Is Nato obsolete, or brain-dead?

What did ex-president Donald Trump think about Nato? Twice during his campaign, he rubbished it publicly as “obsolete”. Three years ago the French president Emmanuel Macron said Nato was “brain-dead. Is it obsolete or brain-dead or both?

Nato’s job, as the British secretary-general, Lord Ismay, said in 1967 was to “keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down”. It certainly had success with the latter two. The first was unnecessary.

There are some- a few- influential people- much wiser than Trump or Macron- who have argued that Nato is indeed obsolete. One of these was William Pfaff, the late, much esteemed, columnist for the International Herald Tribune.

Another is Paul Hockenos who set out his views in a seminal article in World Policy Journal. Their words fell on deaf ears.

President George H.W. Bush (Senior), who presided over the end of the Cold War, wanted to see the Soviet Union more involved in Nato’s day-to-day work.

He travelled to Kiev and told Ukrainians in a public speech that they should keep their country as part of the Soviet Union. Bush preferred stability.

His successor, President Bill Clinton, had totally another agenda- and one that turned out to be dangerous one, triggering over time Russia’s present-day hostility towards the West- incorporating one by one Russia’s former east European allies, the so-called “expansion of Nato” eastwards.

His successors continued that approach with Barack Obama at one time raising a red rag to a bull by calling for the entry into Nato Ukraine and Georgia.

Nato countries thought that they had a role after the Berlin Wall came tumbling down in 1989 and the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. It led to “humanitarian” interventions in Bosnia in 1995, against Serbia in 1999 and in Kosovo later in 1999. But the latter two were done without the authority of the UN Security Council, thus breaking international law. Russia and Spain voted against the intervention in the UN Security Council. (Ironically, if Russia had got its way it would have set a precedent that would have made it very difficult for Russia later to justify its occupation of Crimea and Ukraine.) The final settlement made by the warring parties is unlikely to last.

In 2001 Nato countries led by the US started to bomb Afghanistan and later sent in troops. The war lasted 19 years and ended with Nato’s defeat. In 2003 Nato attacked Iraq and quickly overthrew its government but caused so much damage that the country is still struggling to get back on its feet. (Before that it was the most prosperous of all Arab countries.)

Let’s return to the founding of Nato in 1949, meant “to keep the Russians out”. A majority (yes, a majority) of top historians who have examined the evidence are convinced that Stalin had no intention of invading Western Europe. The Second World War was won.

The Soviet Union, perhaps understandably a bit neurotic after Napoleon and Hitler’s attempts to invade it, reaching within striking distance of Moscow, had a ring of friends around its borders, and Germany was divided.

The allies had been an invaluable helpmate during the war and the Soviet Union did not feel threatened by its former comrades-in-arms. It did not need to fight them for more territory.

Thorough searches by Western historians through the Soviet archives- they were opened during the years of President Boris Yeltsin- have revealed that Moscow had no plans to invade Europe.

Despite its deployments in the former ex-Yugoslavia and Afghanistan, Nato is not a truly multilateral institution of equals. The Europeans do not initiate military action (with the exception of the invasion Libya that led to the overthrow and killing of President Muammar Gadhafi in 2001, followed by chaos that still lives on). It is the Americans who do that and the Europeans, whatever their reservations, invariably follow.

Moreover, obeying America rather than following their own convictions in ex-Yugoslavia, they did not seek UN Security Council permission, and then are angry that Russia follows suit with its grabbing of Crimea.

Nato has no relevance to the problems that truly occupy Europe and the US today.

Its hands are tied in Ukraine because of the fear of nuclear war if they start to fight the Russians. Moreover, there are other examples of irrelevance to our most pressing problems.

It cannot help in dealing with the fact, as a European Union study concluded, that there will be an increase in tensions over declining water supplies in the Middle East that will affect Europe’s security and economic interests. It has no plans to deal with that.

Nor can it do anything to contribute to the fight against global warming, in the long run the most severe threat that confronts humanity.