IF at all there is a transnational organisation that is a grave danger to the world, the outdated North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) must be it. There are two reasons for saying this. One, Nato is the military wing of the European project, an enterprise charged with Europeanising what is not Europe. This is both a political and cultural project. It is an experiment of regime and culture change, though not necessarily in that order. Clash of civilisations is being given a new lease of life. This is why European leaders and diplomats (and American ones, too) never tire of talking of freedom, democracy and human rights. Call them armed missionaries. The coming together of Europe and the United States in such ideological flavour in the shape of Nato should alarm the non-Western world. Beware of the far-reaching change in our society that these ideologues are envisioning for us. We would do well to keep in check such one-size-fits-all Western hubris. Liberal imperialists dressed as humanitarians must be kept at a safe distance.
Nato's constant search for a new purpose for its continued existence, our second reason, is equally dangerous. No matter what Nato says, the alliance was created as a defensive organisation, the Article 5 reason: an attack on one is an attack on all. The target was the Soviet Union. With the collapse of
the Soviet Union in 1991, Nato should have been buried for good. But Nato wasn't funeral-ready. It had to find a new
purpose. It did: policing, even
if it meant going as far as Afghanistan. What an expansive reading of the Nato treaty. Article 5 talks of an attack on one. In what way were the Sept 11, 2001 terrorist acts an "attack" by a particular country? The 19 extremists involved in the suicide mission were not from the armed forces of any nation. They should have been treated as criminals and punished as such, if found guilty.
But no, the US and Nato had to do it their way. No one-size-fits-all here. Their "us versus them" turn of mind did not allow it. They had to create a Guantanamo legal black hole where no American law could reach. Just in case the law finds them not guilty. To justify an invasion, the US and Nato began working their propaganda machinery by describing the bombings as "attacks", a quick route to invoke Article 5. Sadly, the Western media from The Economist to The New York Times became the echo chambers of liberal imperialists as they are now in the Russia-Ukraine crisis. First disinformation, then the bombs. Truth is always the first victim. Thus, with its fertile imagination and storytelling skills (helped in no small measure by British and American propagandists), Nato invaded Afghanistan, invoking Article 5 for the first time.
To justify the two invasions and earlier ones, as Professor John Gray recounts in Black Mass, the former British prime minister Tony Blair went on his 1999 disinformation circuit in Chicago, where he spoke of the idea of an "international community", a collection of superpowers (Nato?) that stand ready to take military action whenever they deem "morally" necessary. If before the enemy was a nation at war with the West, today it is an "autocratic" regime or a "rogue state" that is deemed wanting in "freedom" and "human rights". Call it culture change at gunpoint. A dangerous pursuit for any alliance, outdated or otherwise.