NATO, a tested hypothesis once more.
The concept of NATO,The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was intended as a post World War 2 strategic alliance led by the United States to counter the rising Iron curtain of the USSR in Eastern Europe. The essential details were that the members of NATO are to support one another in a traditional sense. To provide aid to one another in times of war and to spend a certain amount to maintain their military.
In reality, members of NATO have not maintained the original charter for what was expected of them and this has created a situation that is very similar to how the Byzantine Empire ran its foreign alliances. The Eastern Roman Empire, known to modernity from its 19th century term of Byzantium, ran a large governmental structure centered in the great middle ages city of Constantinople, it had maintained a large amount of trade and wealth generation from its provinces. With this money, it attempted to counter the troubles of the day; which included conducting war and to defend its land territories. This basic plan worked for a time when the Eastern Empire had dealt with smaller federations of migrations of people including Varangians, Tatars, and other Germanic tribes.This strategy failed however once the Byzantine Empire encountered a unified front from elsewhere. In the Byzantine case, this was the rise of Islam and the first Islamic Caliphates. Under strong pressure and the failure of quid pro quo diplomacy, the Byzantines lost their eastern provinces in the middle east and north Africa and thus lost a lot of influence in the 600s. The reason for this is that the Byzantine Empire had traditionally bribed tribes to fight amongst each other; yet, once it encountered a strong unified foe, it failed to make a strong defense.
The situation of a wealthy nation trying to encourage discourse for strategic gain has been seen in the post WW2 United States. In Afghanistan in the 1980s, the United States funded the rebel groups to take to guerrilla warfare in order to fight the USSR. This was successful in large part because the USSR had tried to control the area by using tactics that had worked in traditional warfare. The belief of the Soviets was that they could kill enough resistance that eventually the country would bow down to them. This worked fine in the cities of Afghanistan, but as those who are aware of the situation in Afghanistan. There is a large influence of the countryside tribes in the country. When the majority of these tribes went against the Soviets and formed their Mujaheddin factions. The USSR had little opportunity to try to divide and conquer. Despite this not being a European conflict, we can use this as evidence to show that deep consideration must be made of alliances and situations on the ground.
For NATO, its actions after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 has been very aggressive in its expansion approach. Evidence for this is that there seems to be a strong correlation between the growth of the European Union into Eastern Europe and the expansion of NATO. Nations such as the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland are participating states in the expansion of Western ideas and economic practices. All of these countries have sent delegations and maintained memberships in the European Union for many years now. For the Russians, these developments have been cause for alarm in Moscow. For some perspective of how the Western nations have out competed the USSR and the Russian state take for example the Kremlin provide a statistic of in the year 1980, the USSR had a third of the economic size of the United States. Now, the Russian economy is about 1/15th the size of the United States. Hence, economic stagnation is a major pull factor of Russia to enter into Ukraine to protect its national albeit Imperialistic ambitions.
From what can be seen is that the NATO nations have had success to divide Russian Influence from its post Soviet sphere of influence, yet it has not paid adequate attention to its eastern counterparts. . Russia is part of BRICS, an acronym standing for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa have come to represent a sort of counterbalance to that of the OECD, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The OECD has many countries under the Western banking sphere and has a large influence on economic policy. BRICS is trying to remove the US Dollar from its World Reserve Currency status by economic promotion, so when the nations of NATO are pushing sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, its still not addressing the financing and economic power of BRICS and even the Western nations support it by the purchasing of Chinese goods. This profit made in China can easily be fed back into Russia, if needed. What logically should be done is that there should be an ultimatum to China, where if they do not cut off trade with Russia then they will also be under an embargo. This would cause harsh penalties to Russia and may push the Chinese to convince Russia to call back the attack.
The problem fundamentally with NATO was that it was going to hit a roadblock onto how much division it could cause in Russia’s sphere of influence and its reliance on the United States to lead the alliance. The United States has waned somewhat in power projection in the early 21st century. This has allowed members of NATO to not take seriously its called for obligations within the alliance with notable members such as Germany, not holding up their budgetary responsibilities to provide for a strong military. When Ukraine was invaded on 24 February 2022, Germany was not prepared and even relied on Russian Natural gas to fuel its factories. Without this natural gas, Germany, which needs 1/3rd of its supply of total natural gas to fuel its robust factories could not operate at a strong capacity. The Germans were unprepared and so were the French. French president Macron had taken up the delegation to negotiate with Russia for a peace deal; he and his advisors failed to materialize this. France based on its contributions to NATO should not be given authority to negotiate on behalf of the alliance. It is the failure of strong leadership in the United States that is ultimately just after Vladimir Putin to blame for the developments in Europe in February 2022. Now, NATO has responded and appears weak to the rest of the world due to its failure to deal with a united Russian front. One of its biggest mistakes was to announce that a nuclear option was not possible. Even if one doesn’t want to do that, it should not tell the enemy so, this is because an enemy who has this information will do everything it can to exploit it. It is probable that Russia would have been less aggressive if they thought Moscow might be obliterated for its actions.To be frank, NATO sounds good on paper, but with the reality of this event and others priors, it shows that NATO as currently structured does not work and should be abolished and replaced with something else.
Ultimately, NATO and the United States’ role in the alliance shows just as past Empires have come to understand is that you cannot only rely on divide and conquer to deal with your enemies and you can’t buy your way out. It is necessary to be adaptable to the times and to keep all options on the table. Sources: 1. https://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?DataSetCode=PDB_LV 2. https://www.worldeconomics.com/GrossDomesticProduct/Russia.gdp