Although deterred by the Soviet Union from Western Europe

NATO is at its best when it does nothing

• The Western world won the Cold War in 1961 when East Germany recognized that the only way to stop the flight of its population was by building a huge wall to prevent its inhabitants from fleeing.

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• After Reagan came to power in the 1980s, the Soviet Union believed that the West was planning a nuclear strike against it.

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"NATO" is an alliance that is in its best position when it does nothing, and it should remain that way, but when it tries to do anything, it causes an endless series of disasters.

And when the alliance claims that it is "the most successful alliance in history", because it managed to deter the Soviet Union from attacking Western Europe and not waging a war in this region, and this is true, it covers up another historical fact that it forgot.

This fact is evidenced by the fact that during the end of the forties and the beginning of the fifties of the last century, both the Soviet Union and the United States decided independently that they would not work to expand their political systems and alliances in Europe, using or threatening military forces, for a clear reason that is manifested in any move. In this area it would lead to a catastrophic nuclear war.

This is something we desperately need to remember, as NATO is trying to anger Russia in Ukraine.

That is why, and before presenting what was called at the time "the Truman Doctrine" which was manifested in the United States' support for Greece and Turkey in 1947, and three years before the formation of the alliance, the President of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, had decided not to support Communist Greece in the ongoing civil war there, In addition, he pressured the Communist government of Yugoslavia not to provide support to Greece, which led to the secession of Yugoslavia from the Soviet Union.

The "Sun Room" project

Six years later, when President Dwight Eisenhower arrived at the White House, he ordered the conduct of the "Solarium Project", which bore this name because it was agreed upon in the Sun Room in the White House, a scenario that was implemented, and was intended to convince the leaders of the Republican Party The hardliners, including former US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, stated that their plans to reduce the influence of the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe were dangerous to implement, and that they reluctantly accepted them, and based on this, the Alliance refused to support the Hungarian people who revolted against the control of communist rule. 1956 year.

During the Cold War that followed the revolution of the Hungarian people, which lasted for 36 years, the borders of the countries of "NATO" and "Warsaw" did not change, until the collapse of the Soviet Union from within, as a result of the state of oppression and absurdity that prevailed in its countries, and "NATO" did not try To win over Austria and Finland, two capitalist democratic states that were formally adopting neutrality from the two Cold War camps, and the Finnish people did not, for their part, try to change the situation in which they were living, not because of the danger of that, but because neutrality did not cause them any harm.

Stay behind fences

The capitalist and democratic countries of the West did not have to do anything at all. They managed to remain behind the walls of the military power of the "NATO" alliance, and when the President of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev, addressed the countries of the West, saying, "We will bury you", he did not mean that the Soviet Union would destroy The Western world, but he meant that we, as a Western world, would die of our own accord as a result of the innate failure of capitalism, and that the Soviet Union would remain as a result of its innate strength, and it turned out later that what happened was the opposite, but without killing at all.

From this point, the Western world did not win the Cold War between 1989 and 1991.

Rather, it was in 1956 when the Hungarian people revolted against communism, and in 1961 when communist East Germany recognized that the only way to stop the flight of its population to a better life in West Germany was to build a huge wall that prevented its inhabitants from escaping, and from that moment on the Soviet bloc became an ideological model. In Europe, dead.

As for Washington, Vietnam, Angola, Afghanistan, and other places were not that important to them, but they were interested in the large economic centers in Western Europe and East Asia, which are countries that make the United States ready to risk a nuclear war against it. As for Moscow, The vital interests were in Eastern Europe, and on the borders of the Soviet Union itself, and accordingly, when one side knows the vital interests of the other, it will not show a challenge to those interests.

Physical combat training

Accordingly, the Cold War in Europe was a form of physical combat exercises, although this analogy was unrealistic given the size of the military forces that each side was mobilizing against the other, in addition to the flood of mutual aggressive speeches between the two parties, and the fear between the two parties was real despite One of the great capabilities that the armies of both sides were amassing, and according to what the Russian Colonel, Olg Gurdevsky said, the fugitive from the KGB alliance following the arrival of the US President, Ronald Reagan, to power, the Soviet leadership truly believed in the beginning of the eighties of the century In the past, the West was planning to launch a preventive nuclear war, but that did not mean that this belief was based on fact.

Elsewhere, the suffering of the Vietnamese, Cambodians, Afghans, Ethiopians, and Guatemalans, in the shadow of the proxy wars between the two camps, was real and frightening.

But neither NATO nor the countries participating in it (with the exception of France, Britain and the United States) participated in these wars, because their participation would have made their societies mount strong protests, and accordingly, although the presence of NATO helped to deter any Soviet aggression, but in reality the Alliance did not do anything.

The disastrous role of the alliance in international issues began with the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, as this gave it the opportunity to do something, and the fear of canceling the alliance gave it the impetus for this, and these fears were exacerbated by the Europeans about the loss of American protection, in addition to the concern that NATO officers and employees could lose their jobs.

Unnecessary enemy

The negative consequences were doubled: Russia had once again turned, unnecessarily, into an enemy.

It reinforces America's faith in its mission to bring freedom to the world, and encourages Europeans to indulge in strategic irresponsibility under the American security cloak, at the expense of the American taxpayer.

The alliance is not ready for war

Nevertheless, NATO is still not prepared to engage in a real war. A friend working in the US military summarized to me beautifully the role of NATO in Afghanistan when he said: “We pretended that we listened to them while they pretended that they were fighting (i.e. European members of the alliance), although it excluded real sacrifices by the British army.

Regarding NATO as a force to fight Russia, a former employee of the staff of the former NATO Secretary-General, Hope Scheffer, spoke to me during the efforts of the General Secretariat, paid by Washington, to include Georgia and Ukraine in the alliance between 2007 and 2008, when I asked him About the contingency plans drawn up by NATO employees regarding the possibility of a war between Georgia and Russia over the breakaway regions in Georgia, he answered me: “There are no plans.” When I expressed my surprise, he added: “You do not understand the situation, as the idea of ​​NATO expansion is It was all promoted to European voters, coupled with promises that they would not have to fight in order to protect these two countries. ”

Perhaps an alliance led by such a horrific and failed leadership still deserves to exist, as a residual guarantee of security in Western and Central Europe, and the interests of the United States in these regions, even if with less American presence, the responsibility for European security must rest on the shoulders of the Europeans themselves. In order for NATO to be able to fulfill this essential role, all it has to do is what it was doing during the Cold War, to do nothing. And we might be sure that without Washington bailing out the consequences, even the most expansive European members of the Alliance would be too happy to do nothing.

• The disastrous role of "NATO" in international issues began with the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, as this gave NATO the opportunity to do something, and the fear of canceling the organization gave it the motive for that. These fears were exacerbated by Europeans about losing American protection, in addition to the concern that NATO officers and employees could lose their jobs.

Anatole Levine - British writer and George Orell prize winner.

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