NATO’s Global Mission Creep

NATO, the main overseas arm of the U.S. military-industrial complex, just keeps expanding. Its original raison d’être, the supposedly menacing Soviet bloc, has been dead for twenty years. But like the military-industrial complex itself, NATO is kept alive and growing by entrenched economic interests, institutional inertia and an official mindset resembling paranoia, with think tanks looking around desperately for “threats”.

BY DIANA JOHNSTONE
Counterpunch
INTERNATIONAL
Posted by Bulatlat

NATO, the main overseas arm of the U.S. military-industrial complex, just keeps expanding. Its original raison d’être, the supposedly menacing Soviet bloc, has been dead for twenty years. But like the military-industrial complex itself, NATO is kept alive and growing by entrenched economic interests, institutional inertia and an official mindset resembling paranoia, with think tanks looking around desperately for “threats”.

This behemoth is getting ready to celebrate its 60th birthday in the twin cities of Strasbourg (France) and Kehl (Germany) on the Rhine early in April. A special gift is being offered by France’s increasingly unpopular president, Nicolas Sarkozy: the return of France to NATO’s “integrated command”. This bureaucratic event, whose practical significance remains unclear, provides the chorus of NATOlatrous officials and editorialists something to crow about. See, the silly French have seen the error of their ways and returned to the fold.

Sarkozy, of course, puts it in different terms. He asserts that joining the NATO command will enhance France’s importance by giving it influence over the strategy and operations of an Alliance which it never left, and to which it has continued to contribute more than its share of armed forces.

The flaw in that argument is that it was the totally unshakable U.S. control of NATO’s integrated command that persuaded General Charles de Gaulle to leave in the first place, back in March 1966.
De Gaulle did not do so on a whim. He had tried to change the decision-making process and found it impossible. The Soviet threat had diminished, and de Gaulle did not want to be dragged into wars he thought unnecessary, such as the U.S. effort to win a war in Indochina that France had already lost and considered unwinnable. He wanted France to be able to pursue its own interests in the Middle East and Africa. Besides, the US military presence in France stimulated “Yankee go home” demonstrations. Transferring the NATO command to Belgium satisfied everyone.

Sarkozy’s predecessor Jacques Chirac, wrongly labeled “anti-American” by US media, was already willing to rejoin the NATO command if he could get something substantial in return, such as NATO’s Mediterranean command. The United States flatly refused.

Instead, Sarkozy is settling for crumbs: assignment of senior French officers to a command in Portugal and to some training base in the United States. “Nothing was negotiated. Two or three more French officers in position to take orders from the Americans changes nothing”, observed former French foreign minister Hubert Védrine at a recent colloquium on France and NATO.
Sarkozy announced the return on March 11, six days before the issue is to be debated by the French National Assembly. The protests from both sides of the aisle will be in vain.

There appear to be two main causes of this unconditional surrender.

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