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Why Trump Won’t Scrap ‘Obsolete’ NATO
By Finian Cunningham
January 25, 2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- "SCF"
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British Prime Minister Theresa May told UK
media that she would «press» US President Donald Trump
to support the NATO military alliance when she visits
Washington DC this week. May said she will remind Trump
that NATO is the «bulwark of our defense». The meeting
comes at an awkward time as news reports emerged also
this week that a British nuclear missile test went badly
wrong and targeted the US.
The British submarine-launched
intercontinental missile reportedly occurred
last June. The test took place off the coast of Florida
and the target area was supposed to be thousands of
kilometers away in the southern Atlantic Ocean,
apparently somewhere near the British colonial territory
of St Helena, off Africa.
Details still remain covered up by
British authorities, but reports this week say that the
missile probably went in the opposite direction and
instead traversed the United States. Reportedly, the
weapon was not carrying a nuclear warhead. Where it
finally landed is not yet publicly disclosed.
No doubt, the American authorities were
given advanced notification of the British test fire.
But it seems ironic that Theresa May sets herself the
mission of «pressing» Trump to continue committing to
the NATO «bulwark of defense» – when the British member
of the alliance nearly hit America with a faulty ICBM
only a few months ago.
May will be the first foreign leader to
meet in person with President Trump. Japan’s PM Shinzo
Abe met Trump earlier, but the latter was technically
still only President-Elect then, not yet in office.
May’s meeting was due in February but has been brought
forward to this week. It’s not clear what prompted the
earlier rescheduling – only one week after Trump’s
inauguration as the 45th president. Over the
weekend, May was tediously hailing the «special
relationship» between the two countries, claiming that
it would give her more gravitas to urge the American
president to continue supporting NATO.
Only a couple of weeks ago, Trump
reiterated comments in British and German media
interviews in which he labelled NATO as «obsolete». The
comments reportedly sparked
alarm among European members of the US-led military
alliance. Trump’s views appeared to tie in with his
«American First» strategy of withdrawing from overseas
military commitments.
May told the
state-owned BBC over the weekend that she
«won’t be afraid» to challenge Trump on redoubling
American commitments to NATO and in particular urging
the US president to give public assurances to Baltic
states of his defense commitment in the «event of
Russian aggression».
The British premier won’t have to do much
«pressing» on Trump, as she rather self-importantly
opined to the BBC. She will find herself pushing at an
open door. Trump’s spokesman Ted Malloch also said this
weekend that the new president has no intention of
shelving NATO. His comments about the organization being
«obsolete» were intended to indicate that Trump wants
European members of the 28-nation alliance to carry a
«fairer share of the financial burden». For decades, the
US has accounted for some 70 per cent of NATO’s budget.
This is what businessman Trump means by «obsolete». He
wants European NATO partners to step up to the plate
with increased military spending, which will inevitably
end up pumping the US military-industrial complex.
Apart from NATO, the other item on the
agenda of the Trump-May meeting this week is trade
issues. Britain is keen to negotiate a bilateral trade
deal with the US especially in the light of its «Brexit»
decision to quit the European Union and its single
market. Indeed one can surmise that Britain is not
merely keen, but rather is positively desperate to forge
new commerce with the US. This is reflected in May and
her Cabinet cozying up to Trump ever since his surprise
election on November 8. May was one of the first foreign
leaders to congratulate Trump over the phone. And
earlier this month, she sent her foreign secretary Boris
Johnson to New York to discuss future bilateral trade
prospects with the Trump transition team.
The high priority on Britain clinching a
bilateral trade deal with the US is another reason why
May’s comments about «pressing» Trump on NATO commitment
are just haughty pretensions. It’s not hard to imagine
that the British prime minister will be super
ingratiating towards the new occupant of the White
House, being extremely careful to keep him sweet. The
notion of May giving Trump a lecture on NATO as «our
bulwark of defense» is laughable given her desperation
to cut a vitally important trade accord to buoy up post-Brexit
Britain in the choppy waters of the global marketplace.
Her pretensions of being a stern partner to the US are
just British delusions of grandeur to cover up for the
cringing fact that Downing Street is running to
Washington with a begging bowl. Trump knows that his
English dame is a shrinking violet, and while extending
diplomatic grace, there is little doubt that the
American will let May know in no uncertain terms just
who the boss is.
Anyway, as already noted, Trump’s views
on NATO are not as radically dismissive as some
observers may have gleaned. In typical contradictory
fashion, Trump has at other times praised the
organization as «important». Also, his Defense Secretary
General James «Mad Dog» Mattis reportedly gave
an unequivocal commitment to NATO during his
confirmation hearings to the Senate earlier this month.
Indeed, Mattis said that Russia posed a dire threat to
the US-led international order and he pleasingly echoed
CIA talking points, accusing Russian leader Vladimir
Putin of «trying to break up NATO».
While President Trump has repeatedly
called for normalizing relations with Russia, he has
nevertheless absented any comments about NATO’s current
military escalation in Poland and the Baltic States. If
Trump is serious about restoring relations with Russia
he should abandon the policy of Russophobia under his
predecessor Barack Obama, and begin de-escalating NATO.
If anything demonstrates that NATO is «obsolete» it is
surely the buildup of patently offensive forces on
Russia’s border – by a military organization that was
set up in 1949 to combat the Soviet Union, which expired
more than 25 years ago.
NATO is the epitome of how the US and its
allies refuse to acknowledge a multipolar world
comprising nations on an equal basis. NATO is a de facto
statement that a select-few of self-anointed nations
presume the right to possess nuclear weapons, while
other nations are refused this right.
A month after Britain’s failed ICBM test
in the Atlantic, British parliamentarians voted to
upgrade the country’s Trident nuclear program to the
tune of $47 billion. British lawmakers were not informed
about the launch failure from the submarine HMS
Vengeance off Florida. The information had been kept
secret until this week. Had parliamentarians known about
the potentially catastrophic misfire, the vote might
have gone against upgrading Trident. So much for British
democracy! And so much for the 1970 Non-Proliferation
Treaty which mandates nuclear-armed states like Britain
to disarm its nuclear arsenal, not upgrade it with $47
billion.
This month, the UN ambassador from the
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea)
wrote a letter of protest over sanctions that have been
slapped on his country over recent ICBM tests.
Ambassador Ja Song Nam claimed that there is no
international law outlawing any nation from carrying out
such tests. It is, in his view, singularly unfair that
the DPRK be sanctioned, particularly when it is arguable
that such weapons development is in response to US-led
aggression under the guise of annual war games around
the Korean Peninsula.
The issue becomes even more bitterly
ironic given that NATO member Britain is somehow
entitled to launch ICBMs at will and without impunity
even though the ballistic weapon could have slammed into
a populated area in any number of countries – and this
from a nuclear power that claims to be part of a
«bulwark of defense».
NATO is indeed obsolete. It should be
disbanded forthwith owing to it presenting a threat to
world security from its provocative imbalance of
military forces. NATO military spending is ten times
that of Russia’s.
Also obsolete is the US-led international
order underpinned by NATO which permits certain nations
like Britain to possess and test fire nuclear-capable
weapons while ostracizing other nations like the DPRK
who dare to challenge this privileged, unjust order.
Western political leaders like Donald
Trump and Theresa May are so imbued with arrogant
self-entitlement that, unfortunately, there is no
prospect of NATO being decommissioned as the truly
obsolete war machine that it is. There is no need for
May to «press» Trump on supporting NATO. For it is
fundamental to the US-led international order and its
dysfunctional capitalist economy. Trump won’t scrap it.
He will just get others to pay more into it and in
effect get them to subsidize the unsustainable American
military-industrial complex.
Finian
Cunningham, Former editor and writer for major news
media organizations. He has written extensively on
international affairs, with articles published in
several languages
The views
expressed in this article are solely those of the author
and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of
Information Clearing House. |
