NATO Cannot Survive Without ‘Enemies’

Over the last 70 years, we have heard here in Europe that ”the Russians are coming.” During the old Cold War ending in 1991, they did come to Hungary (1956), Czechoslovakia (1968) - and Afghanistan (1979). But they came neither to any of the neutral countries - Finland, Sweden, Switzerland, Yugoslavia or Austria - nor to any NATO member.

NATO’s militarist predictions and enemy images have proven consistently wrong over seven decades.

During the First Cold War the Moscow-dominated Warsaw Pact’s military expenditures were about 65-80% of NATO, and its technology and efficiency was way behind that of its Western brother. But to be sure, the OSCE - the Organisation of Security and Cooperation in Europe (set up in the early 1970s with 57 members) constructively developed a series of confidence-building measures and dialogue principles.

Under Willy Brandt’s visionary leadership, Germany initiated the ”Ostpolitik” and rapproachement. Like with the Swedish prime minister Olof Palme’s Commission (1982), there was a clear understanding that East and West Europe must continuously talk with each other, inform each other about exercises, build confidence, and create security with and not against each other. What a difference in intellectualism and maturity from today’s leaders and the new Iron Curtain.

The Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact fell apart in 1990-91, and all important NATO leaders are documented to have promised Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not expand ”one inch” if only he accepted that East Germany could unite with NATO member West Germany.

Before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, its military expenditures was only 8% of the 30-member NATO’s. Neither then nor today is it a threat to any NATO country, but NATO can’t live without enemies.

What most people do not know was that the Warsaw Pact was established in 1954 only after the Soviet leaders had asked to join NATO, which had been established in 1949; it was turned down. Most also do not know that all Russian leaders, also Gorbachev and Putin, have signalled a wish to join NATO but were turned down too.

Fast forward some 30 years. NATO broke all promises, did not listen to Russian security concerns and expanded NATO instead of developing an all-Europe peace and security structure. Ukraine - where NATO had worked for about 30 years to prepare it for NATO membership against the majority of the Ukrainian people (according to all opinion polls) - and very much against Moscow’s wish - became NATO’s Himalayan hubris blunder.

So the alliance that have promised its tax payers ’ stability, security and peace’ - NATO’s mantra no matter what it does - is now the main (but not only) creator of the most dangerous situation in Europe since 1945. It’s particularly tragic since Ukraine was never strategically important to the West. Making it a NATO member was a show of force that could just as well have been avoided - an attempt to contain and humiliate Russia.

It is in this perspective one must see that NATO now holds its largest military exercise for decades, Steadfast Defender, involving 90 000 troops from all 31 NATO members and Sweden, from January 22 to May 31. Why this tremendous waste of taxpayers money? Why this huge waste of energy and destructive impact on the environment? Why this militarist attitude in the midst of a Europe in deep structural, political and economic crisis and increasing malfunctioning of societal services and infrastructure?

The answer can be found on NATO’s homepage (https://shape.nato.int/stde24): ”Steadfast Defender 2024 will demonstrate our ability to deploy forces rapidly from North America and other parts of the Alliance to reinforce the defence of Europe. It will show that we can conduct and sustain complex multi-domain operations over several months, across thousands of kilometres, from the High North to Central and Eastern Europe, and in any conditions. It will be a clear demonstration of our transatlantic unity and strength and our determination to continue to do all that is necessary to protect each other, our values and the rules-based international order.”

First, it is about ”ourselves” - our unity, capabilities, strength, determination and values. After the mentioned Himalayan blunder and the de jure and de facto fiasco of turning Ukraine into a NATO proxy fighting Russia on behalf of the alliance, the exercise is about beating breast.

So sure is the alliance of its fake fearology-based threat assertion about the Russians coming that it does not even have to mention Russia in the official text. The exercise, rather, aims to demonstrate military unity on top of political fragmentation and show - or pretend - that the NATO’s citizens get security and peace for their money now they are fearing war.

It does not seem to occur to the NATO-based MIMAC- Military-Industrial-Media-Academic Complex - elites, or priesthood, that they are fighting ghosts that will not come this year either. To anyone with a clear and rational analysis, Russia has more than enough on its hands approaching its third year of warfare in Ukraine and that it won’t be an easy piece of cake even if Russia wins militarily.

It is 30+ years ago now that NATO should have dissolved because its raison d’etre - the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact - disappeared. Its way of thinking about offensive instead of defensive deterrence combined with never-ending nuclear and conventional armament based on invented enemy images - also China - is outdated.

The alliance desperately needs to boost its crisis-ridden low self-confidence by pretending that the US will come to rescue Europe when ”the Russians are coming.” However, the US is now dropping Ukraine for the Middle East/Gaza and China and with the prospect of Donald Trump in the White House, the alliance faces an existential crisis - not unusual for creatures approaching 80 years of age without even attempting new thinking.

Holding such absurd exercises is a way to signal to their own citizens that we see a threat and we protect you - despite the fact that the enemy is invented. Because how to squeeze money out of the taxpayers if there were no threat?

The anti-intellectual approach is indicated also in the bizarre idea that military expenditures shall be tied to NATO members’ economic performance - 2% of the GDP. Rational intelligence would tie military budgets to an analysis of what foreseeable threats there are, which of them each country chooses to guard against with the funds it is able to allocate.

Not so NATO! Here the idea is that - irrespective of every decent threat analysis - 2% is needed. Did any country ever think of doing similarly when it comes to health or culture?

In summary, if you want peace, prepare for peace. Prepare for war and you get enemies - and those you need to maintain your MIMAC as a parasite on civil society. Human and common security - genuine peace - is of no relevance to the military Steadfast Pretender of such fake peace. But eventually, Steadfast Pretenders will militarise themselves to death thanks to their addiction to weapons instead of intelligent diplomacy, civilian conflict resolution, common global security and true peace-making.

The Global East and South must now learn from and take concrete steps to avoid falling into the trap of self-destructive militarism that the Occident has fallen into. They must not do tit-for-tat but re-invent peace and outline a new global peace system with genuine common security without nukes, constant armament and wars.

Fortunately, that is eminently possible.

Jan Oberg is Director of the Transnational Foundation for Peace & Future Research. Views expressed here are the writer’s own.