The 4 April 1949, representatives of 12 countries including much of North America and Western Europe signed the foundation document of the so-called "North Atlantic Treaty Organization" (NATO) as a multilateral military alliance that was supposed to defend the Western Europe from a hypothetical Soviet offensive aimed at taking control of the entire European continent. At a distance of 70 years from such events, and after the Alliance has meanwhile grown to include 29 states, the words recently spoken by French President Emmanuel Macron ("NATO is now in a state of brain death") should finally sounding like a rude awakening for all those who have not yet realized that NATO has arrived at its "swan song" and is collapsing due to a mix of reasons ranging from territorial-military overexposure to irresponsible politics carried out by the leaders of at least two of the member countries (United States and Turkey) who are literally "cannibalizing" the Alliance from within.
In truth, NATO had already begun to show signs of "fatigue" in the aftermath of the 1991, when the "Fall of the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain", the end of the Warsaw Pact and the disintegration of the USSR itself they had left NATO "orphaned of its mission and original vocation".
For a while, the Organization was kept alive by the need to guarantee the existence of an instrument of intervention in the crises of the former Yugoslavia and the widespread perception of insecurity coming from Mitteleuropa, where once communist countries were going through a long period of political reforms and painful social reorganization. The events of the 11 September of the 2001 and the subsequent intervention of the Atlantic Alliance in Afghanistan then gave further water to the mill of those who tried in every way to reinvent a new mission for NATO: that of "global policeman".
Today, in the 2019, the excuses have really come to an end and this is not due to the action of some foreign power (like the much-reviled Russia) and not even to the attacks of Islamic terrorism but simply due to a normal process of "Erosion" of the ideological, economic and political-strategic "fundamentals" on which the Alliance was based and for the nefarious joint action of two men who have managed over the last 3 years to string a series of blows that have literally nailed NATO to the wall, apparently with no possibility of appeal. These two men are the president of the United States of America, Donald John Trump, and the president-dictator of the Republic of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
As for the "fundamentals", we could say that the establishment of NATO was based on a sort of agreement, not even a tacit one; the European countries, defeated and humiliated during the Second World War (and here the words "defeated" and "humiliated" should be emphasized at least thirty times just to remind ourselves who we are and where we come from!) accepted the price of American occupation for an unlimited time horizon, obtaining in exchange the funds necessary to rebuild their devastated economies.
Here it is necessary to make a small incision on why I used the term "occupation" above when by definition a military occupation implies a preponderance of the occupier's forces over those of the occupied. From this point of view it is true that, after a very first phase in the immediate post-war period, the United States considerably reduced the numerical strength of their occupying forces in Europe. However it is necessary to note that, at the same time, the United States has created a whole system of more subtle and subtle tools designed to bend, intimidate, corrupt, fascinate, co-opt (and so on) both the elites and the "living forces" of the European societies (for example the world of culture) to the point of reducing them to a state of mind in which they can no longer perceive the geopolitical horizon of their own and of their countries as separate from that of the United States of America and end up slavishly following their desired and directives even when they are dramatically at odds with the most basic national interests of European countries. In a word, the elites and the "living forces" of the European continent have ended up "being happy" to live under this evanescent "invisible yoke", they are convinced that the establishment of the primacy of the United States is really the fruit of the "will of God "as in the" Destiny Manifesto "and that there cannot be better worlds than the one in which the United States perpetuates their hegemony indefinitely.
Exactly as the peoples of the so-called "pre-Columbian Mesoamerica" had been able to experience a long period of peace and economic well-being between the 674 and the 1168 after Christ in the shadow of the spears of the Toltec conquerors, so the peoples and, above all, the elites Western Europe could do the same by exploiting the American strategic umbrella, even partially (or as in the case of Iceland) delegating the defense of our continent to a foreign power in exchange for joining the trading system international free trade established by the Bretton Woods agreements that have contributed to supporting the so-called "dollar pyramid" for more than half a century. Not only that, the possibility of delegating to the United States the defense, security and even the protection of its own national interests guaranteed the countries of Western Europe the possibility of using their economic resources to inaugurate a long period of political and economic reforms that have allowed generations of Europeans to enjoy the fruits of "social democracy".
Given the unquestionable and positive results achieved over several decades and the undeniable economic progress recorded in this part of the world, the leaders of the time could be forgiven for having "signed" this "Faustian pact".
What I think is unforgivable is not having been able to look in the long run (especially after the 1991!) And not having prepared our countries for a hypothetical "plan B" in the event that things started to get worse.
The first element that led to the jams of this "great strategy" was the sudden opening of all the markets in the world, even those that throughout the "Cold War" had been hermetically sealed (such as the Warsaw Pact or the China) or semi-autarchic (India, Latin America), to trade and foreign direct investment.
The result of the so-called "Globalization" was to extend American national interests (now "global") with the consequent progressive erosion of the tools available to the US to exercise its levers of power. The "Globalization" has also added new sources of supply for the maintenance of the "pyramid of the dollar" while Western Europe, now become the European Union in progressive expansion, has lost its traditional role of "tributary" of the America-system and, since the introduction of the euro, it has even become a competitor where the economies of the Old Continent have turned out to be sources of greater attraction for the energies coming from the rest of the world to the detriment of the manufacturing system with stars and stripes that has progressively and inexorably started trudging. In this context, Donald Trump's zero-shooting against NATO's European allies guilty of "not paying enough for their club membership" must be understood.
In truth, already during the Obama presidency, the United States had engaged European diplomats in a long tug-of-war in order to convince the other NATO partners to raise the percentage of their budgets to the defense up to the 2% threshold of their GDP. This objective was then formalized with plans for its implementation within the year 2024. However, Trump also started a methodical campaign to attack the European Union; for example by exposing himself personally on the Brexit side, expressing words of esteem for numerous Euro-skeptical leaders and stating with impunity that this or that country should leave Europe.
The intent of the White House tenant is now obvious. First, Trump wants to destroy the European Union to eliminate the main competitive market for the United States (the same strategy is on the other hand being carried out against China through the so-called "War of Duties"); only after the European economies are brought to their knees can they be "re-colonized" by the American one exactly as it was at the end of the Second World War.
Secondly, although the importance of NATO in American strategic thinking has diminished considerably (the "pivot to Asia" had already begun quietly during the Bush junior presidency, so well before Trump's rise to the White House), such however, a military alliance has its value as a means of pressure against Moscow and helps the United States to "irregular" European countries by keeping them under political control.
Third, to maximize its profit in any case, Washington still wants to force its "client states" to "pay more" in order to free up more resources for itself. It is easy to understand how Trump's strategy conceals a triple disaster for us Europeans, as it aims to destroy our economies, make us pay more for our budgets in defense and divert this expense not towards the protection of our national interests but only those of the United States. Being devoid of any shadow of "do ut des", this initiative should be rejected by us with all our strength and indeed should push all European states to an equal and opposite response, at least to force the American elites to follow a more reasonable path , if there is one. On the contrary, all that the active European leaders at national level or within the structures of the EU and NATO are able to do is tinkering with ridiculous declarations of intentions "the fundamental importance of Euro-Atlantic relations" and meanwhile they pray that a miracle happens and that Trump disappears as if by magic and everything returns to "normality". The situation then became even more serious since, after the failed coup of the 2016 in Turkey, the "sultan" Erdoğan began to pursue an even more shamelessly aggressive foreign policy without any scruple to blackmail the other members of the NATO which, in accordance with treaties, would be obliged to "defend it" if one of the many international crises it created should for some reason get out of hand.
Here we are faced with a paradox because the military alliance for the protection of freedom and democracy par excellence finds itself having to live with a dictator within its territorial and institutional borders without even having at its disposal sanction or expulsion mechanisms for faces to counter the excesses of that despot.
The worst thing is that, in the light of what happened in recent times in Syria, the scenario that would see the United States no longer just as the unwary to handle Turkey, but even "run" in Erdoğan's actions now appears increasingly credible . In fact, despite it being ascertained that Turkey's long-term geopolitical objective is destined to lead to a war of great proportions in the territories straddling Europe, Asia and Africa and that this situation will be a red alert for we Europeans, such a scenario could indeed greatly benefit the United States of America, which could count on the fact that Erdoğan does the dirty work on their behalf, triggering a great crisis that causes the collapse of the EU while they sit beautifully and watch intervene at the right time to once again regain control of our continent, as they did in the First and Second World Wars.
In light of all this, and understanding once and for all that we must not resign ourselves once again to take on the role of historical losers and that we would still have the strength and the ability to speak our minds about the destiny that awaits us, we should be like Europeans and how Italians remind us of a series of things. At first the words of Kissinger: "Relations between countries are not dictated by love but by interests". NATO is not a love story but a flirtation of interests, like everything in international geopolitics; until it serves our interests well, otherwise let's get rid of them and also quickly!
Following, with the observation that Erdoğan is a threat to the world and in particular to our continent and our country and that this threat cannot be avoided forever but must be addressed, resolutely.
If for 70 years we had the chance to live in irresponsibility (in the sense that we were not responsible for ourselves and our security), this does not mean that history will allow us to be so forever. Let's roll up our sleeves a lot and start doing homework.
Photo: NATO / White House / US Navy / Prime Minister's office / web
