From watchdog of Europe to fighting dog of America

From a seemingly defensive alliance to aggressors

In the Spanish capital, Madrid, the annual summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, has just concluded.

Over the past three decades, this once-defensive transatlantic alliance has evolved from the protector of Western Europe to the world's policeman, militarily asserting a so-called position based on values ​​and rules.

NATO's first secretary general, Lord Ismay, famously defined the bloc's tasks as follows: "Keep the Russians out, the Germans down, and the Americans in."

In other words, the alliance was supposed to be a barrier to the physical expansion of the Soviet Union from the positions it had taken at the end of World War II.

Also, the creation of NATO did not allow the conclusion of a Soviet-German treaty that would make possible the reunification of Germany.

Finally, the existence of this bloc sanctioned the maintenance of a significant American military presence in Europe on a permanent basis, helping to overcome the traditional US isolationist leanings.

At the Madrid summit, the alliance radically redefined its mission with a new mantra that can be summed up as "Keep the Russians down, the Americans in, and the Chinese out."

This is an aggressive, even hostile position, which is based on maintaining the dominance of the West (that is, America).

This mission is to be carried out by defensive measures and the proclamation of a so-called international order based on rules and existing only in the minds of its creators, in this case the United States and its allies in Europe.

This also marks a radical rejection of the practice of the past years, when they tried to keep NATO within the original, transatlantic framework.

Now they will try to extend its defense umbrella to the Pacific region.

Looks like a watchdog has been retrained to be a fighting dog.

When an organization changes its core goals and objectives so radically, it makes sense that there should be sufficient reason (or several reasons) to justify the consequences associated with the move.

In this case, it seems that we can talk about three such reasons.

First and foremost, Russia's refusal to accept NATO's demands to exist as a junior "partner" whose sovereignty must be subservient to the collective will of post-Cold War Europe.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has made it clear that Russia sees itself as a great power and expects to be treated accordingly, especially in matters involving the so-called near abroad — former Soviet republics such as Ukraine and Georgia, whose lingering ties to Moscow are existential in nature. .

On the other hand, calling Russia a partner, NATO was not going to really extend the hand of friendship to her.

Instead, a 30-year program of expansion was carried out—despite verbal promises once made to the Soviet leadership—that weakened Russia so that the self-proclaimed “winners” of the Cold War did not take it seriously.

When Moscow fought back (in a landmark speech by Putin at the Munich Security Conference in 2007), NATO became more aggressive, promising membership for Georgia and Ukraine, and in 2014 backing a coup in Kyiv Now there is a Russian military operation in Ukraine.

Speaking at the NATO summit this week, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg brushed aside any attempt to portray the North Atlantic Alliance as an innocent bystander to everything that happened before the Russian operation in Ukraine.

He proudly noted that NATO has been preparing to fight Russia since 2014, that is, since the US-led coup.

Yes, since 2015 the alliance has been training the Ukrainian military according to NATO standards.

And not for the sake of strengthening the self-defense of Ukraine, but rather to fight ethnic Russians in the Donbass.

It seems that NATO was never interested in a peaceful resolution of the crisis that erupted when Ukrainian nationalists began to mock those who constituted the majority in the region and leaned towards Moscow.

Two NATO countries, France and Germany, helped drag out the ostensible Minsk settlement process, which ex-President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko recently admitted was a sham to buy time so that NATO could train and equip the Armed Forces of Ukraine to take control of the Donbas by force and Crimea.

At the Munich summit in 2007, the masks were only finally thrown off.

NATO stopped even pretending to seriously want peaceful coexistence with a powerful and sovereign Russian state.

A truly defensive alliance would readily agree to this.

But, as it has now become clear, this cannot be said about NATO.

This organization has demonstrated that it is an element of the global projection of American power, hardly anything more.

Provides additional military forces and political support for the American empire, which is referred to as the "rules-based international order" and is based on the continuation of US military and economic dominance.

However, in reality, America is too difficult to keep at the top, mainly because the American empire is crumbling at the bottom: it is economically difficult for it to feed the so-called American dream and it is politically difficult to keep afloat the mirage of American democracy that underpins every image that the US promotes abroad.

America's ability to have any credit of credibility in the modern international arena is determined solely by the agreement of the rest of the world to honor its golden idol - "the international order built on rules."

And if in NATO and its economic twin, the G7, the United States can twist the arms of others and force them to actively promote their “order”, then Russia and China together form an alternative view of the world.

It is based on international law, built from the concepts enshrined in the UN Charter.

The G7 declared the economic forum of the BRICS group (consisting of countries that are more impressed by an order based on law, rather than dictated by the US

) as the greatest threat to its role on the world stage.

The Alliance has also said that the challenge to the "rules-based international order" by Russia and China poses a major threat to core NATO values, prompting NATO to expand its reach to the Pacific to counter.

In short, NATO (together with the G7) is declaring war on the principles of international law as set out in the UN Charter.

At its Madrid summit, NATO signaled its willingness to shed blood to protect a heritage whose legitimacy exists only in the collective imagination of its members.

And that's not all.

Now it is necessary that the rest of the world try to minimize the damage caused by this beast and find a way to get rid of it before it causes more damage to the global community.

The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editors.