I have been waiting for someone to bite the bullet. And Timothy Garton Ash did it. He wrote an Op-Ed piece in The New York Times on July 22, in which he argued for Russia's "eventual place" in NATO. Now, Timothy Garton Ash is neither "soft" on Russia nor someone unaware of the geopolitics of the region. He is today perhaps the leading public intellectual in the Western world writing about the countries of east-central Europe that once made up the so-called socialist bloc. He believes passionately in human rights and in a democratization process in these countries that will eliminate the vestiges of their Communist past.

Yet, he now wants Russia in NATO. What are his arguments? He says that, of course, NATO should expand eastward, and that including the Baltic states will bring the world closer (and here he cites Vaclav Havel) to "stability, security, democracy, and an advanced political culture...." But he then proceeds to reprimand gently even his culture hero, Havel, for not "push(ing) his thinking far enough to suggest Russia's eventual participation in NATO." The nub of his case for including Russia is its effect on the "the next generation of political leaders, whose thoughts about whether Russia belongs to the West will be greatly influenced by whether the West itself believes Russia should be part of it." Ash admits that people will think him a "lunatic" now but he expects that his views will become "conventional wisdom" ten years from now.

Now, if I understand the surface argument correctly, admission to NATO is an intermediary step in a process of "democratization." One has to reach a certain level already (Russia is not yet there), but not all the way, because then the very inclusion in NATO will "democratize" (or should it be "Westernize"?) a member. What's going on here? Is NATO now a school of political education or is it still a security organization? And if it is still a security organization, against whom should it secure its members? No longer against Russia, they say. And Ash, at least, suggests that it would be unwise to turn it into an anti-China alliance.

To make sense of this, we have to go back to 1945. When the victorious Allies created the United Nations, they adopted a Charter which presumed that the potential danger to peace would come from some resuscitated version of Nazism/fascism/militarism (that is, what the Axis powers had represented ideologically). The key Chapter of the U.N. Charter that was supposed to deal with this danger was Chapter VII, entitled "Action with respect to threats to the peace, breaches of the peace, and acts of aggression." This Chapter required all members "to make available to the Security Council, on its call...armed forces...necessary for the purpose of maintaining international peace and security." The use of these armed forces was to decided by the Security Council with the assistance of a structure called the Military Staff Committee, which was to consist of the Chiefs of Staff (or their representatives) of the five permanent members of the Security Council - that is, China, France, Russia [U.S.S.R.], the United Kingdom, and the United States.

This body began work on Feb. 1, 1946, met every two weeks thereafter, and after 29 months reported to the Security Council on July 2, 1948 that it was unable to fulfil its mandate. Although the group continued to meet ceremonially, it was in fact totally moribund, until it was seemingly revived by a U.N. resolution in 1990 for the purpose of undertaking a naval blockade against Iraq. But two or three informal meetings led to the decision not to activate formally the Committee.

It is obvious why the Military Staff Committee could never function. The main geopolitical tension after 1945 was not the putative revival of the Axis powers (or others states pursuing a similar policy) but the Cold War, which preoccupied the governments of the five permanent members of the Security Council, and which made it therefore impossible, indeed inconceivable, that they could agree unanimously on anything to do with the use of military force in the international arena.

Instead, four of the five permanent members involved themselves in two gigantic military alliances, NATO and the Warsaw Pact. The justification each of the two alliances gave for its existence was the existence of the other. It would have seemed to follow that after 1989, with the collapse of the Communisms, the dissolution of the U.S.S.R., and the disbanding of the Warsaw Pact, that NATO would have gone out of existence. The momentary hope that this might occur was signaled by the attempt to revive the Military Staff Committee in 1990. But it was not to be, since even then, the five could not agree on coordinated military action.

The members of NATO decided to continue, indeed to strengthen their structures, and expand geographically their mandate. (Previously, NATO had restricted its formal mandate to the European continent.) What justification did NATO give for its two notable actions - expansion eastward by including new members, and military operations in the Balkans. One was a version of what Ash is talking about - the "democratization" by Westernizing of the formerly Communist countries. The second was the existence of "rogue powers" which threaten the peace, and which no one else could contain.

These are of course self-assumed tasks. If NATO follows Ash's advice, and includes Russia, it would be directed against whom? Why not move to include China, Korea, and Japan? Why not then India? Why not then Brazil? And so we could continue. Until we would arrive at guess what - the United Nations. So, why do not the NATO members cut short the whole process, disband NATO, and simply revive the Military Staff Committee? Once again, the answer is obvious. NATO exists today to defend the West/the North against the rest/the South. Defend is of course a euphemism, since at the moment no one in the South, singly or collectively, is in a position to challenge militarily the NATO powers.

A U.N. military operation would have to be responsive politically to the whole world, and not just a third of it. And if we could imagine the Military Staff Committee actually functioning, the commanding officer of the armed forces being used would not always be (it might seldom be) an officer of the United States armed forces, which would mean that U.S. forces would be serving under the command of a foreign officer. The U.S. is not willing to have this happen even within NATO, much less within the framework of the United Nations, far less reliable from its point of view .

So, there we have it. NATO is a military tool of the West/North. Of course, NATO would be ready to include Russia, once Russia were willing to play by its rules. In the meantime, it will have to make do with Latvia. And the rest of the world will be subjected to its self-satisfied and self-justifying rhetoric.
 

Immanuel Wallerstein

[Copyright by Immanuel Wallerstein. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to download, forward electronically or e-mail to others and to post this text on non-commercial community Internet sites, provided the essay remains intact and the copyright note is displayed. To translate this text, publish it in printed and/or other forms, including commercial Internet sites and excerpts, contact the author at iwaller@binghamton.edu; fax: 1-607-777-4315.

These commentaries, published twice monthly, are intended to be reflections on the contemporary world scene, as seen from the perspective not of the immediate headlines but of the long term.]

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