French President Emmanuel Macron is neither the first nor the only one to question the usefulness of NATO, even if his words have frightened the French media (professional propagandists in the pay of whom one wonders!). This question has been a recurring one for several years. After Afghanistan, the situation is getting bogged down with Syria, Turkey and up to the EU borders. Even American President Trump, but for very down-to-earth reasons and in a rather unfair way, also denounces an organization that is expensive for the United States. And if, as Franck Biancheri suggested in 2008, we accepted to consider that after the collapse of the Warsaw Pact it was NATO’s turn to be questionned. What is NATO for? A QCM at the end of the article that you could still answer today.
Franck Biancheri, 29-08-2008
That’s right! History has only one meaning, a very ironic sense of humour! Thus, after the Communists, the USSR, the Warsaw Pact and the people’s democracies, it is now the supporters of the irresistible West, the “end of history” (for the benefit of the same West), all-powerful Americanism, the ever-growing stock exchanges and NATO, invincible sword/shield of capitalist democracies, who are seeing their dreams collapse.
The wind of History is rushing all this little world into the ditch where they join the empires of a thousand years and other eternal elucubrations that the human spirit never tires of inventing.
Of course, there is panic on board the media, boards of directors and Western chancelleries. Stock markets have lost 30% in one year and continue to fall, the United States is sinking deeper into an unprecedented economic, social, military and moral crisis every day, NATO is bogged down in Afghanistan and tangled down under Russia’s new bumpers, and the EU still cannot decide whether it has a destiny of its own or whether it is just a Washington appendix.
So, our professional propagandists (in France in particular almost all the journalists of the national media who have now abdicated any desire to inform the public in order to limit themselves to the repetition of the communiqués of the powerful of the moment in Paris, Washington or Tel Aviv) are resurrecting the ghosts of history in an attempt to ward off fate.
Here we have the old USSR again behind the current Russia! Here are again the comparisons with Stalin’s annexation of Eastern Europe! Here again is the “ethnic cleansing” to stigmatize Russian action in Georgia[1]! … and so on.
Come on, come on, gentlemen, the lacquers of the powerful of the day, behave yourself. Your readers are not blind and the Internet exists, with media or debate sites that are beyond the control of your masters.
History does not repeat itself. Everyone knows that today’s Russia is no longer the USSR of yesterday, just as we know that today’s United States is no longer the same as it was in 1945. The ideological conflict on the Russian side disappeared; democratic and liberating legitimacy on the American side disappeared. Russia has always been a partner power in the European game and is once again becoming so. On the other hand, the question arises for the United States: can it be a player in the European game[2]?
In fact, if the current Georgian crisis is indeed a remake of something, it is the subprime crisis in the United States and the Western finance crisis. Just as the poor in the United States were convinced by financiers eager to get into debt beyond what they could pay back, the Georgian president (like his Ukrainian counterpart, or the Afghan president, or the Iraqi prime minister, or a bunch of other pro-Western puppets on the planet) was convinced that he could claim to live in the rich Western house and get rid of the influence of his big Russian neighbor without much difficulty. A serious mistake, of course, as for all those poor American households who also believed in the “American dream”. The reality has brutally reminded them: the poor do not become rich by miracle… and the Caucasus cannot escape its geographical situation.
And the analogy goes further. In the same way that the subprime crisis triggered a widespread crisis of all Western finance and brought down “kings of the world”[3] such as Bear Stearns in a few months, the Georgian crisis is causing NATO to falter and leave what little credibility it has left, in the West and elsewhere.
Militarily ensconced in Afghanistan, NATO is now facing a growing questioning of European public opinion, including in traditionally Atlanticist countries such as the Netherlands and Germany, while the organisation is moving towards a blatant cover-up in Georgia[4]. What is NATO for? The MCQ is becoming increasingly clear to Europeans (6 questions with 6 possible correct answers):
Answer 1: To supplement the expansionist policies of Washington or Tel Aviv
Answer 2: To involve Europeans in false conflicts (Georgia) or endless conflicts (Afghanistan)
Answer 3: To attack small defenceless countries
Answer 4: Nothing when it comes to a powerful country (like Russia)
Answer 5: To deprive Europeans of the right to vote and decide on the use of their armed forces
Answer 6: To prevent the emergence of a real common European defence.
Let the current French president and his clique of Americanists want to sell us a conflict between the West and the rest of the world (Russia, Islam,…) in order to corner Europe with the American Empire in disarray, free to them. But it is up to us, the citizens of Europe, to fight for an alternative and to make one essential point clear: the West no longer exists. The European Union now has its own interests that no longer overlap with those of the United States, or even may even be opposed to those of Washington. Moscow and Washington are foreign capitals for us EU citizens. We have no orders to take from either of them.
In conclusion, let NATO go with the wind of history, as it was already done for the Warsaw Pact!
Franck Biancheri, 29-08-2008
(Original French: OTAN en emporte le vent … de l’Histoire!)
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1] The current French Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner, is an accomplished propaganda specialist in this field. He tells absolutely anything with remarkable poise and lies on lies with disarming sincerity, as with his statement on 26/08/2007 about the “ethnic cleansing” (sic) that was soon to be committed (re-sic) in a South Ossetian city, according to Georgian sources. When he is thanked by his masters, there is no doubt that they will find him a sinecure as an editorialist in one of their media.
2] And not the master of an American game in Europe as they have been since 1945.[:fr]
