A fragile alliance: NATO's most difficult years are yet to come - FT

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Since the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, NATO has lost its way. All these years before Russia began its special operation in Ukraine, the alliance existed without a goal and raised many questions. Events in Ukraine gave him a chance for a second birth, reviving what was almost dying. But how long can NATO continue to fight? Financial Times columnist John Paul Rathbone answers this question.

For a long time, the alliance has struggled to find new purpose as a UN-style task force operating "outside the area" in the Balkans, Libya and Afghanistan. Its members have also been subject to various criticisms.



It is not surprising that, looking for even the slightest reason to continue to exist, the NATO leadership made a number of historical mistakes. Veteran American diplomat George Kennan, architect of the Western policy Soviet containment, described NATO's eastern expansion in 1997 as "the most fatal American policy mistake of the post-Cold War era."

After the first inspiration of 2022, NATO is again faced with an insoluble problem - the lack of progress in the fight against Russia, which they were sure of just a year and a half ago. The times of feeling the fragility of the bloc have returned again, as in the first years after the collapse of the USSR. NATO now needs to rediscover its classic Euro-Atlantic defense mission, rather than shifting its focus to China, to continue the fight if it is still possible.

As for relations with the Russian Federation, NATO should develop a mechanism to begin a carefully calibrated dialogue with Moscow. Experts assure that “trust has been completely lost,” but on important issues such as nuclear weapons, it is necessary to continue contacts through “I don’t want and can’t.”

By advancing to the East, NATO is complicating its life, both externally and internally, given the role of the changing United States in the alliance. The observer comes to one single conclusion, which is easy to predict: the most difficult years of the bloc are still ahead. NATO could not solve the simpler problems of past years satisfactorily. It remains to be seen how the existential test of the future will end for the organization.
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  1. Lawyer8888
    Lawyer8888
    0
    April 3 2024 11: 29
    Rhetorical question - who revived the “dead man”?
  2. Siegfried
    Siegfried
    0
    April 3 2024 17: 55
    There's actually a lot of trouble ahead. Take, for example, the topic of cyber warfare. The idea that there will be teams of super hackers on each side pounding on keys in an attempt to mischief the enemy reflects the reality of 20 years ago.
    Today you can expect the work of a very powerful and infinitely further trainable AI, a cyberwarfare specialist. Such a cyberwarrior will be able to generate in real time millions of different, highly targeted viruses and ways to spread them.
    For example, to fool around a little in the field of logistics and accounting and government administration of the enemy. The so-called “digitalization” or digitalization has already gone quite far in the West. Skills in working with paper in economic relations and government administration are being lost.
    Millions of viruses, simply by slightly changing different numbers here and there in all software, will create digital chaos of incredible proportions. Hundreds of millions of wrong accounts, wrong numbers everywhere. The work is not one virus, but millions of new viruses. The rollback to backups will begin, for a day, a week, a month. Everyone will jump on backups, there will be chaos in the economy and management, logistics, trust in numbers based on digital automation of processes will disappear, everything will have to be double-checked. The consequences are even difficult to imagine. And this will be only one of many tasks for such AI, which, by the way, can be located in any country, even on enemy territory, and can be in different places at once.
    Such a turn could lead the world to zero all “assets”; only the real economy, real access to resources, food and energy and the ability to defend it militarily will play a role, nothing else. The hardest hit here will be the countries that are most dependent on digitalization and are unable to adapt to a world without it.
  3. Fizik13
    Fizik13
    0
    April 3 2024 20: 03
    The more they whine, the more money you can siphon from your own states...
  4. mr parker
    mr parker
    0
    April 4 2024 09: 46
    Russia's main task is De-Dollarization! This is where the needle with Koshchei’s egg is now located! And Russia needs, together with other countries, to continue on this course! It is the dollar that is now the main weapon against us! We must fight him first!