BRUSSELS (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 02nd December, 2020) This week NATO foreign ministers are holding a two-day online meeting in which they will discuss the pressing issues for the organization, such as the situation in Afghanistan and the relations with Russia and China, as the strongest pillar of the alliance, the United States, is on the cusp of changing leadership.
After the cold shower given to NATO and the European heads of state at every meeting by current US President Donald Trump and by his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, NATO's permanent staff would probably not mind a shift to the Democrats, which have proved to be more warlike over the last decade than the Republicans.
While there is still a remote possibility that the Supreme Court and its state equivalents will decide to invalidate the elections and go over to one state one vote in Congress, thus giving the victory to Trump, for many the result of the November 3 presidential election is already set in stone. This makes the discussion of NATO's future all the more important.
The foreign ministers discuss several issues that they have identified. According to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, they will talk about the alliance's continued adaptation, Russia's military build-up, the elevation of China as well as the bloc's training mission in Afghanistan. On these topics and others, the vocabulary is carefully selected to project an image of unanimity and decisiveness.
Prior to the meeting, Stoltenberg mentioned how much Afghanistan changed since NATO forces were deployed into the country in the wake of the 9/11 attack on the United States.
"In the months ahead, we will continue to assess our presence based on conditions on the ground. We face a difficult dilemma. Whether to leave, and risk that Afghanistan becomes once again a safe haven for international terrorists. Or stay, and risk a longer mission, with renewed violence. Whatever path we choose, it is important that we do so together, in a coordinated and deliberate way," Stoltenberg said.
This, however, is almost entirely conditional on whether or not Washington will keep its troops in the country. If not, the NATO forces are unlikely to stay one more minute in this very dangerous place, where the Taliban are expected to defeat the NATO-supported Kabul government as soon as the US troops are gone.
"So we find ... Confirmation that in Afghanistan, as in other implications of NATO outside its historical sphere, it is the Americans who decide," Nina Bachkatov, a professor at the University of Liege in Belgium and a specialist of Russia and Eurasia, told Sputnik.
Another pressing matter for the alliance's meeting is Russia's supposed "military build-up around the Alliance, from the High North to Syria and Libya," per a NATO statement.
Not everyone is buying such rhetoric, with some, like Thierry Mariani, an EU lawmaker from the French National Rally party, thinking that by talking about a potential conflict with Russia NATO tries to give itself a lease on life.
"NATO is looking for a reason to exist This takes a long time since the Warsaw Pact was dismantled in 1991. Today Russia no longer has the means to be on the offensive as it could have been in the time of the Soviet Union," Mariani told Sputnik.
NATO foreign ministers will also consider the change in the global power balance with the increasing role of China.
"China is not our adversary. Its rise presents an important opportunity for our economies and trade. We need to engage with China on issues such as arms control and climate change. But there are also important challenges to our security. China is investing massively in new weapons," Stoltenberg said.
For this discussion about the friend and foe China, the NATO ministers are said to be joined by Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea, NATO partners in the Asia-pacific region, as well as Finland and Sweden, and by EU High Representative, Josep Borrell, says the official statement.
"And now NATO is taking an interest in the Chinese threat. It's a long way from the North Atlantic to the China Sea, it seems to me!" Mariani notes.
Meanwhile, Bachkatov sees what she calls "the hope of playing China against Russia, but without a specific strategy - so the winner will be China."
The last point of discussion, the alliance's adaptation to the coming decades, could bring a smile if one remembers the brutal expression employed by French President Emmanuel Macron in The Economist, to describe the organization, wondering if NATO was "brain-dead" and adding that Europeans should take their own defense into their hands.
According to Mariani, the bloc's current function is to play the second fiddle to Washington.
"Mr. Stoltenberg and NATO are desperately looking for an enemy to exist; so that the satellite countries of the United States remain in orbit around the United States and so that the American military-industrial lobby can justify its action," Mariani.
The lawmaker added that the leader of his party, Marine Le Pen, wants France to leave the alliance as it has no real reason for existing.
"It is a US instrument for control of European states operating in the US orbit," Mariani concluded.
