NATO's Madrid summit put all of the alliance’s faults on display, and yet the media narrative surrounding it is that it was a success with new members joining and a strengthening of the eastern flank.
It is finally official that Sweden and Finland have been accepted to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). At the alliance’s yearly summit in Madrid last week it was declared not only that two new members will be joining but also that the group had agreed to a new ‘strategic vision’. The news from the Madrid summit shows that NATO is becoming less nonchalant about its eastern member states’ security, but as a noted NATO skeptic I’m still not convinced joining NATO is worthwhile for Helsinki and Stockholm. I’ve argued in a previous post that the diplomatic spat between Türkiye and the applicants shows that there is a large divergence in how states view the war in Ukraine. In Finland it’s a serious threat to Finnish security which requires a drastic change in its foreign policy strategy but the sense of being in dire straits is obviously not shared in Ankara where the real fear of invasion is exploited to get concessions from the US. NATO is far from perfect, a fact that was obvious from the Madrid summit, and it’s important to critically assess NATO’s policies and not blindly accept them as good as they were devised by an organisation one thinks is a positive force in international relations. I will likely not convince anyone to join in my NATO skepticism, but I’ll try regardless.
The summit in Madrid indicates that NATO is taking its eastern members like Poland, the Baltics, and Bulgaria more seriously as it is increasing deployments of NATO forces to members close to Russia, but it also underlines the degree to which the direction of the alliance is determined by Washington’s wishes. The official summit declaration states that: “We face systemic competition from those, including the People’s Republic of China, who challenge our interests, security, and values and seek to undermine the rules-based international order.” I’ve argued previously that NATO would need to be more focused on a single common enemy to be an effective alliance, and that the collapse of the USSR meant that there was no threat in common for the members. To me, it seems that China is only really a systemic challenger to the US and that making it an explicit rival for NATO only serves the US. Claiming that China poses a challenge to Romania's security is a laughable claim, and most European states have no reason to pick a fight with China, so antagonising Beijing poses a challenge to their interests.
The US’ influence is also strongly felt in the way the summit declaration addresses Russia with statements like: “We will continue to counter Russia’s lies and reject its irresponsible rhetoric. Russia must immediately stop this war and withdraw from Ukraine. Belarus must end its complicity in this war.” I fully agree with the sentiment that Russia’s war is unjust and that Ukraine should be free but there is a right way and a wrong way to express oneself in the context of foreign policy. It’s becoming a catchphrase of mine to say that intentions are irrelevant in the context of escalation but it continues to hold true and Westerners continue to make potentially escalatory statements. The more NATO paints Russia and its president as genocidal villains the more Putin’s narrative of a hostile West besieging Russia rings true, and if you believe the idea which was popular in the US at the beginning of the war that Putin is crazy then making threatening statements makes even less sense.
I am and will continue to be a NATO skeptic; I think French President Emmanuel Macron said it best: “What we are currently experiencing is the brain death of NATO”. It never ceases to amaze me how Western media consistently seems to start from the assumption that NATO is good and not challenge its decisions and rhetoric, even when it is making strange statements and making decisions for the US’ benefit at its most vulnerable member states’ expense.
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I've always been interested in politics, economics, and the interplay between. The blog is a place for me to explore different ideas and concepts relating to economics or politics, be that national or international. The goal for the blog is to make you think; to provide new perspectives.
Written by Karl Johansson
Sources:
https://www.economist.com/europe/2019/11/07/emmanuel-macron-warns-europe-nato-is-becoming-brain-dead
Cover photo by Alex Azabache from Pexels, edited by Karl Johansson
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