The US and European nations together mark the 60th anniversary of NATO this week, but it is unclear whether all share the global ambitions for the world’s biggest military alliance.
“The US is re-engaging with Europe and Europe is re-engaging with the US,” a US official at NATO said, ahead of the two-day summit starting tomorrow on the banks of the Rhine River marking the border between France and Germany.
Francois Heisbourg, from the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris, said: “[US] President Barack Obama’s administration wants to show a cooperative face to the world, notably with its usual European partners.”
While much of the goodwill, from both sides of the Atlantic, has come since Obama won US elections in November, some, like Belgian strategy expert Joseph Henrotin, believe that relations have been improving for some time.
“The real change in the United States as far as Europe is concerned dates back to the second mandate of [former US president] George W. Bush,” he said.
Bush’s decision to launch war on Iraq in 2003 created huge divisions at NATO and amongst Europeans themselves, but in recent years “there has been an attitude [in Washington] that we cannot get by without the Europeans,” he said.
This vision, though, contradicts the attitude of US neo-conservatives, who had long felt that many European nations were out of their league.
Jeremy Shapiro, a researcher at the Brookings Institution, believes that Europe “is still a strategic player,” when it comes to deciding how and when force should be projected when needed.
“It’s the view across the political spectrum that the US is not likely to find more effective and reliable partners in the world. And that is not going to change in the foreseeable future,” he said.
NATO accounts for around 75 percent of the world’s military spending.
But for the Euro-Atlantic partnership to continue a real mission is needed, 19 years after the Cold War.
Even taking into account routinely tense relations with Russia, no direct military threat weighs on the European continent.
One NATO officer said the alliance makes complete sense to Washington.
“While the Europeans are looking for a guarantee of military [security] from the United States, the Americans are coming to look for political support from Europe for their undertakings,” he said.
“Because it operates based on unanimity, NATO is rather a millstone for the Americans,” he said.
“But they stay to transform it into a global alliance meant to control states with bad intentions, while winning respect from Russia and, in the long term, to curb China.”
However, Heisbourg said: “Let’s hope that our American friends don’t push for a coalition along the lines of a League of Democracies. That would lead to a clash of civilizations.”
“If anything can break NATO it is a project of this kind,” he said, adding that it would be against the alliance’s founding treaty and the UN charter, which recognizes only one body with a global vocation: the UN Security Council.
A string of rape and assault allegations against the son of Norway’s future queen have plunged the royal family into its “biggest scandal” ever, wrapping up an annus horribilis for the monarchy. The legal troubles surrounding Marius Borg Hoiby, the 27-year-old son born of a relationship before Norwegian Crown Princess Mette-Marit’s marriage to Norwegian Crown Prince Haakon, have dominated the Scandinavian country’s headlines since August. The tall strapping blond with a “bad boy” look — often photographed in tuxedos, slicked back hair, earrings and tattoos — was arrested in Oslo on Aug. 4 suspected of assaulting his girlfriend the previous night. A photograph
The US deployed a reconnaissance aircraft while Japan and the Philippines sent navy ships in a joint patrol in the disputed South China Sea yesterday, two days after the allied forces condemned actions by China Coast Guard vessels against Philippine patrol ships. The US Indo-Pacific Command said the joint patrol was conducted in the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone by allies and partners to “uphold the right to freedom of navigation and overflight “ and “other lawful uses of the sea and international airspace.” Those phrases are used by the US, Japan and the Philippines to oppose China’s increasingly aggressive actions in the
‘GOOD POLITICS’: He is a ‘pragmatic radical’ and has moderated his rhetoric since the height of his radicalism in 2014, a lecturer in contemporary Islam said Abu Mohammed al-Jolani is the leader of the Islamist alliance that spearheaded an offensive that rebels say brought down Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and ended five decades of Baath Party rule in Syria. Al-Jolani heads Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is rooted in Syria’s branch of al-Qaeda. He is a former extremist who adopted a more moderate posture in order to achieve his goals. Yesterday, as the rebels entered Damascus, he ordered all military forces in the capital not to approach public institutions. Last week, he said the objective of his offensive, which saw city after city fall from government control, was to
IVY LEAGUE GRADUATE: Suspect Luigi Nicholas Mangione, whose grandfather was a self-made real-estate developer and philanthropist, had a life of privilege The man charged with murder in the killing of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare made it clear he was not going to make things easy on authorities, shouting unintelligibly and writhing in the grip of sheriff’s deputies as he was led into court and then objecting to being brought to New York to face trial. The displays of resistance on Tuesday were not expected to significantly delay legal proceedings for Luigi Nicholas Mangione, who was charged in last week’s Manhattan killing of Brian Thompson, the leader of the US’ largest medical insurance company. Little new information has come out about motivation,
RSS