Fabrizio Casari
The conclusion of the NATO summit in Madrid at the end of June officially opened a new stage in history in which Western imperial unipolarism declares war on multilateralism without any diplomacy. With the new Strategic Concept, the Atlantic organization abandons any ambition to guarantee international peace, as from its founding statute; it chooses war, or at least the threat of it, as the central axis of its international relations. An increase of soldiers and weapons in Europe and in the Pacific region, an increase in political and military pressure: a new policy dedicated to imbalance, to raising tensions with threatening and provocative postures and with the enlistment of any country which, because of its territorial location, can exert pressure or even pose a threat to the nations NATO considers hostile, is made official. The accession of Sweden and Finland, in fact, indicates how Washington no longer contemplates even formally the existence of neutral countries destined to cushion the bipolar clash, and instead decides to unite militarily the entire West.
The formal assumption of what was previously only substantive – that is, an offensive organization with aggressive features – confirms that NATO has become an extension of US policy, a security ring for its interests. Another hypocritical postulate that saw the United States as the guarantor of the security of the West disappears, since now it is the West that is dedicated to the security of the United States. The new role is clear: to enter into conflict with anyone who threatens the position of the United States. That, in addition to finding itself with an international system that protects them, also sees in it an element of economic utility, since increased military tensions will lead to an overall increase in military spending. And while for all the countries of the world they represent a distraction of public spending to the detriment of welfare, a millstone for the policies of socio-economic progress, for the United States they are the fundamental engine of its economic growth.
It is not clear from the document how NATO intends to act in a possible direct war against Moscow and Beijing. On the military level, the game is uncertain, as well as crazy, and on the economic level it seems complicated, since its members cannot base their war effort on a solid industrial and manufacturing apparatus. The deindustrialization of the last decades and the financialization of the economy have undermined the West’s capacity to sustain a war production that would allow a confrontation with powers such as Russia and China. An economic and military framework that should push the Atlantic organization to greater prudence, but which prefers to rule out with threats of war any hypothesis of accommodation with Russia’s legitimate security needs and China’s projects of growth and multipolar integration.
Who is threatening whom?
In the overflowing rhetoric of the new Strategic Concept, Russia and China are the authoritarian regimes that, along with others, would like to destroy the Western system. The argument that China is the one threatening the U.S. is hilarious: as is well known, there are some 800 U.S. military bases around the world, of which about 20 directly threaten Beijing. In the Pacific, 137,000 US troops are stationed at bases in Hawaii, South Korea, Japan, Guam, Singapore, Thailand, Australia and the Philippines, and there are also US troops in Hong Kong, Malaysia and Indonesia. In particular, the bases in Guam (Marianas) and Yokosuka (Japan) are the largest in size, military equipment and nuclear weapons in the world. China does not possess a single one outside its territory. And it is China that would threaten the United States?
Identical reasoning could be made about NATO’s eastward enlargement to encircle Russia, whereas there are no Russian bases on the borders of NATO countries; Moscow has only two and they are in Syria.
That is why it is difficult to attempt an objective analysis of the trends taking place on the world scene in the face of so much returning McCarthyism: the new Strategic Concept does not have any of the concepts or the strategy necessary for the convulsive phase full of tensions and wars that the planet is experiencing precisely because of the aggression of the USA which sees its domination threatened.
But apart from the propagandistic rhetoric, the adversaries of NATO, which has become the political representative of the entire West, are not only China and Russia, but all the countries defined as “emerging”, i.e. those that show constant economic and technological growth and are unwilling to cede resources and political sovereignty to the United States and its minority partners.
The United States, now mired in a profound economic and social model crisis, and lagging behind in technology and the military, has identified the imperious growth of China, the military weight of Russia and the economic value of emerging countries (India above all) as the obstacle to be removed to avoid a free market confrontation that would cause the West to lose.
Europe, goodbye
The other predominant aspect of the Madrid summit is that it sanctioned the end of Europe as a political and economic project based on the interests of the continent and which sought, from its inception, to create a zone of peace on the continent where two world wars were born due to German expansionism. Brussels now has a role similar to that of the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia, i.e. of mere support for the extension of U.S. dominance. It puts its political identity, its history, its economic growth, its territory and its population at the disposal of the expansion of the US empire, which also includes tactical nuclear wars that Washignton needs to test the actions and reactions of its adversaries.
An example of this? The entry of Sweden and Finland has been hailed with emphasis, but the abandonment of the principle of non-alignment by these two countries means a multiplication of the risk of war in Europe and not an increase in collective security. And it remains to be demonstrated that their entry into NATO is a militarily expedient idea. Both countries, in fact, share a 1,340-kilometer border with Russia, which, however, controls the Baltic and the Arctic with its Kaliningrad military base. Kaliningrad – 15,000 square kilometers in size and sandwiched between Lithuania and Poland – is a Russian military outpost located 1,400 kilometers from Paris and London, 530 from Berlin and 280 from Warsaw, and is a part of Russian territory in the middle of the European Union. It is in a key position for two reasons: the Baltic Sea port, which houses the base of the Russian naval fleet, is located in one of the few areas where the sea does not freeze. Moreover, by controlling the Suwalki corridor – which connects the oblast with Belarus and is the only land passage between Poland and the Baltic countries – Moscow could isolate Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania in one fell swoop and quickly impose itself on Warsaw.
Moreover, Europe would become an even more important target in the event of a conflict, since Kalinigrad is home to Iskander systems, short-range tactical ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads with a range of up to 500 kilometers and thus capable of reaching much of Europe. In short, contrary to what might be suggested, the entry of Sweden and Finland does not represent a reinforcement of the continent’s security level, but an increase in the risk of conflict, and Russia’s new ballistic adjustment will increase Europe’s military fragility.
Then there are the economic repercussions. The devastating crisis plaguing, and even more so in winter, the EU, will sink the tenuous assumptions of post-pandemic recovery, while the US will benefit, because the EU’s reduced economic strength will reduce the weight of a dangerous competitor in trade and currency markets. The US will have a good chance to impose its products on a market where the EU will not be able to compete due to the partial but significant shutdown of its production capacity and distribution network, brought down by reduced energy supply and higher prices, from which Moscow benefits in return.
All for one, not one for all
Madrid affirmed the end of the concept of diversity within the Alliance, of the idea of maintaining collective security by considering the respective needs of each of its members. There is no longer any place for national or regional needs. The military defense system of capitalism is centralized and lays the foundations for the global confrontation between the US empire and the rest of the world, which sees in the South and the East of the planet the affirmation of a new group of countries claiming to share planetary governance. This is not a wrong assertion, far from it: the BRICS (and not only them) are strategically important, economically successful, politically influential, militarily strong and demographically majority countries. Awaiting the next entry of Iran and Argentina, they already account for 40% of the world’s population, 25% of GDP and 18% of trade, and more than half of the planet’s economic growth. Which scares Washington.
In Madrid, NATO shed the mask of the defensive military alliance, worn out by military and political defeats, and now openly places itself in a belligerent condition against the rest of the world. The representation of some 700 million people decides to confront even militarily the more than 5 billion remaining inhabitants of the earth in order not to share the governance of the planet. Why? Because it would force to stop the plundering of resources and raw materials necessary to maintain a West which no longer produces anything required for the development of the planet and which, on the contrary, condemns its future to an inevitable war to monopolize vital resources such as water, the biosphere, rare earths and fuels.
Slogans, threats and muscular displays are of little use. NATO’s voraciousness has run out of time: As David grows and strengthens, Goliath has nothing to rejoice about.
INTERNATIONALIST 360° 