De NAVO

Le Monde Diplomatique:

'What is Nato for?

by Serge Halimi

Nicolas Sarkozy wanted his presidency to mark a break with the “French social model”, recently restored to its former glory by the collapse of American-style financial capitalism. So did he determine to do away with another old French tradition, national independence? Although he had never expressed such an intention in his electoral campaign and even though he later made any French reintegration in Nato’s joint military command structure conditional on strengthening European defence, Sarkozy effectively announced that General de Gaulle’s policy decision had had its day.

The founder of the Fifth Republic left the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s joint military command 43 years ago, at a time when the Soviet Union held a number of European countries in its iron grip. So why – with what future wars in mind – should France decide to reverse that decision now, when the Warsaw Pact is history and many former members (Poland, Hungary, Romania and others) have joined Nato and the European Union?

Is it to secure billets for 800 French officers at Nato headquarters in Norfolk, Virginia? Or to please Sarkozy’s friends in the arms industry who hope to sell more military equipment now that France is back in line? Or persuade the Americans that Sarkozy can safely be admitted to the inner circle now that Paris is no longer running its own show? It’s more likely that the Elysée hopes to take advantage of the widespread sympathy for the new US president to finally lay an unforgivable piece of French effrontery to rest. It’s the day when Paris dared take issue with all the Dr Strangeloves and the “clash of civilisations” on the question of war with Iraq; the day when many of Sarkozy’s current supporters, including the foreign minister Bernard Kouchner, disagreed with this independent stance. Most member states of the United Nations are not members of either Nato or the EU, and six EU member states (Austria, Cyprus, Finland, Ireland, Malta, Sweden) do not belong to Nato either. But the roles of the three structures are becoming confused: the military organisation is being assigned a geographical scope and entrusted with “stabilisation” missions for which it has no qualifications or jurisdiction.

On 19 February members of the European parliament, claiming that they are slowly forming a worldwide human team (une terre sans frontières), passed a resolution (1) by a small majority (293 to 283), referring to “phenomena such as international terrorism … organised crime, cyber threats, environmental deterioration, natural disasters and other disasters” and calling for “still closer partnership” between the EU and Nato. The explanatory note appended to the resolution sums the situation up in this image: “without a military dimension, the EU is like a barking dog without teeth”.

Leaving no stone unturned, the resolution also recalls our “painful history”, referring to Hitler and Munich, quotes a few lines by “Elie Wiesel, holocaust survivor”, and adds: “Wouldn’t we want someone to come to our rescue when we are crying?” US officers, however, have never had a great reputation for drying civilian tears. Neither during the war in Kosovo, nor in the Iraq war, both conducted in breach of the UN charter. But, regarding many member states at the UN, the European parliament profoundly regrets that “the doctrine of non-alignment, inherited from the cold war era, undermines the alliance of democracies”.

So it is understood that “the future collective defence of the European Union” to which the French head of state is committed will be organised exclusively within the framework of the Atlantic Alliance. The Alliance will not hesitate to deploy its forces in combined civil and military missions extending far beyond the old iron curtain to the borders of Pakistan. Even within Sarkozy’s own party, two former prime ministers, Alain Juppé and Dominique de Villepin, are already worried about this change of direction – evidence enough of the risks involved in taking such a course.'