NATO Has Never Been So United (and You Are Not Reading Right Now)

We are persistently told by a host of NATO promoters, often called ‘democracy promoters’ for PR purposes, that “NATO has never been more united.” From Joe Biden to the Pentagon to the NATO GenSec Jan Stoltenberg the message is the same: the NATO-Russia Ukrainian War is strengthening NATO to a level never known: politically, militarily, organisationally, etc. As usual, reality diverges substantially from the message. 

Fears are growing in Europe that the US is incapable of leading anymore and that Washington will depart from the organisation or drastically restructure its relationship. These fears are driven by the prospect of Biden’s defeat in the November U.S. presidential elections. The expected winner, now Donald Trump, has steadily opposed the war, promised to end it if elected (unrealistically ‘within 24 hours of taking office’) and is very likely to seek a radical transformation of the US role in NATO if he does not decide to withdraw the US from the military alliance altogether. Thus, Biden’s defeat, in turn, is being driven in part by NATO’s failed war effort win Ukraine: the inability to save Ukraine from a conflict into which Washington drove it, the lack of capacity to continue arming Ukraine, the lack of political will to maintain financing it, and the plethora of lies the U.S. government has deployed about the conflict, all being exposed outside the dinosaur media. 

Faith in NATO’s effectiveness in the U.S. and elsewhere in the West has been shaken by the Ukraine debacle. Thus, the effort to expand NATO to Ukraine by way of nurturing pro-NATO elements and backing an illegal overthrow of a constitutionally elected Ukrainian government and covering up the violent Maidan-led snipers’ massacre of 20 February 2014, along with other catastrophic policy choices in Ukraine has led to a threat to NATO as a viable security organisation. 

Viability is being further undermined by political and economic infighting among NATO’s European members. As Europe flails about in the absence of American leadership, diplomacy, indeed simple sanity to end the war, the Continent’s hapless, childish leaders are eating themselves up. The popularity of their governments is collapsing for the same reasons Biden is about to lose the American presidency: the failed Ukraine war and popular opposition to its continuation and/or specific policy choices forced by the war. The key German government is experiencing rapidly declining popularity as a result of an economic recession sparked by the war. It is badly divided over whether or not to send Taurus cruise missiles to Kiev. Those divisions were put on public, too public a display, creating greater schism. First, German Chancellor Olaf Sholz stated that he opposed sending the Taurus systems because it would require sending German officers to Ukraine to assist in their operation ‘just as the British and French are doing.’ Then, a tapped telephone call involving Germany’s top generals discussing the Taurus question was published in which it was confirmed that British and French officers were helping Ukrainians operate those countries’ missile systems sent to Ukraine. This set off mutual recriminations between the Germans, on one hand, and the Brits and French, on the other. 

More fundamentally, the bloc is divided over whether or not to make war or peace. The Viktor Orban government in Hungary and the new Robert Fico government in Slovakia have come out against massive military and other support to Ukraine and for negotiating with Moscow to end the war. Serbia has been less vocal but also prefers peace rather than war with its brotherly Slavic and Eastern Orthodox nation, with which it has a long history of close relations.

On the other hand, French President Emmanuel Macron has been calling for ignoring Russian red lines and sending Western troops to Ukraine, though not under NATO aegis. Macron has shocked the world by claiming he would send, then that he would not send, then that he would send, then that he would not send troops to either Odessa, Ukraine’s northern border, Moldova, depending on which version is in his head on any given day. The Czech President backed Macron’s erasing of red lines. 

As a result the Czech and Slovak governments exchanged nasty words. On March 9, 2024, Fico accused the Czech government of jeopardizing the two Slavic countries’ relations over the situation in Ukraine: “We take note that the leaders of the Czech government decided to jeopardize their [relations] only because they are interested in supporting the war in Ukraine, while the Slovak government openly talks about peace.” The two countries managed a peaceful, painless divorce at the end of the Cold War, but now are at odds over the West’s failure to negotiate a post-Cold War order. Lithuania and Estonia have backed the confused French initiative, with Macron courting the latter to also send troops. The rest of Europe, led by Germany, has opposed these reckless ideas but have not joined Hungary and Slovakia in a call for pursuing peace talks.

In sum, we have a broad and divided Western political spectrum over the war. Listing them from the pro-war to the pro-peace ends of the spectrum, we have: France, the Baltic states, and Czech Republic close to which stand the US and UK — the rest of the European continent’s NATO members, except for the pro-peace parties — and the pro-peace bloc of Hungary, Slovakia, and Serbia. This spectrum is over the fundamental issue of war and peace. This is not unity; it is division. 

In sum, NATO is experiencing severe fissures for the first time since the end of the Cold War and the beginning of NATO expansion, when some cleavages emerged over whether or not to expand without Russia. This earlier dispute, ironically was sparked by disagreement over whether NATO expansion would spark anti-Western sentiment in Russia, de-democratization in Russia, and ultimately new tensions and conflict with Russia. All of these present fissures are products of NATO expansion and the resulting NATO-Russia Ukrainian War. NATO has shot itself in the foot, weakening itself while wakening a giant, Russia, to greater security vigilance and its military potential. Thus, a politically divided NATO and West, with depleted arms stores and economies faces off an energised, united, and passionate Russia supported by most of the rest of the world in its resistance to American hegemony. 

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About the Author – 

Gordon M. Hahn, Ph.D., is an Expert Analyst at Corr Analytics, www.canalyt.com. Websites: Russian and Eurasian Politics, gordonhahn.com and gordonhahn.academia.edu

Dr. Hahn is the author of the new book: Russian Tselostnost’: Wholeness in Russian Thought, Culture, History, and Politics (Europe Books, 2022). He has authored five previous, well-received books: The Russian Dilemma: Security, Vigilance, and Relations with the West from Ivan III to Putin (McFarland, 2021); Ukraine Over the Edge: Russia, the West, and the “New Cold War” (McFarland, 2018); The Caucasus Emirate Mujahedin: Global Jihadism in Russia’s North Caucasus and Beyond (McFarland, 2014), Russia’s Islamic Threat (Yale University Press, 2007), and Russia’s Revolution From Above: Reform, Transition and Revolution in the Fall of the Soviet Communist Regime, 1985-2000 (Transaction, 2002). He also has published numerous think tank reports, academic articles, analyses, and commentaries in both English and Russian language media. 

Dr. Hahn taught at Boston, American, Stanford, San Jose State, and San Francisco State Universities and as a Fulbright Scholar at Saint Petersburg State University, Russia and was a senior associate and visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Kennan Institute in Washington DC, the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and the Center for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies (CETIS), Akribis Group.