Nato was conceived expecting the US would protect Europe’s interests against Russia. Now, it’s expected that Europe protects itself, and also protect America’s interests, and perhaps the US will sacrifice itself to help Europe. Next, China comes in. Clearly the concept and reason for NATO is outdated.
The biggest recent driver of NATO expansion is Vladimir Putin. He personally ensured that Sweden and Finland joined. Russia is the problem because it insists on invading its neighbors.
Strictly speaking, NATO did not expand. Nations eagerly joined it for protection against precisely what’s happening to Ukraine now.
Sayantani G
4 months ago
Factual correction- 108 nations till date donot recognise Kosovo. This includes Spain, Greece and India as well as several other nations of the global South.
The Kosovo intervention set an unfortunate precedent- effects of which are felt till today.
As someone who has lived and worked there, I find the author’s depictions rather simplistic and devoid of seeing the issue in a broader historical context starting in 1389.
I am sure this post will be ” held back” by UH so won’t say more( please prove me wrong UH!)
Siting a battle in 1389 lost by the Serbs would seem to justify (as always used to be the case – Prussia and Silesia, many others) the area becoming part of Turkey rather than any other outcome!
Serbian nationalism was a much later phenomenon – originally of a tiny elite of people who largely created the usual romanticised national myths, such as the 1389 battle. The genie is well.out of the bottle, but narrow exclusive nationalism has – unwittingly but probably inexorably – been a historical catastrophe for the Balkans and other areas of Eastern Europe.
Not quite. That maybe your perspective but is not that of a considerable section of the Christian people’s of the Balkans.
Islamic rule is something which is part of the historical memory of many non Islamic people’s ruled by the former.
Not necessarily is it seen as being as uplifting as those of you who have not undergone it seem to think.
Alex Lekas
4 months ago
Given the Nato campaign was justified by the need to halt what was described as a Serbian “genocide” against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo,
Maybe we stop accepting things that we approve as “given” and also stop with the overuse of ‘genocide.’
R S Foster
4 months ago
The brutal reality for the West is that we are badly outnumbered by Regimes and Peoples who hate us, want to kill us, and will do so if they can…and not for anything we have done, just for who we are…which offends against their notion of how the world should be, how it should be run and who by.
Which means our most rational choice is to abandon the UN, cut off it’s funding, and throw it out of our countries…and concentrate all our efforts on preparing to defend ourselves…and reshoring all the means and resources necessary to do it successfully.
Which clearly includes alliances like the Five Eyes, Aukus, NATO and others if these can be held together and strengthened.
By 2100, the world might be run by our descendants or those of Czar Putin of all the Russians, the Celestial Emperor Xi, or some new Caliph and Commander of the Faithful…
…and I personally prefer the first over the other three options..!
Good point. What has the UN really done in furtherance of World Peace since the Korean War?
Steve Jolly
4 months ago
Kosovo only ‘worked’ because it exploited a pre-existing religious division. The entire area of the former Yugoslavia has a history defined by being a battleground between Catholic Christian powers, most notably the Austrian Habsburg Empire, Orthodox Christian powers, most notably Russia, and the Islamic Ottoman Empire. Kosovo was a largely Muslim region still under the control of Serbia, the largest and most powerful of the states that comprised the former Yugoslavia and a traditional ally of Russia. Kosovo didn’t want to be under Serbian control anymore so the only thing the west had to ‘do’ was evict the Serbian Army which was essentially acting as an occupation force. Given the facts on the ground, the action was reasonable and strategically sound. The goal was achievable because of the circumstances surrounding the situation. Most NATO members understood that at the time and it was a fairly successful operation, though as in any conflict, mistakes were made, such as the bombing of the Chinese embassy. It was not a landmark betrayal of the ‘global order’, except maybe in the minds of idealistic fools.
That this author thinks the UN’s opinion on anything should make two figs worth of difference just shows the general naivete of journalists in general. The UN was never anything but a PR tool and a discussion forum, a way for the post WWII powers to pander to their war weary populations and make it seem like they were trying to all get along and prevent another war. They didn’t want a war, but neither did they think the UN would present any obstacle to wars. Wars rarely happen because people want them. They happen because of divergent interests and differences that can’t be reconciled to the point one side or the other feels compelled to escalate the matter to violence. When one side of a conflict decides it’s worth killing, there’s no discussion that can resolve the matter. The UN was, is, and always will be, an irrelevant side show, a glorified PR operation for the world’s governments to try to play to the global press, who conveniently provide a nigh endless supply of idealistic fools who will regurgitate nonsense on command.
The international rules based order certainly wasn’t buried in the rubble of the Chinese embassy in 1999. If anything, that point represents the zenith of the rules based order. The international rules based order was never based on the UN, or NATO, or the G7, or any of that. Further, there never were any rules. The international rules based order was the unchallenged military supremacy of the US everywhere in the world and the rules are whatever Washington says they are. Consider the events of the past two decades up to the present. The US military has been humbled in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Chinese have built up a force that can credibly threaten US carrier groups, and most recently, the US Navy has proven incapable of defending freedom of the seas from a few hundred people living in tents in the desert. If you’re looking for the reason globalism and the ‘rules based order’ is failing, look no further.
The author does have one thing right. China is not the answer to NATO. They’re an alternative hegemon but they’re not likely to be any less self-serving or demanding than the USA is. They’ll just make different demands that might or might not be preferable to the old. They might not intervene militarily as quickly but they won’t bat an eye at telling foreign media outlets what they can and can’t say about China or threatening to cut trade to force political concessions.
There really is no escaping it. Globalism was based on somebody having unchallenged, unequivocal, and broadly understood complete military supremacy to enforce whatever ‘rules’ existed, whoever made them up. Without that, globalism will break down, and we will again be living in a multipolar world where all international relations, including financial investments, trade, and immigration will have to be weighed in terms of geopolitical interest and national security. The old world is not coming back. The new world will belong to those who best prepare for it.
I think you need to keep in mind that Kosovo is the seat of the holiest shrines and monasteries of the Serbian Orthodox Church – Gracanica, Pec, Dvechane. Apart from countless other churches and monasteries.The NATO intervention was largely unnecessary especially as the Kosovar Albanians were not necessarily the forces of ” righteousness” as they were made out to be.
In any case it was the Ottoman Turks who in the 18th century encouraged the mass migration of Albanians into Kosovo to alter the population mix.
The loose usage of the word ” genocide” is also unfortunate given that the earlier wars in Croatia saw violence on all sides- including similar issues in Krajina. The KLA was a militant and violent organisation. Some of its worst excesses against Serbs and their places of worship were as bad as the Srebenica massacres.
This excuse for ” good terrorists” versus ” bad terrorists” which the West had used was not a very helpful paradigm in the long run. The Mujahideen of the 1980s morphed finally into Al Qaeda. Similarly stoking Albanian Muslim revanchism in Kosovo in 1999 has not been a good strategy and leads to the issue of double standards, keenly felt in many parts of the non
West.
The intervention by Clinton was perhaps further unfortunate given the long shadows of World War Two in the region. Recall that the German armies then found enthusiastic support from the Albanians( and the Croat Ustasha). The fact that the German Green Party played a major role in bringing about the Kosovo intervention adds this a further layer of complication.
Well I tend to avoid moralizing in geopolitics. I also don’t expect leaders to be clairvoyant enough to know all the possible implications of an action twenty years down the road. I wasn’t making a statement of moral support for the Kosovo mission. I was simply stating the realistic facts as I see them. Kosova was a success for NATO insofar as it was accomplished successfully at a reasonable cost with minimal losses. It was certainly successful when compared to boondoggles like Vietnam and Iraq.That’s all. Whether it was good or bad, justified or not, is endlessly arguable. In geopolitical conflicts there are always two sides and rarely can either be described as “the good guys”.
It wasn’t very inexpensive either. Full Kfor troops included NATO plus UN peacekeeping troops. Plus OSCE. Plus a very ambitious UN Mission with deployment of scores of international civil servants and local bureaucrats ( invariably a subsidy to Albanians in employment terms).
The fiscal costs were staggering( you can check the UN and OSCE websites for the exact amounts).
All for what? Distracting attention from domestic politics? Or ego satisfaction at the cost of thousands of destroyed lives? Read the book ” Crucified Kosovo” to see the thousands of Christian shrines and churches destroyed.
I agree with you that situations appear clearly in hindsight, but this intervention by the US under Clinton was quite unnecessary.
Eric Hermann
4 months ago
China is NOT the largest economy in the world. It’s still significantly behind the US in GDP and most traditional metrics of economic size.
Will K
4 months ago
The West is in chaos, primarily due to Mr Biden’s incompetent foreign policies. China would probably be content to stand back, continue normal trade with Russia, the East, and the USA, and wait for Mr Biden to leave office.
Main Edition
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FR
Nato was conceived expecting the US would protect Europe’s interests against Russia. Now, it’s expected that Europe protects itself, and also protect America’s interests, and perhaps the US will sacrifice itself to help Europe. Next, China comes in. Clearly the concept and reason for NATO is outdated.
NATO became outdated with the collapse of the Soviet Union and should have been dissolved then.
While Russia exists in its present form, there is a need for NATO.
NATO lied about not expanding…but Russia is the problem…lol
The biggest recent driver of NATO expansion is Vladimir Putin. He personally ensured that Sweden and Finland joined. Russia is the problem because it insists on invading its neighbors.
Which countries were forced to join NATO against their will? “Lol”?
Strictly speaking, NATO did not expand. Nations eagerly joined it for protection against precisely what’s happening to Ukraine now.
Factual correction- 108 nations till date donot recognise Kosovo. This includes Spain, Greece and India as well as several other nations of the global South.
The Kosovo intervention set an unfortunate precedent- effects of which are felt till today.
As someone who has lived and worked there, I find the author’s depictions rather simplistic and devoid of seeing the issue in a broader historical context starting in 1389.
I am sure this post will be ” held back” by UH so won’t say more( please prove me wrong UH!)
Siting a battle in 1389 lost by the Serbs would seem to justify (as always used to be the case – Prussia and Silesia, many others) the area becoming part of Turkey rather than any other outcome!
Serbian nationalism was a much later phenomenon – originally of a tiny elite of people who largely created the usual romanticised national myths, such as the 1389 battle. The genie is well.out of the bottle, but narrow exclusive nationalism has – unwittingly but probably inexorably – been a historical catastrophe for the Balkans and other areas of Eastern Europe.
Not quite. That maybe your perspective but is not that of a considerable section of the Christian people’s of the Balkans.
Islamic rule is something which is part of the historical memory of many non Islamic people’s ruled by the former.
Not necessarily is it seen as being as uplifting as those of you who have not undergone it seem to think.
Given the Nato campaign was justified by the need to halt what was described as a Serbian “genocide” against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo,
Maybe we stop accepting things that we approve as “given” and also stop with the overuse of ‘genocide.’
The brutal reality for the West is that we are badly outnumbered by Regimes and Peoples who hate us, want to kill us, and will do so if they can…and not for anything we have done, just for who we are…which offends against their notion of how the world should be, how it should be run and who by.
Which means our most rational choice is to abandon the UN, cut off it’s funding, and throw it out of our countries…and concentrate all our efforts on preparing to defend ourselves…and reshoring all the means and resources necessary to do it successfully.
Which clearly includes alliances like the Five Eyes, Aukus, NATO and others if these can be held together and strengthened.
By 2100, the world might be run by our descendants or those of Czar Putin of all the Russians, the Celestial Emperor Xi, or some new Caliph and Commander of the Faithful…
…and I personally prefer the first over the other three options..!
Good point. What has the UN really done in furtherance of World Peace since the Korean War?
Kosovo only ‘worked’ because it exploited a pre-existing religious division. The entire area of the former Yugoslavia has a history defined by being a battleground between Catholic Christian powers, most notably the Austrian Habsburg Empire, Orthodox Christian powers, most notably Russia, and the Islamic Ottoman Empire. Kosovo was a largely Muslim region still under the control of Serbia, the largest and most powerful of the states that comprised the former Yugoslavia and a traditional ally of Russia. Kosovo didn’t want to be under Serbian control anymore so the only thing the west had to ‘do’ was evict the Serbian Army which was essentially acting as an occupation force. Given the facts on the ground, the action was reasonable and strategically sound. The goal was achievable because of the circumstances surrounding the situation. Most NATO members understood that at the time and it was a fairly successful operation, though as in any conflict, mistakes were made, such as the bombing of the Chinese embassy. It was not a landmark betrayal of the ‘global order’, except maybe in the minds of idealistic fools.
That this author thinks the UN’s opinion on anything should make two figs worth of difference just shows the general naivete of journalists in general. The UN was never anything but a PR tool and a discussion forum, a way for the post WWII powers to pander to their war weary populations and make it seem like they were trying to all get along and prevent another war. They didn’t want a war, but neither did they think the UN would present any obstacle to wars. Wars rarely happen because people want them. They happen because of divergent interests and differences that can’t be reconciled to the point one side or the other feels compelled to escalate the matter to violence. When one side of a conflict decides it’s worth killing, there’s no discussion that can resolve the matter. The UN was, is, and always will be, an irrelevant side show, a glorified PR operation for the world’s governments to try to play to the global press, who conveniently provide a nigh endless supply of idealistic fools who will regurgitate nonsense on command.
The international rules based order certainly wasn’t buried in the rubble of the Chinese embassy in 1999. If anything, that point represents the zenith of the rules based order. The international rules based order was never based on the UN, or NATO, or the G7, or any of that. Further, there never were any rules. The international rules based order was the unchallenged military supremacy of the US everywhere in the world and the rules are whatever Washington says they are. Consider the events of the past two decades up to the present. The US military has been humbled in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Chinese have built up a force that can credibly threaten US carrier groups, and most recently, the US Navy has proven incapable of defending freedom of the seas from a few hundred people living in tents in the desert. If you’re looking for the reason globalism and the ‘rules based order’ is failing, look no further.
The author does have one thing right. China is not the answer to NATO. They’re an alternative hegemon but they’re not likely to be any less self-serving or demanding than the USA is. They’ll just make different demands that might or might not be preferable to the old. They might not intervene militarily as quickly but they won’t bat an eye at telling foreign media outlets what they can and can’t say about China or threatening to cut trade to force political concessions.
There really is no escaping it. Globalism was based on somebody having unchallenged, unequivocal, and broadly understood complete military supremacy to enforce whatever ‘rules’ existed, whoever made them up. Without that, globalism will break down, and we will again be living in a multipolar world where all international relations, including financial investments, trade, and immigration will have to be weighed in terms of geopolitical interest and national security. The old world is not coming back. The new world will belong to those who best prepare for it.
I think you need to keep in mind that Kosovo is the seat of the holiest shrines and monasteries of the Serbian Orthodox Church – Gracanica, Pec, Dvechane. Apart from countless other churches and monasteries.The NATO intervention was largely unnecessary especially as the Kosovar Albanians were not necessarily the forces of ” righteousness” as they were made out to be.
In any case it was the Ottoman Turks who in the 18th century encouraged the mass migration of Albanians into Kosovo to alter the population mix.
The loose usage of the word ” genocide” is also unfortunate given that the earlier wars in Croatia saw violence on all sides- including similar issues in Krajina. The KLA was a militant and violent organisation. Some of its worst excesses against Serbs and their places of worship were as bad as the Srebenica massacres.
This excuse for ” good terrorists” versus ” bad terrorists” which the West had used was not a very helpful paradigm in the long run. The Mujahideen of the 1980s morphed finally into Al Qaeda. Similarly stoking Albanian Muslim revanchism in Kosovo in 1999 has not been a good strategy and leads to the issue of double standards, keenly felt in many parts of the non
West.
The intervention by Clinton was perhaps further unfortunate given the long shadows of World War Two in the region. Recall that the German armies then found enthusiastic support from the Albanians( and the Croat Ustasha). The fact that the German Green Party played a major role in bringing about the Kosovo intervention adds this a further layer of complication.
Well I tend to avoid moralizing in geopolitics. I also don’t expect leaders to be clairvoyant enough to know all the possible implications of an action twenty years down the road. I wasn’t making a statement of moral support for the Kosovo mission. I was simply stating the realistic facts as I see them. Kosova was a success for NATO insofar as it was accomplished successfully at a reasonable cost with minimal losses. It was certainly successful when compared to boondoggles like Vietnam and Iraq.That’s all. Whether it was good or bad, justified or not, is endlessly arguable. In geopolitical conflicts there are always two sides and rarely can either be described as “the good guys”.
It wasn’t very inexpensive either. Full Kfor troops included NATO plus UN peacekeeping troops. Plus OSCE. Plus a very ambitious UN Mission with deployment of scores of international civil servants and local bureaucrats ( invariably a subsidy to Albanians in employment terms).
The fiscal costs were staggering( you can check the UN and OSCE websites for the exact amounts).
All for what? Distracting attention from domestic politics? Or ego satisfaction at the cost of thousands of destroyed lives? Read the book ” Crucified Kosovo” to see the thousands of Christian shrines and churches destroyed.
I agree with you that situations appear clearly in hindsight, but this intervention by the US under Clinton was quite unnecessary.
China is NOT the largest economy in the world. It’s still significantly behind the US in GDP and most traditional metrics of economic size.
The West is in chaos, primarily due to Mr Biden’s incompetent foreign policies. China would probably be content to stand back, continue normal trade with Russia, the East, and the USA, and wait for Mr Biden to leave office.