No Alternative To Obsolescence

Has NATO passed its sell-by date?

The recent media sensation that is the ‘Ukraine Crisis’ is another example of our most successful activity, the manufacture of alternatives to reality. We do not make many things any more but we can be relied upon to put on a good show.

The tendency of the West to exercise the soft power of propaganda upon its own citizens is often overlooked because it is so successful. As the spluttering, tic-plagued fat Stalinist (Zižek) says, when ideology is invisible that is when it is strongest. The past two years have demonstrated how easily nations accultured to news feeds in their pockets can be persuaded of the wisdom of practically any form of nonsense when Official Sources recommend it.

Official Sources were likely the reason for the closed loop of self-congratulation which ended the Afghan adventure so well. The Forever War machine does not rely on outside information, instead preferring the churnalism and career-savvy tropes of its own trusted operatives, with the many soldiers, diplomatic staff and other reality-based dissidents ignored. It was obvious to anyone watching – and the world was watching – that the West’s grand strategy had melted into something disturbing and grotesque. The spectacle to which we were treated had veered crazily off-message, in real time, as if the tape had suddenly unspooled to reveal the hideous, slurring reality beneath the carnivalesque.

Why did we do this in Afghanistan? The people who flew the planes into the buildings on September 11 were Saudis, as was Bin Laden himself. Of course, Bin Laden and his men were armed and valorised by the West when they were fighting the Soviets. In his absence, once eliminated, the West went on to fight the Taliban, which was formed by Mullah Omar in the 90s in disgust at the widespread practice of recreationally raping boys amongst the local warlords.

These warlords would become our allies and we would protect them along with their harems of boys from the wrath of the Taliban and of the boys’ own parents. Our values at work.

Another great success was heralded in the toppling of the horrid despots in Libya and in Iraq, where stability and order has been replaced with open air slave markets and public executions (Libya), and the considerable extension of Iranian regional power in the ruins of the state formerly known as Iraq.

Of course the reasons for the Iraq war are well established and Mr Blair is doing very nicely, thank you. Murdering Gadaffi in the street was far better than him going on to remove Libya from the dollar (and Euro) and the continuing existence of a secular, modern and successful African state with the power to assist its neighbours and lead the region independently of Western power.

Which brings us to terrorism. Is there a greater terror than shock and awe? It is difficult to argue that the result of dislodging these unpleasant men has been an increase in the happiness of their peoples generally, to say nothing of that other now-perpetual crisis of the mass movement of formerly settled peoples. Gadaffi himself warned he would ‘Turn Europe black’ if he was not paid billions to continue preventing illegal immigrants leaving for Lampedusa.

Now there is no Gadaffi and the mediterranean migrant taxis are doing a brisk trade. We in the west know all about the embassy, Yvonne Fletcher and Lockerbie, but not so much about literacy rates, irrigation, social welfare and education in the former Libya, to say nothing of the repression of violent islamism. There were no machine gunnings on Tunisian beaches then, for example. Iran and Turkey now co-operate to back the Libyan government, such as it is, a somewhat novel outcome for a strategy seemingly inspired by the wisdom of bombing democracies into being.

These are the recent victories of the West. Liberal interventionism has delivered Syria into the hands of Russia, Iraq and Libya to Iran whilst Yemen presents another extension of Iranian regional power (to the horror of the Western ally, Saudi Arabia, whose citizens flew those aeroplanes into the World Trade Centre).

As these greatest hits play in the background the West – the US and NATO in this instance – are busy ramping up the talk of despotism, aggression, the need for a strong response and the usual warmongering boilerplate which plays so well with the liberal intervention market.

Yet this crisis is not only due to the crisis of competence in our disintegrating societies, whose effects are legible at the very top of the bill. Our diplomacy of course reads like a mispelled complaint to the manager. It is embarrassing.

This crisis has come about because our only real success lies in making people believe. Make-belief is our stock in trade. ‘Nation building’ - an expensive activity bringing dividends for some – has often been invoked but never yet been demonstrated. Iraq has not yet turned into Sweden (whilst Sweden has had some success in turning into a kind of Iraq). ‘Our values’ in Afghanistan reduced to protecting men who raped boys and the heroin crops of senior Afghan government officials. The story you will have read is of girls now going freely to school. Heartwarming.

Make-belief is fine for managing democracies without force. We do it all the time, and have done so with increasing finesse ever since Bernays came up with his ‘Freedom Torches’ to sell cigarettes to women. The creation of these illusions relies on our susceptibility to suggestions of moral good, liberation, superior intelligence. The next time someone tells you that advertising does not work on them, check the brand name on their shoes. Or the one on their opinions.

Beliefs are a product these days. The belief in the product is also a manufactured belief. NATO has turned into this kind of postindustrial product – all brand and marketing, no substance. It is made out of gestures.

Such is the belief in the power of the West. Does it really exist as it did before 1989? The fall of the Soviet Union was a disaster for the West, bringing a brief period of giddying self-intoxication. This has been followed by a series of crises, some more real than others, rendering the West as reliant on the production of drama as a histrionic addict. Lurching around, blaming others for its problems, threats menacingly interspersed with outbursts of awkwardly insincere emotion. Germany has left the party recently, as has France – the two major European powers refusing to enter the theatre of war. Macron wishes to lead the EU in a dialogue with Russia – the big idea is to take Russia seriously. Seriously.

Germany has a pipeline coming from Russia carrying gas on which it relies. It does not want a war with Russia. It does not have the army nor the appetite.

In fact, the only people willing to get involved are the USA, the UK and oddly, Canada. The USA has a diplomatic mission led by Blinken and Nuland who hate Russia, and who have both been involved in spreading freedom to Libya and to Ukraine in the past.

The make belief here would strain the credulity of a child were these facts openly acknowledged. The Ukrainian government has requested that the USA stop talking up a war as Ukraine has enough problems as it is. It also knows that no troops will be committed to protect it from any Russian invasion in any case.

Ukraine is not a NATO member and NATO will not be defending Ukraine unless Ukraine joins NATO. This is very unlikely but is perhaps the only way for NATO to survive a crisis it has itself created, which has thrown into sharp relief the irrelevance of the organisation.

The EU wishes to form its own army, and to forge a diplomatic path independent of that of the USA, the main sponsor of NATO. It is unclear whether Turkey will risk further involvement than the sale of drones to Ukraine, the effect of which is to encourage the heavy rearmament of the Donbass. When the war comes it may be from the so-called ‘frozen conflict’ in this region, into which Russia is now pouring heavy armour, anti-air capability and countermeasures.

NATO cannot agree with itself as to what to do, and it is clear that some NATO countries are not enjoying the show. Russia is not a failed state with a rural goat herding population, nor a desert plain with a young conscript army. It is a peer when you are near, and NATO is not near in sufficient numbers to matter. The presence of several thousand UK troops in a Baltic republic would not present much of a speed bump to an invasion, were it to happen, since it is reliably estimated that Russia could seize all three Baltic states in three days anyway. They have land and sea denial north of the Suwalki gap. This is a fact which no amount of make belief can wish away.

There are other brute facts such as the Russian red lines. They are demanding – not asking – that NATO cease expansion to the East in line with two OSCE agreements (Istanbul 1999 and Astana 2010). The worthlessness of these assurances are perhaps only exceeded by the paper tiger status of NATO itself, which appears to have made a successful attempt on its own life. It has talked up a fight which it cannot survive. It is obsolete, it cannot expand further without war and its major European continental powers do not want one. The fallout has begun before the bombs drop.

The performance art for which the West is famed has been its undoing here. The bluster, the media assault, the threats and tough talk on the regime channels - it has resulted in stalemate. NATO cannot now back down, and must either absorb Ukraine or dissolve. If it succeeds in memeing a war into existence it will lose. There is no means of military success available as NATO has largely abandoned any serious commitment to the defence of Europe, and is therefore outnumbered on the Eastern flank by a factor of over ten to one.

Another option for losing is the obvious strategy to pursue if you are Russia – the intensifying supply of heavy arms to Donbass. The conditions here are perfect for hybrid warfare, blurring the boundaries of invasion, insurgency and state action. The Russians have learned that we cannot react to ambiguity, since our political discourse is broadcast in black and white. We have begun the conversation. We do not have the capability to respond.