powers have increasingly diverged, primarily
due to the increasing unilateralism and belligerence of the US, with
Washington on one side and the weaker powers of France and Germany on
the other.
Of central importance in this renewed power struggle is control of the
vast oil and gas reserves concentrated in the Middle East and Central
Asia. In 1997 Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s National Security
advisor, published an article, “A Geostrategy for Asia” in which he
stated one of the central aims of US foreign policy in the current
period.
“America’s emergence as the sole global superpower,” Brzezinski wrote,
“now makes an integrated and comprehensive strategy for Eurasia
imperative,” a task that would involve extending a “benign American
hegemony” over the weaker European powers that would assist US
dominance of the continent in return for being allowed to play a
secondary role.
For this, Brzezinski suggested, NATO would be maintained as a
ready-made structure of “American political influence and military
power on the Eurasian mainland,” which should be expanded to envelop
the countries of the former Stalinist states and thus enhance the
position of the US.
Brzezinski also proposed that NATO be used to ensure that the attempts
at eastward expansion by the European powers could be kept in check by
a simultaneous expansion of the alliance: “A wider Europe and an
enlarged NATO will serve the short-term and longer-term interests of US
policy. A larger Europe will expand the range of American influence
without simultaneously creating a Europe so politically integrated that
it could challenge the United States.”
This tactic of undermining any extension of European unity capable of
challenging the establishment of US hegemony over Eurasia reached its
highest point with the “old Europe” versus “new Europe” split prior to
the beginning of the 2003 Iraq war. Lined up behind Washington were the
most avowedly pro-NATO members of the EU, especially Britain, with the
gaggle of pro-US Central-Eastern European NATO and EU candidate
countries squawking their support. Washington was able to utilise its
sway over the continent in order to scupper any Franco-German led
effort to ensure that European capital was not too disadvantaged in the
scrabble for control of the Middle East.
Thus NATO has emerged more than had ever been the case during the Cold
War as a means by which America aggressively imposes its power over
Europe. How have the continental European powers responded to this?
France and Germany have made limited efforts to add a military
capability to Europe’s existing structures of economic integration,
through which they hope to more aggressively assert the interests of
European-based capital in their horse-trading with the US. It was
envisaged that this would be done independently of US-dominated
structures of NATO, but this has proved extremely difficult to achieve.
Former French President Mitterrand and German Chancellor Kohl
cautiously sought to develop a European defence organisation, with the
1991 EU Maastricht Treaty preparing the ground for a common European
defence system. Since then has followed a struggle within the EU to
agree on a European military project, with Britain repeatedly acting to
prevent any drift away from NATO.
In 2000, following the NATO war on Serbia, many European commentators
bemoaned the EU’s continuing reliance on America’s armed forces to sort
out problems in its own “backyard”, and European defence ministers
proposed the creation of a 60,000-strong European Rapid Reaction Force.
However, the EU powers have not been able to agree on the role that
this body should play in relation to NATO.
This struggle is currently being played out over the draft European
Union constitution, which sets out to strengthen the EU’s existing
economic structures while establishing a new military command structure
and security apparatus. The document seeks to create new EU
institutions capable of deciding on foreign policy, with a new European
foreign minister, while framing a “common defence policy, which might
lead to common defence.”
Once again Washington is using its regional allies, primarily Britain,
to try to abort the European military project. Blair was forced to call
for a referendum in Britain on the EU constitution by elements within
the US and British ruling class who hope to sabotage moves that would
deepen European independence from America. Even if the European
constitution is ratified by all EU member states, then US-aligned
countries such as Britain, at the head of the “new Europe” faction that
includes the eastern accession countries, will act to weaken the
stature of any European defence force that rivals NATO.
If an independent European military force is established then it is
likely to consist of a “core” of EU members, minus the closest allies
of Washington, drawing primarily on French and German forces. Either
way America will seek to ensure that it retains its role as the
pre-eminent power in Europe with NATO as the continent’s largest
military structure.
Continuing reliance on America
Consequently EU military policy is in something of a shambles. With the
more ambitious French and German plans to establish military structures
independent of NATO failing to get off the ground, they have opted to
participate with Britain in a plan for the establishment by 2007 of
half a dozen 1,500-man European “battle groups” to intervene in areas
considered outside the theatres of US and NATO interest, such as Africa.
Aside from America’s existing overwhelming military superiority, which
it uses to threaten and cajole its rivals, there are two fundamental
reasons for the European powers’ inability to cut themselves free from
NATO’s apron strings.
Firstly, European-based capital continues to look to American
imperialism to lead the way in cracking open every area of the world
for ruthless exploitation. This was shown during the 1990s in the
former Yugoslavia when the Europeans colluded with the US to break up
the country and finally bombard Serbia into submission. When George W.
Bush announced the beginning of the “war on terror”, a euphemism for
neo-colonial adventurism across the globe, every country in Europe
enthusiastically joined the bandwagon, recognising the potential that
the 9/11 attacks had created to aggressively pursue their own interests
in the shadow of the American onslaught.
While the bourgeoisie in Britain is most closely tied to US militarism
in the pursuit of its predatory goals, their German and French
counterparts are not averse to attempting to glean what they can from
the spoils of American neo-colonialism. In October 2003, just months
after Chirac and Schroeder had criticised the US invasion of Iraq, the
two countries signed a UN resolution handing the US official control of
the country as the occupying power. The French and German bourgeoisies
remain divided between taking advantage of the short-term prospect of
being able to scavenge some limited benefits from the occupation of
Iraq and recognising that the US is acting to ensure its hegemony in
direct opposition to European interests.
The second reason why the European bourgeoisie continues its
subservient orbit around US imperialism is that it finds itself sitting
atop a highly volatile social situation at home. The anti-social
programmes of the EU and its member states aimed at attacking the
position of the working class, combined with a massive popular antiwar
sentiment across the continent, have created a situation in which the
European elite feels dangerously exposed. Following the global antiwar
movement that emerged early in 2003, Europe’s governments are acutely
aware that any confrontation with America could set into motion a
further mass movement of the working class and threaten their own
survival.
Additionally, the failure of the US occupation in Iraq at the hands of
an insurgent population would also be a defeat for world imperialism
and a major setback to Europe’s own ambitions to subjugate weaker
countries under its control. In September 2003 Chancellor Schroeder,
addressing the UN General Assembly, held out the hand of cooperation to
the US over Iraq, pointing out that German assistance in the occupation
would be in Washington’s interests. “New threats, over which no state
in the world can become master, require international cooperation more
than ever,” he said, before offering humanitarian, technical and
economic aid, and training for Iraqi police and military officers.
President Chirac, equally concerned that the US was facing a looming
popular rebellion in Iraq, also offered aid to the occupation, saying
that France “very much [wanted] the Americans to succeed.”
This stand continues with the UN debate regarding the June 30
establishment of the interim Iraqi government, with Paris and Berlin
offering advice to the US on how to give a veneer of credibility to the
handover of “sovereignty” to its own hand-picked puppet regime.
Nevertheless, the European powers will continue to look for
opportunities to stake out their own spheres of influence where and
whenever possible, inevitably leading to conflicts with each other and
their larger transatlantic rival.
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