WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 25th September, 2021) America's European allies will continue to be used and discarded by Washington unless they follow-up on plans to revise the NATO alliance concept in the wake of France's recent humiliation at the hands of the Biden administration.
Earlier this week, Paris and Berlin said they agreed to revise the strategic concept of the NATO alliance in response to France getting humiliated when Australia decided to unilaterally terminate a $66 billion submarine deal in favor of a defense pact with the United States and UK. French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian described the move as a "knife in the back."
"Nothing will change until the NATO members internalize the fact that, as far as Washington is concerned, they are like tissue: to be used when needed and forgotten when not," former Canadian diplomat Patrick Armstrong told Sputnik.
Armstrong called the decision to revise the alliance concept "a step" toward realizing their subordinate role to Washington.
Meanwhile, some have suggested more dialogue with Washington could alter the situation - but others remain skeptical.
US political commentator Professor John Walsh pointed out that there had never been any real political dialogue within the NATO alliance during its 72 years of existence. From the very beginning, US policymakers had taken for granted that they would issue the commands and the role of all their European allies was simply to obey, Walsh said.
"There has been no dialogue since April, 1949, when NATO was founded," Walsh told Sputnik. "The master uses 'dialogue' only as a cosmetic on commands to its underlings - in this case US-occupied Europe."
The US is now so panicked over China, Walsh added, that it "dispenses with the makeup."
"Or, as Victoria Nuland put it nakedly, 'F**k the EU,'" Walsh said.
French Defense Minister Florence Parly this week said the move to revise the alliance concept is meant to remind Washington that the reason for NATO's existence is transatlantic security. She said being allies does not mean "being hostage to the interests of another country."
California State University Emeritus Professor of politics Beau Grosscup said the initiative did indeed confirm the US allies were beginning to reassess their long-subservient role to Washington.
"Clearly, the European nationalists, led by France-German cooperation - a rare thing - are rethinking their post-Cold War acquiescence to US demands that a US-dominated NATO remain responsible for European security as opposed to a Pan-European alliance absent the US as a member and the end of NATO," Grosscup told Sputnik.
US administrations, he added, most recently Trump's, have bludgeoned European allies into paying more for the alliance costs without giving up its decisive role in policymaking.
"In short, the French-German officials are saying, if the US wants NATO to continue the time has come for Europeans to become equal partners in policymaking - not only on questions of European security but also regarding US security in a new and true definition of 'Transatlantic Security Alliance' - something the US has always and adamantly rejected," Grosscup said.
