Is NATO Splintering?

by Steve

One of the consequences, intended or unintended, of the Bush Administration’s handling of its Iraq invasion campaign, may be the disintegration of NATO. The word has been out on the street for a while that the Project for a New American Century cabal wanted multinational bodies weakened or de-emphasized so that Pax Americana could proceed unimpeded.

Following the Robert Kagan script of a militarily inconsequential Europe finding itself irrelevant in the new era of American supremacy, it should not be surprising now to find that Europe, sans Tony Blair, is looking for new alliances to act as a counterweight to American hegemony. But did the Perle/Wolfowitz/Cheney/Rummy crowd want NATO to be seriously damaged as well?

Against a backdrop of growing anger and division, the European Union's four leading opponents of the war in Iraq are pressing ahead with a summit in Brussels tomorrow to discuss boosting military co-operation in Europe.

President Jacques Chirac and the German Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, are expected to use the summit with Belgium and Luxembourg to push the case that Europe needs to build common defence forces that are as independent as possible of America and NATO.

So while Tony Blair has struggled to keep the French from dividing the EU and NATO further, Bush pours gasoline and talks of penalizing France. The French respond to this with a push to develop a credible and independent European military counterweight to America, at a time when Bush and Blair were counting on the EU and possibly NATO bailing the coalition out on some of its peacekeeping obligations in Iraq.

And it is clear that Bush’s handling of the Iraqi war drive has pushed France and possibly Germany to look for a military partner in Russia. In particular, Russia and France are pursuing joint weapons development and European defense cooperation, even going so far as to talk about developing their own European missile defense system as a result of Bush’s withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty.

So instead of having multinational defense organizations that could have been led by the United States, as the leader of the free world, we face a situation where regional alliances will see a need to separate themselves from us, and develop their own capabilities. This may not worry Rummy and the gang now, but there will come a time when centralized control from a deliberative body will look good to America.