“All concerned should come together and discuss the
OBVIOUS alternatives to militarist policies in general and
NATO expansion in particular,” appeals Dr. Oberg. “According
to President Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright, the present expansion involving Poland, the Czech
Republic and Hungary is only the first in a series. Now is
the time, therefore, to prepare for a new advocacy of
alternatives to the continuation of this dangerous
development. Further NATO expansion must be stopped,” says
the TFF director.
“NATO was and remains geared to the Cold War. In its
essence, the alliance has not changed. NATO must not be
allowed forever to lead or monopolise world security
affairs. Its military priorities and nuclearism in
particular make NATO a part of humanity’s problem, not an
instrument in the exploration of the new peace policies that
ought to unfold in this genuinely new era.
NATO expansion is sheer folly. It contradicts every
vision of a world in which we learn to clash as civilised
creatures, solve our conflicts through negotiations and
mutual respect and devote our energies to demilitarisation,
civil society, democracy, justice, sustainable development
and peaceful, co-existence in diversity.”
“The decision to expand NATO has been too uncritically
accepted in Europe, whereas there is a reasonable debate in
the United States. One wonders why so many media people,
security experts and even peace researchers have stopped
asking fundamental questions or spoken out against this
destabilising policy,” states Oberg and continues:
“There are surprisingly few convincing argument in favour
of NATO expansion. To understand why it is anyhow swallowed,
the project can be seen as any other marketable commodity
devoid of self-criticism and moral consideration: if
marketed with enough money, with advance preparation of
elite attitudes, with appeals to fear or narcissism – it
will go down. Human folly combined with interests of money
and power can be sold as wisdom and statesmanship even in
so-called democracies, in the modern information society.
It’s actually quite frightening.”
“I take pleasure in sharing the arguments below AGAINST
this expansion – and those to come. Most of them have
surfaced in the debate, some are my own. Many concerned
citizens feel that something is wrong. Let’s proclaim it
from the roof-tops. Indeed, our best “weapons” are better
thoughts, ideas, ethics, compassion and networking – and
independent minds in an increasingly authoritarian era the
slogan of which is that ‘there are no alternatives.’ But
there is no democracy if there are no alternatives. I urge
all concerned to come together and discuss the OBVIOUS
alternatives to militarist policies in general and NATO
expansion in particular,” appeals Jan Oberg.
46 Arguments Against NATO’s Present and Future Expansions
1. NATO has less experience in handling conflicts
than the UN, the OSCE and many NGOs. NATO is not geared to
the new challenges, it’s toolbox fundamentally belongs to
the past. The post-Cold War conflict landscape makes the UN
and OSCE, not NATO which is predominantly a military
organisation, more relevant.
2. The huge oil resources in the Caspian Sea/the
Caucasus may well be high up on the hidden future agenda of
this and coming NATO expansions. So is the containment of
Russia and Yugoslavia.
3. “Increased stability” and “enhanced security”
are magic formulas with which the expansion is sold to
citizens. However, no analysis has operationalised these
terms or shown that there will be more real stability or
security with NATO expansion than without it. The rhetoric
goes unnoticed because a majority of journalists and
intellectuals have stopped asking critical questions.
4. Today security must be defined in broad terms
and include socio-economic, cultural and ecological
dimensions. Thus, alternative defensive defence, military as
well as civilian, is relevant. Security means handling
conflicts efficiently. NATO expansion is based on an
outdated defence philosophy.
5. New states such as Croatia, Bosnia or Georgia –
and newly non-aligned states such as former Warsaw Pact
members – could be pioneers of new defence, security and
foreign policies if they had not chosen to imitate the
outmoded defence policies of much bigger or older security
actors (in comparison with whom their military status will
forever remain 2nd or 3rd class, small as they are.
6. Estimates of the costs of the expansion vary
from a few billion dollars to several hundred billion
dollars over the next decade. NATO members disagree about
who shall pay the bill. All this is indicative of the
well-known law in military matters: it’s going to be
expensive, more expensive than “estimated” at the time of
the decision-making.
7. The costs – inside NATO and for the new members
– are very high. Everybody talks about economic crisis. We
should ask what the “opportunity costs” of this expansion
are: how much welfare, civil investments, cultural activity
could citizens get for the sums their governments now invest
in the military?
8. Spending huge sums on the military in times of
economic crisis will impoverish the already disadvantaged
and reward the rich elites, thus aggravating social
tensions. There is already enough of of such
conflict-promoting class divisions in Eastern Europe.
9. The expansion will lead to increased American
power in and over Europe – a Europe in general and an EU in
particular that cannot get its acts together. East European
governments seem to want this “proof of Westernness” because
the EU could not accommodate them.
10. No nation has unlimited economic resources.
NATO investment will mean less resources for the OSCE, the
EU, and the UN as well as less for non-military security
measures.
11. No-first-use of nuclear weapons should have become NATO policy before any expansion.
12. The argument that “the East European want it
so badly and how can we say no to them?” is beside the
point. It was President Clinton who already in 1992 started
selling the idea of expansion. Eastern dissidents, including
Lech Walesa and Vaclav Havel, were traditionally pacifists
and neutralists; they emphasised civil society and culture
and cooperation, not nuclearism and militarisation and
certainly not NATO membership. That is – until they became
representatives of state power and someone whispered “NATO
membership” in their ears.
13. Furthermore, must NATO gallantly open the door
to any government (however never Russia or Yugoslavia) who
seems to have no independent thoughts concerning their own
security but want to become clients, protected by big
brothers in the West? Are we to believe that citizens
longing for democracy and prosperity would really want that,
if they were also offered various alternatives to NATO
expansion?
14. According to Washington, this is only the first in a series of expansions.
15. Saying there are no alternatives to NATO
expansion is indicative of intellectual poverty or, worse,
an authoritarian worldview. Democracies are characterised by
the presence of more than one option – and public discussion
about them.
16. There would hardly be much public support in
the new member states if people there were given accurate
information about two things: a) the likely real price and
opportunity costs of membership and b) that they will, in
the worst of cases, be “defended” by nuclear weapons.
17. Russia’s military expenditures are believed to
be about 10% of those of the United States and, thus, even
smaller in comparison with all of NATO. No military threat
motivates or justifies NATO’s expansion.
18. One may ask whether the world will ever
achieve disarmament if the general philosophy is: “When
there is a threat we must increase our military; when there
is no threat we must also increase it because there could be
one in the future”?
19. No nation have suffered as much and been more
humiliated in this century than Russia. Just think of the
world wars, Stalin’s terror, the inefficient Communist
economy. Whatever was done in the Gorbachev era to open up
to the West (a precondition for internal reforms), the
Soviet Union/Russia received no rewards beyond lip service.
In a historical perspective, NATO’s expansion is simply
provocative as seen from Russia – “the most fateful error of
American policy in the entire post-Cold War era” as stated
by George Kennan.
20. Russia will never be a full member, community is not sought.
21. The expansion is likely to stimulate Russian/Chinese/Asian rapproachment.
22. With the expansion, the fault line Catholic/Protestant versus Orthodox will be polarised.
23. New member are likely to be former Warsaw Pact
countries or others such as Slovenia who all feel
antagonised vis-a-vis Russia. So NATO expansion can only
involve countries that will be seen by Russia as future,
potential enemy states.
24. The stronger NATO becomes in its role as
“peacekeeper,” the weaker the UN will be. The UN –
deliberately weakened by US policies in recent years – will
be forced to surrender its authority, competence, good name
and role as world community organisation to elite group
interests that may violate its charter and to missions it
can’t control. Successively “UN” will stand for “United
NATOs”.
25. Out-of-area operations will appear more
“natural” as boundaries between NATO and non-NATO-members
will be increasingly blurred.
26. NATO reforms will take more time; integrating
the new members may potentially weaken the alliance and
cause a series of conflicts about payment and power inside
it.
27. Nuclear weapons will just not be deployed as
things stand now. What about a future situation? Russia will
feel a stronger motivation now to upgrade her nukes.
28. Ratification by the present NATO member states
could cause divisions at the same time as the planned
continuation/withdrawal of troops from Bosnia is likely to
take place. Who is really willing to pay these
bills? And who has the power to make other governments
– or, rather, their taxpayers – pay?
29. The “look-at-Bosnia” argument is faked. The
Russians are not equal there; Dayton is not a peace but a
complex cease-fire agreement. It will not produce a unified
state through voluntary commitment by its constituent
members. NATO/SFOR and others now form an authoritarian
protectorate-like mission way beyond what the Dayton
Agreement stipulated, while none of the conflicts that lead
to the catastrophe has been solved. NATO came in the
wake of all the conflict-management mistakes by Western
actors, the EU and the US in particular, since 1991. Bosnia
was used to “save” NATO whose raison d’etre had become
fragile.
30. What threatens Europe and human civilisation?
Answers include environmental degradation, overexploitation
of natural resources, socio-economic crisis, alienation,
terrorism, financial breakdowns, global inequality, poverty,
drugs. None of these challenges can be solved by NATO’s
military-dominated defence and security policies and, thus,
not by its expansion.
31. Nuclear and other illegitimate weapons of mass
destruction represent another threat to world peace. No
purpose can justify their use. In addition, we witness a
decreasing control of nuclear technology and fissile
materials. NATO expansion implicitly lends more, not less,
legitimacy to these morally indefensible policies.
32. NATO expansion cannot but increase US arms and
military technology sales. The new members are likely to go
for American technology. Thus, European arms producers will
face even stronger competition from the United States. In
response they will merge into ever larger corporations and
become ever more difficult to control politically.
33. Germany and the UK are important host nations
of US bases, wartime operations, peacetime “humanitarian
interventions” and peacekeeping. This can only be divisive
within the EU and undermine further its – quite unrealistic
– goal to “speak with one voice” in security and foreign
policy matters.
34. If the real desire of the
Eastern Europeans is to assert their “Westernness” and
have it confirmed, is Western Europe so intellectually,
culturally and economically poor that it can only offer them
a militarised “Westernness”? Of course there are better ways
to help them develop their identity.
35. The expansion places countries which don’t
want, or want but are not accepted yet, in a difficult
position now; they are likely to feel less secure in the
future.
36. Conventional military balances are upset by the new memberships.
37. Integration of mentality, education,
inter-operability, and language in NATO becomes more
difficult with new countries.
38. The Foreign Minister of the Czech Republic has declared that his country is willing to host nukes.
39. Hungary, a new member, has no border with any other NATO member.
40. Hungary and Slovakia have important unsolved problems.
41. The Baltic states have permanent, troubled
relations with Russia; the “new NATO” will be seen as
thoroughly “anti-Russian – much worse than a Finnish or
Swedish membership.”
42. Russia may refuse to ratify START 2 because of
NATO’s expansion. NATO expansion will strengthen militarist,
nationalist and otherwise backward circles in Russia.
43. Russia gets an extra argument for nuclear
weapons, to compensate for the tremendous superiority of
NATO in the conventional fields. So, if you don’t have an
enemy, you can produce one.
44. The former GDR is nuclear-free; a Nuclear
Weapons-Free Zone should include all newcomers plus Belarus
and Ukraine. This will be much more difficult with NATO
expansion. A lot of peace proposals and alternatives
security arrangements will come to look more “unrealistic”
after NATO’s expansion than before.
45. Diversity and pluralism contribute to security
and survival. NATO expansion forces ever more countries to
think alike, i.e. either think no independent thoughts or
think the same thoughts as the stronger power(s).
46. The more members get in, the more impossible
it will be to stand outside. “Follow the flock” will be a
maxim for the smaller and neutrals very soon. Sweden’s
incremental policies towards de facto NATO membership is
indicative of which way the winds blow.
