NATO-EU merger presages major escalations against Russia, China

25 Jan.—In a momentous move that has gone almost unremarked in mainstream Western media, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and European Union (EU) announced this month that they will henceforth work together with a degree of “cooperation” that amounts in all but name to a formal merger. The arrangement is a new dimension in the western end of “Global NATO”, the expansionist policy NATO adopted at its Madrid summit in 2022; last week’s AAS reported on the eastern, Asia-Pacific end of that policy (“Japan re-arms for ‘Global NATO’”, AAS, 18 Jan. 2023). It comes at the same time as a reckless escalation of programs to arm the Kiev regime in Ukraine even more heavily, as NATO’s proxy for war against Russia.

Established with neither the approval of, nor any apparent consultation with the governments of either organisation’s member states, the new NATO-EU arrangement not only demands that they all cede what remains of their sovereignty in economic policy-making to the EU’s unelected bureaucracy, but also that EU members that are not part of NATO nonetheless give it control of both their strategic policy and their armed forces. In their desperation to cement total control before the trans-Atlantic financial system that is the basis of their power reaches its final and inevitable collapse, NATO and the EU are increasingly exposing themselves as what they have always been: not a defensive military alliance and cooperative political mechanism designed to ensure Europe’s peace and stability, but rather the military and political wings of a single power structure designed to rope all of Europe—along with as many “ally” and “partner” countries as possible—into a global showdown with Russia, China, and every other nation that refuses to submit to Anglo-American world rule, even if it means nuclear war.

The “Joint Declaration on EU-NATO Partnership” outlining the new arrangements was signed into effect by President of the European Commission (EC, the EU’s unelected executive government) Ursula von der Leyen, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, and President of the European Council (an intergovernmental consultative body) Charles Michel in Brussels, Belgium on 10 January. The 14-point joint statement claims that NATO and the EU’s shared interests, values et cetera are being challenged as never before by “Authoritarian actors … using multiple means—political, economic, technological and military”, which together constitute the “gravest threat to Euro-Atlantic security in decades”. Russia’s alleged “brutal” “aggression” is defined as the main and immediate threat, followed by “China’s growing assertiveness”. How exactly China’s “assertiveness” in the western Pacific does or possibly could pose a threat in the North Atlantic, literally half a world away, is never mentioned. That the agreement is intended to serve NATO’s pretensions to the role of global enforcer of the socalled “rules-based international order” (as distinct from international law), however, is evident in point 12 of the statement, which declares that in addition to deepening cooperation in existing areas, NATO and the EU will “expand and deepen our cooperation to address in particular the growing geostrategic competition, resilience issues, protection of critical infrastructures, emerging and disruptive technologies, space, [and] the security implications of climate change” (emphasis added). Immediately thereafter, point 13 calls for non-NATO EU members also to be involved, stating that “In signing this declaration we will take the NATO-EU partnership forward in close consultation and cooperation with all NATO Allies and EU Member States”. The statement pays lip service to their national sovereignty by saying that this will be done “without prejudice to the specific character of the security and defence policy of any of our members”, but then adds: “We encourage the fullest possible involvement of the EU members that are not part of the [NATO] Alliance in its initiatives.” (Emphasis added.) To anyone familiar with the EC’s history of subjugating national legislatures and usurping their executive powers in literally every area of public policy, this is tantamount to a declaration that Sweden and Finland, as well as Austria, Cyprus, Ireland and Malta, are automatically being enrolled in NATO whether they like it or not.

Of those countries, only Sweden and Finland have applied to join NATO. Its charter, however, requires that all current NATO members must approve for a new one to join, and Turkey has threatened to veto both countries’ applications unless they and other EU members drop the arms embargoes they imposed on it for targeting Kurdish militias in Syria; and Sweden’s in particular for its material support to the same and closely related groups, including terrorist organisations inside Turkey itself. The United States, however, has already set about creating a work-around, with the Swedish government announcing 9 January the opening of separate bilateral talks on military cooperation between the two countries. According to Sweden’s Defence Ministry, as reported by Reuters, the talks are aimed at the conclusion of a Defence Cooperation Agreement which will create a legal framework for the presence of US forces in Sweden, and will enable an even closer bilateral cooperation than facilitated by NATO membership.

On the same day, Poland’s Defence Minister Mariusz Blaszczak announced the formation of a new army division (typically comprising 10-15 thousand troops) to be stationed along Poland’s border with Belarus. “Our task is to build a strong Polish army to effectively deter an aggressor, to make sure that the aggressor doesn’t dare attack our country”, he said, as quoted by the state news agency PAP—as though even Russia, let alone Belarus itself, had ever evinced any such intention. He added that the government was seeking to “saturate” eastern Poland with troops. There are already two other divisions there; the new one, to be armed with the latest US and Korean as well as domestically made heavy armour and artillery, will be placed in between them.

NATO’s real mission

Founder and President of the International Schiller Institute Helga Zepp-LaRouche, in her 11 January weekly webcast, lashed the EU-NATO Joint Statement as a deliberate move to make the already red-hot strategic situation even worse, against the interests and without the consent of the peoples of their member countries. “Who authorised the EU and NATO to form an alliance to establish a Global NATO dictatorship?” she demanded. “Voters in the countries have not been asked about that; there has been no public debate; I don’t think that any parliaments were consulted.” As the Australian Alert Service has reported, supranational dictatorship in the service of Anglo-American geopolitical agendas is what both NATO and the EU were set up for in the first place. Our “What is NATO?” series of articles, published May-July 2022 (available at citizensparty.org.au/australian-alert-service-featurearticles/strategic), show how the East-West confrontation after World War II, and NATO as one of an array of institutions founded at that time, were instigated by British proEmpire elites centred around Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill and their allies within the United States, to block the policies of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt for the post-war world.

Roosevelt had intended that Russia and China, which had suffered horrific wartime losses in the defeat of Nazi Germany and its imperial ally Japan, would be America’s indispensable allies in creating an entirely new, just world order. NATO’s contrary purpose, as reputedly described by its first Secretary-General, Churchill’s former chief military advisor General (later Baron) Hastings Ismay, was to “keep the Americans in, the Germans down and the Russians out” of post-war policy in Europe. After Roosevelt’s untimely death in April 1945, Churchill, even though out of office in 1945-51, took a direct hand in founding institutions to achieve that goal, in 1948-49. Foremost alongside NATO was the political United Europe Movement (UEM), designed to promote formation of a United States of Europe, which would merge with a unitary UK-USA government to become, in his words, a “world government”. The UEM sowed the seeds for the future EU.

Britain continues in a similar role today. Perhaps fancying himself a latter-day Churchill, former PM Boris Johnson, who is credited with having personally talked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky out of negotiating peace with Russia during a visit to Kiev in April last year (less than two months into the conflict), popped up in Ukraine again on 23 January to reiterate his and Britain’s undying support for what they and NATO have made clear they intend should be an endless proxy war with Russia (at least until they run out of Ukrainians). While there, and in an article published the following day in the UK Daily Mail, Johnson attacked the USA, Germany and other NATO members for their failure, during a 20 January meeting of the US-led “Ukraine Defence Contact Group” of senior defence officials from NATO and allied countries in Ramstein, Germany, to agree to donate tanks and other heavy weapons to the cause. “The Ukrainians need hundreds of tanks, and they should be getting them from the Americans, the Germans, the Poles, and many others”, he wrote.

Johnson’s article voiced the incendiary demand that Ukraine be admitted to NATO immediately, despite the bloc’s foundational rule that no country currently involved in armed conflict and/or with unresolved border disputes may do so. Were this to be allowed, Ukraine would of course immediately invoke the “collective defence” provision of Article V of the NATO Charter, which obliges all members to respond to an attack upon another as though on themselves, with thermonuclear World War III the inevitable result.

As this issue of AAS goes to print, a late evening (US Eastern time) report in the New York Times indicates that Johnson, and the war-mad faction he speaks for, have got at least the first part of their wish. The USA’s Biden Administration, whose senior military commanders had previously been publicly dubious of the idea, now “plans to send M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine, US officials said on Tuesday, in what would be a major step in arming Kyiv as it tries to seize back its territory from Russia. The White House is expected to announce a decision as early as Wednesday, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the discussions. One official said the number of Abrams tanks could be between 30 and 50.” The NYT adds that Germany, too, is due to announce a decision on sending some number of its own, much more modern Leopard II tanks to Ukraine as well, and waiving export restrictions so that other countries can do the same. “On Monday, Poland’s defence minister said his country had formally requested Germany’s permission to send Ukraine Leopard tanks from its own stocks, and other countries have indicated they would do the same if Germany agreed”, the paper reported. “In Kyiv on Tuesday, Finland’s president, Sauli Niinisto, told reporters at a news conference that he had discussed the supply of Western tanks to Ukraine with President Zelensky, saying the country was considering various options for its participation.”

Sober military analysts, however, have pointed out that no number of tanks the collective West is capable of supplying can possibly turn the tide of battle in Ukraine’s favour, not least because it lacks the capability to repair, maintain or make ammunition for them. All they can do is prolong the war in the vain hope of weakening Russia, and get more soldiers and civilians on both sides needlessly killed in the meanwhile. But then, that, too, has been the plan all along.

By Richard Bardon, Australian Alert Service, 25 January 2023