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THE TREATY OF NICE, NATO AND A EUROPEAN
ARMY:
IMPLICATIONS FOR IRELAND
Andy Storey (Afri), April 2001
The Link with NATO
The emerging EU defence policy will, in some way, be linked
to NATO. The only question is the closeness of that link.
As far as NATO's preference is concerned, the question can
be answered decisively. By 2005, according to the NATO Secretary
General, the
"indivisibility of the transatlantic [US-European] link...
will have been carved in stone - on a monument outside the
building where joint NATO-EU Council sessions are being
held. By 2005 NATO and the EU will enjoy a close and confident
relationship at all levels. Both formal and informal exchanges
between the secretariats and the military authorities will
be a matter of routine. Joint meetings will be held, and
senior officials of our respective organisations will brief
each other on a regular basis."
Already this link is becoming more institutionalised. A key
pointer was the appointment of former NATO Secretary General
Javier Solana to the position of EU CFSP High Representative.
In December 1999, EU leaders at the Helsinki Summit agreed
to improve "consultation, co-operation and transparency" between
the EU and NATO. At the Feira Summit in June 2000, four joint
EU-NATO working groups were established, on issues including
EU access to NATO assets such as equipment and information
(on which more later). The Nice Presidency report discussed
above refers to the development of a "a permanent and effective
relationship between" NATO and the EU. One of the annexes
to the Presidency report specifies that the NATO Secretary-General
should attend EU Ministerial meetings; that the chair of the
NATO Military Committee should attend meetings of the EU Military
Committee; and that there should be regular liaison between
EU and NATO military committees and staffs.
What, in part, underpins this linkage with NATO is US insistence
on retaining a predominant role in European defence or, to
put it slightly differently, US fears about the emergence
of an independent European military capacity that might challenge
US hegemony. As Cekic and Wrigley have argued, "the determination
of the US to use NATO to maintain its authority in Europe
has been very clear". Recent EU initiatives, while not wholly
unambiguous in this regard (see below), appear to confirm
the move towards closer EU-NATO co-operation. For example,
all EU countries (except France) that are also members of
NATO send the same representatives to the new EU Military
Committee as they do to the NATO Military Committee, precisely
"to encourage the EU and NATO to co-operate closely". Tellingly,
during discussions in March 2001 on the crisis in Macedonia,
Solana and the NATO Secretary General took part in a joint
news conference.
NATO's Role in the World (and what co-operation with it
says about the EU)
Given that these proposed new security arrangements are closely
linked to NATO, what then is NATO's role in the world? This
is a reasonable question to ask of an Irish government which
is keen that we develop our linkages - both direct and indirect
- with this organisation. To put it mildly, there is a strong
case for saying that NATO does not promote international peace
and security. If it did, it would be difficult to explain
how it manages to tolerate Turkish massacres of tens of thousands
of Kurds, the destruction of thousands of Kurdish villages,
and the creation of between 2 and 3 million Kurdish refugees.
Or how it facilitates the ongoing Turkish bombing of Kurds
in Iraq - the very people British and US forces are supposed
to be protecting by the enforcement of a supposed 'no-fly'
zone, but who are in fact bombed by Turkish planes with the
active co-operation of British and US pilots. Turkey is a
NATO member (and has pledged troops to the EU Rapid Reaction
Force) so the failure to prevent its well documented atrocities,
indeed the willingness to endorse them by weapons and other
support, is as good an illustration as any of NATO's attitude
towards peace, justice and human rights.
NATO also stands accused of the reckless usage of depleted
uranium in Yugoslavia/Kosovo and Bosnia. Irish soldiers serving
in Kosovo may have already been exposed to dangers of contamination
from that substance. And the dangers are very real: can it,
to take just one example, possibly be a coincidence that 300
residents (out of a total of 5,000) of the Sarajevo suburb
of Hadjici have died of cancers and leukaemias since NATO
planes bombed it in the summer of 1995? The ERRF is likely
to have access to weapons containing depleted uranium.
The example of Kosovo is a particularly important one because
it was the first 'out-of-area' military action waged by NATO
as an organisation in its own right, and one that was regrettably
endorsed by the EU (including Ireland). Particularly pertinent
here are the allegations of war crimes committed by NATO -
such as the killing of fifteen people and the wreaking of
damage on a hospital by the cluster bombing of the city of
Nis in May 1999; between the end of the war and March 2000,
unexploded cluster bombs killed over 50 people in Kosovo.
More broadly, there is, at the very least, a strong argument
for saying that the Kosovo war accelerated massacres and expulsions
already taking place and that it has not contributed to a
stable and democratic future for the Balkan region. This is
the conclusion arrived at even by an initially enthusiastic
supporter of NATO military intervention, Mary Kaldor: "The
NATO intervention did not save one Kosovar Albanian. On the
contrary, it provided a cover under which the Serbs accelerated
ethnic cleansing".
Some of the Kosovars trained by NATO forces as part of that
campaign subsequently went on to massacre Serbs, and US intelligence
specifically supported - as part of what was initially an
anti-Milosevic strategy and which continued throughout the
year 2000 - the Albanian insurgents later to become engaged
in a campaign in Macedonia. NATO intervention has, in summary,
generated ongoing instability and violence. Writing in March
2000, the UN Special Investigator for the former Yugoslavia
stated, "The bombing hasn't solved any problems… It only multiplied
the existing problems and created new ones".
Furthermore, it now seems certain that the entire Kosovo war
could have been averted. The Yugoslav government refused to
sign the initial (pre-war) Rambouillet peace accord, largely
because it contained a NATO-inserted clause that granted NATO
troops free access to all Yugoslav territory - this clause
was later dropped from the final post-war settlement terms.
As Robin Blackburn has observed, "The Serbian delegation,
under duress, had been willing to accept the principles of
the Rambouillet package, save for the very detailed twenty-fifth
chapter on the NATO-led occupation force". The clear implication
is that the war was fought because of either a mix-up, or
because NATO wanted a war to assert its predominant role in
European military and defence arrangements. Former US National
Security Adviser Sandy Berger described "bolstering the credibility
of NATO" as an objective in its own right of the Kosovo campaign,
a factor also openly cited by British Prime Minister Blair
at the time.
The argument that NATO contributes to international insecurity
rather than security is supported by other evidence. The Ukrainian
parliament voted to pursue nuclear rearmament on the grounds
that the Kosovo war rendered invalid previous security guarantees
offered by the US. Much the same argument applies to Russia,
where NATO expansion eastwards is opposed by almost all political
parties and has the effects, amongst others, of pushing the
Russian authorities towards greater reliance on nuclear defences
and hardening parliamentary opposition to nuclear weapons
reduction treaties. Even as far afield as India, concern about
the Kosovo war is cited as a contributory factor to the determination
of the Indian government to acquire nuclear weapons, thus
helping to fuel the dangerous and wasteful arms race between
India and Pakistan. The efforts in other fora of the Irish
government to achieve "a world free of nuclear weapons" are
set at naught by these trends. (Indeed, consideration of the
wider global impact of the NATO-EU proposals is often sadly
lacking in much current discourse, which is of particular
concern to Afri as an organisation engaged with justice issues
vis-ŕ-vis the Majority World).
If it is not the promotion of peace and security, what then
does drive NATO policy? Part of the answer lies in the close
and well-established linkage between NATO and armaments companies
such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing and others. Tariq Ali has
pointed to the way in which share prices for companies such
as British Aerospace climbed dramatically in response to the
Kosovo war. The massive military 'upgrading' being carried
out by new NATO members represents a bonanza for these companies,
an influence on policy that is openly acknowledged by one
commentator (who is supportive of NATO expansion): "The United
States saw the accession of new members to NATO as.. more
markets for its armaments industries, which, like NATO in
the immediate aftermath of the collapse of communism, now
otherwise seemed superfluous". For example, British Aerospace
and Boeing competed vigorously to supply $2 billion worth
of fighter aircraft to Poland, and similar contract battles
rage in the case of the Czech Republic and Hungary. The Chairman
of the Committee to Expand NATO, a US advocacy organisation,
is, not surprisingly, also the chairman of Lockheed.
NATO policy is, in other words, at least partly subordinated
to the imperative, as Fintan O'Toole has put it, of discovering
"new ways to justify the expenditure of trillions of dollars
a year on 'defence'". A Pentagon report has found that "the
[US] armed forces' desire to bring modern hi-tech weapons
on stream is consistently running ahead of the proof that
they can actually do the job for which they are intended".
This can come at the expense of safety for the users of these
weapons, even leaving aside the damage inflicted on those
at the receiving end. Francis Wheen has put the matter succinctly
in relation to one specific US aircraft that caused the deaths
of its users on two occasions: "the Pentagon pressed ahead
with production, preferring to jeopardise the lives of its
marines rather than incur the wrath of the contractors."
Broader commercial considerations will also help drive NATO
policy in the coming years, for example regarding access to
areas around the Caspian Sea. According to the New York Times,
"The most concentrated mass of untapped wealth known to exist
anywhere is in the oil and gas fields beneath the Caspian
and the lands around it... The strategic implications hypnotise
Western security planners as completely as the finances transfix
oil executives." Gilbert Achcar has described the Caspian
Sea region as being the scene for "an out-and-out 'black gold-rush'
by the American oil companies." NATO policy will not be unaffected
by these considerations, which extend beyond the location
of the resources themselves and encompass, for example, the
possible importance of security for a Balkan oil pipeline.
It is no coincidence that NATO's self-styled 'southern flank'
has, since 1995, been extended to the Caspian Sea, taking
in the Black Sea also (on which NATO fleets are more and more
evident), another factor fuelling anger in Russia. A former
US naval officer and NATO war planner has noted that "NATO's
cloak now extends to the Black Sea, adding to Russia's concerns".
Again, the interconnections may be encapsulated in a single
individual: the former US National Security Adviser, Zbigniew
Brzezinski, is a strong advocate of NATO expansion; he is
also an adviser to the Azerbaijan International Operating
Company, a consortium of twelve leading oil companies that
includes Exxon and Amoco amongst its members.
Introduction
New Military Structures
The Link with NATO
Could Ireland Help Change
NATO and the ERRF?
Conclusion
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