Neo NATO
The date is June 12, 2016, a DiEM25 discussion on the EU’s role in NATO inspires the following.
Let me begin by saying I too am a pacifist at heart, and would love to see a demilitarized EU set an example for the rest of the world.
Sadly, I do not believe the world is currently in a state where the dissolution of NATO and the demilitarization of the EU would lead to greater global stability, and as such I would like to make a (devil’s advocate) argument for not just a continuation of NATO, but in fact a significant increase in EU involvement in NATO, coupled with a far greater emphasis on militarization of EU member states.
I have the following five arguments to make for this case:
First and foremost I agree with the assessment that NATO is currently a mechanism through which the United States exercises influence on member states. That being said, NATO membership is a voluntary decision for states, and to my knowledge no state has had membership imposed upon it against the will of its population. Indeed former Warsaw pact countries were willing to go so far as to join an offensive war they had no interest in fighting purely to secure their membership to NATO. This speaks to the notion of security through alliances still being a powerful political concept in establishing independence and recognition in the global community. This is doubly true with the United Nations, the body traditionally charged with ensuring global security and stability, having become a globally powerless institution, unable to agree on even the most common sense issues, ineffectual and even counter-productive in virtually all of its mandates. As long as veto powers exist this will not change and because veto powers exist it cannot change.
As such, the issue with NATO is not its mandate or its existence, it is that the relative balance of power among member states is so heavily skewed towards the United States as to allow them to threaten member states into complying with unpopular demands. This imbalance of power is not codified in NATO rules and regulations (if it were it would not have grown to what it is now), it is simply a matter of the US holding all the cards. Simply put: there is a demand for security that only the US can offer. As such, if the relative power of non-US members were to increase they could offer that security and the US would lose its ability to dictate unpopular policy.
Whether or not you believe that NATO expansion is the reason for Russian aggression in Georgia and Crimea, NATO membership is certainly a deterrent to Russia were they to set their sights on Estonia, Latvia or other ex-Soviet states. Throughout history territorial conflicts have erupted for an enormous variety of reasons, and while alliances have increased the risk of conflict in some cases, they have also mitigated the risks in plenty of others. Just because NATO expansion has been a factor in increasingly hostile relations over the last decade does not mean it has not also been a deterrent against conflicts that could have erupted in that same time, if nothing else, NATO countries do not fight one another.
Which leads me to the next argument. As the UN becomes increasingly powerless, debate about the legalities of war as well as the imposition of consequences for war crimes, has all but ceased. At the same time, technology continues to rapidly change the face of warfare. For the most part the technological emphasis has been on greater accuracy in the arms themselves, but as the US drone program shows: while a missile may be directed with pinpoint accuracy to a car from thousands of miles away, the accuracy of the intelligence and justification for that missile being fired in the first place has been ignored. Thus, there can be no accountability for that missile being fired, let alone a global accountability for the drone program as a whole. Unlike a powerless UN, an alliance among friends is much more capable of determining a vision for the future of warfare. A vision that will be desperately needed as warfare continues towards greater automation. As well as being able to more effectively consider the ethical and legal standards for the future of war, NATO is more capable of pooling resources towards accomplishing that vision, and can use said resources to hold one another accountable for actions that betray this vision. After all, the larger NATO gets and the more evenly power gets distributed among NATO members, the larger the consequences would be for being removed from NATO. This threat could also be used against state actors like Turkey when they actively undermine NATO’s strategic interests but are politically immune to other sanctions. In simple terms a stronger EU presence in NATO will allow the EU to assert a foreign policy when it gets around to actually having a foreign policy.
My next argument, continuing from the last one, is that the EU actually creates and exports a lot of weapons. In 2014 France, Germany, the UK, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands exported a combined total of $5.5 billion worth of arms, that’s almost as much as Russia and several times as much as China in that year. How many of those weapon systems are now being used by Saudi Arabia to bomb Yemen, or have made their way to Syria? What about those Mistral Assault ships that were going to end up in Russia? The EU plays a part in the arming and destabilization of the world, and because we turned a blind eye to our defense industries and called ourselves pacifists, we’ve been arming some very questionable parties. The EU is currently the global leader on surveillance technology exports, so we’ve obviously not changed our ways since 2014. However, this fact illustrates that we are good at making these systems, and as such, with greater political attention we could play a stronger role in determining the future of warfare, and who has access to it. Simultaneously, by buying locally we could increase European independence from the US and increase our relative military power as well as our economic stability.
To continue this line of thought into a more left wing futurist direction I’d like to touch on sustainability. War is obviously not sustainable, ending lives and blowing things up can never be. That being said, on a practical level, everything leading up to the blowing up of things also uses incredible amounts of fossil fuels, as fuel consumption can never be as important in the design of weapon systems as it would be in any other system. This creates the complicated dynamic where, as fossil fuels become scarcer and more expensive and the world pivots away from them, we’ll still need to secure fossil fuels for our defense, while at the same time using them much faster in order to secure them. Given the environmental focus of the EU, and the fact that we continue to have defense industries, why not invest heavily in a more sustainable future of war? A more sustainable military would focus less on explosive non-renewable power and more on renewable electrical power, just like other industries do. The same principles that apply to engines also apply to bombs. If the goal of a military is to deter or remove a threat. Stepping away from the paradigm of war being about destroying and killing a threat, into a paradigm of war being about deterring and disabling a threat would redefine global conflict. Sadly not every player on the world stage holds the belief that reducing lethality in war is desirable, as such the EU’s human rights focus and economic potential could have a disproportionately important effect in the future of weapons systems.
Given the previous arguments for alliances and the militaries that empower them being a necessary evil, pivoting the EU to contribute more to NATO and its own defense capabilities actually empowers it. Doing so allows it to play a stronger political role, introduces a potential check to US influence, allows the EU to have more say in the legalities and ethics of warfare as a whole, which in turn increases the amount the world in general takes these things into account. It also allows the EU to influence and contribute to the technologies used in warfare while benefiting economically, and it allows the EU to contribute to a global effort to reduce the lethality and increase the sustainability of war and defense.
Lastly there is a practical political argument to be made for militarization in the context of an EU increasingly torn apart by nationalist and eurosceptic right wing parties. Historically defense is an important argument for the right, as it is tied to ideas of sovereignty and independence. Similarly militarization has historically proven an excellent strategy to rally and unify populations. In order to steer these forces from a disintegrative path onto an integrative one, the EU could leverage the fact that, through NATO and through our combined military weakness, we’re still “all in this together” with or without the EU. An increase in militarization and cooperation could use traditional right wing arguments of sovereignty and security to help unite a politically divided citizenry.
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Thank you, dear reader. Consider this my hat.
