Survival of Trans-Atlantic Alliance sees no guarantees

NATO head Jens Stoltenberg touted the unifying nature of the NATO Alliance in his call for a greater commitment to its mission. Stoltenberg got around to promoting this necessity because of the threats that are posed by Russia, cyber attacks, terrorism, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. But he seems to ignore the fact that many of the threats to the security of the Western order are artificial or manufactured by NATO’s primary member and benefactor, the United States of America.

USA News reports:

LONDON (AP) — The bonds between Europe and North America are under strain and there’s no guarantee the trans-Atlantic partnership will survive, the head of NATO warned Thursday.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg called for an effort to shore up the military alliance amid the divisions between Europe and the United States over trade, climate change and the Iran nuclear deal.

“It is not written in stone that the trans-Atlantic bond will survive forever,” Stoltenberg said during a speech in London. “But I believe we will preserve it.”

NATO has been shaken by U.S. President Donald Trump’s “America First” stance and mistrust of international institutions. Trump once called NATO obsolete and has repeatedly berated other members of the 29-nation alliance of failing to spend enough on defense.

Ahead of a NATO summit in July, Stoltenberg said “we may have seen the weakening” of some bonds between North America and Europe. But he insisted that “maintaining the trans-Atlantic partnership is in our strategic interests.”

Stoltenberg said the world faced “the most unpredictable security environment in a generation” due to terrorism, proliferating weapons of mass destruction, cyberattacks and an assertive Russia.

“We must continue to protect our multilateral institutions like NATO, and we must continue to stand up for the international rules-based order,” he said.

After meeting Prime Minister Theresa May in Downing St., Stoltenberg praised Britain, one of a minority of NATO countries to meet a target of spending 2 percent of GDP on defense.

He said that despite differences between the U.S. and Europe, NATO delivered “trans-Atlantic unity” every day.

“We have had differences before, and the lesson of history is that we overcome these differences every time,” Stoltenberg said.

Some European officials worry the Trump administration is cool on efforts to hold Russia to account for misdeeds including election meddling and the nerve-agent poisoning of former spy Sergei Skripal in England, which the U.K. blames on Moscow.

At a G-7 summit this month, Trump suggested that Russia should be readmitted to the group of industrial powers, from which it was expelled over its annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Some U.S. allies are concerned by reports that Trump plans to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin when the American leader travels to Europe for the NATO summit next month.

But Stoltenberg said meeting Putin does not contradict NATO policies.

“We are in favor of dialogue with Russia,” he said. “We don’t want a new cold war. We don’t want a new arms race. We don’t want to isolate Russia.

America’s mission to export democracy and ‘freedom’ and to reshape global politics through regime changes is what has led to many of the threats which Stoltenberg mentions. The reason why the situation with the Ukraine and Crimea even came about was due to the US’s meddling which led to a violent color revolution and which is still mired in violence to this day.

The migration issue facing Europe is largely the result of America’s wars in the Middle East, which had as their aim regime changes, but which have only resulted in radicalized Islamic terrorist groups springing up to destabilize and threaten destabilization not just in the Middle East but across the Eastern hemisphere.

Those migrants are fleeting the destabilization wrought by America’s meddling in the Middle East and Africa. And America is still arming and financing terrorist organizations and continuing to stoke conflict, whether it is Libya, Syria, or Yemen. These activities, by America not Russia, have led to the deaths of millions, war crimes, flagrant human rights violations, and political instability, both actual and threatened, from Europe to the Gulf of Aden.

And it was America which terminated its participation in a nuclear non proliferation agreement with Iran, the JCPOA, and is attempting to totally kill the agreement by trying to force its remaining signatories to ditch it as well, or to render it impossible to observe through the threat of secondary sanctions. America made these global security threats, and continues to do so unapologetically.

Therefore, it would appear that NATO’s mission, both its initial one and however it perceives its current one, cannot be realized in an honest fashion. Essentially, not only are the conditions surrounding a unified West becoming more uncertain by the day, but areas of common interest are becoming fewer also. It’s not entirely about whether NATO can survive, but whether it really should. Perhaps this is one multilateral agreement that Trump should exercise his withdrawal habit upon and walk away from it, perhaps under the pretext that its members just won’t carry their weight and pay up.