UN Marginalised, NATO Facing Change 

Multilateral organisations are not doing too well. Multiple attempts at regional integration in Africa and Latin America have failed rather ingloriously. Though participating nations are as a rule excited to become part of a bigger whole, they more often than not refuse to invest even the tiniest sliver of sovereignty in the common good. Borders that should be open remain sealed if not by tariffs walls, then by paperwork barriers.

The European Union and its Common Market set the gold standard for economic integration but the bloc is being assailed by nationalistic forces trying to capitalise on nostalgia. For now, the EU is safe after Poland returned to the fold and French voters last Sunday rejected a swing to the right. Only Slovakia and Hungary remain irritants with Viktor Orbán as a lone guerrilla fighter travelling the world in search of something even he cannot quite define.

On a global scale, multilateral organisations fare little better. The United Nations, formerly the world’s repository of hope, has become marginalised to the point of irrelevance. What it says or does carries little, if any, weight. Secretary-General António Guterres does not improve matters with his over-the-top alarmist messages on climate change that expose the former prime minister of Portugal to considerable ridicule. Mr Guterres seems to have lost the plot altogether and with it, his audience – and authority.

Meanwhile, the World Economic Forum, meeting place of the chattering upper classes and their camp followers, has been exposed as a clique of woke hypocrites who preach all the proper things – equal opportunity for all, corporate social responsibility, and whatnot – only to do the exact opposite internally. Expectant mothers are sidelined, female staff harassed, and people of colour discriminated. The WEF has become toxic and only the cluelessly vain still embark on the annual winter pilgrimage to Davos.

Birthday without a Party

And then there is NATO celebrating its 75th birthday without a party. Whereas the United Nations consistently fails to keep the peace, though not for a lack of trying, NATO did succeed in its mission to keep member states safe from outside threats – and from each other. Of course, the treaty is far from perfect and may, before long, be tested in case Donald Trump returns to the White House.

The Washington summit convened to celebrate NATO’s 75th birthday is overshadowed by two potentially disruptive developments: Trump and Ukraine. The latter – Ukraine – is a question of semantics: NATO leaders must phrase their resolve carefully, balancing between, on the one hand, offering institutionalised support for that country whilst, on the other, avoiding the impression that Ukraine is on the cusp of gaining admittance to the club.

Outgoing NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg wants to ‘Trump-proof’ the organisation’s support of beleaguered Ukraine by eliciting multi-year support pledges from member states. He also proposes to award NATO a coordinating role in providing equipment and training to the armed forces of Ukraine, a process that currently runs on a country-by-country basis which implies crippling inefficiencies.

Member states have thus far only been willing to support Ukraine through next year with about €40 billion in military aid – probably enough to keep the country on its feet but not nearly enough to expel the Russian invader from its territory.

With Slovakia and Hungary already cosying up to the Kremlin, and Trump impatiently waiting in the wings and ready to upset whatever apple cart he can find, incoming NATO boss Mark Rutte needs to deploy his full arsenal of diplomatic skills to keep the peace inside the organisation.

Trump the Realist

Whilst Donald Trump is often portrayed as unhinged and simple-minded, including on this forum; he does possess a surprisingly clear vision of America’s place and role in the world. It is a vision – or perhaps an instinct – that resonates with a great many American voters who agree with Mr Trump that the US should stay out of world affairs, discard geopolitical considerations, and concentrate on furthering its own interests, rather than those of longtime allies.

That vision, realist and intellectually defensible, seeks to extract the US from multiple foreign ‘entanglements’ in recognition of the fact that the country’s mighty forces are stretched too thin. Trump’s leitmotif involves competition and negotiation (if you must: ‘The Art of the Deal’) instead of applying direct pressure through the use of force.

During his first term in office, neoconservative Atlanticists stopped the president from following his instincts though that did not prevent him from winding down American involvement in Afghanistan and engaging adversarial states such as North Korea, China, and Russia.

Trump the Realist will unlikely pursue a full isolationist foreign policy but will want to tune out from, for example, the Middle East. To do that, Mr Trump will revert to his ‘drill-baby-drill’ energy policy, scrapping environmental legislation and other impediments to oil and natural gas companies. This accomplishes two things: prices at the pump will likely drop and, critically, allow the intractable politics of the countries bordering the Persian (Arabian) Gulf to be largely ignored.

The expected shift then goes from geo-political to geo-economic. In one of his more lucid moments, Mr Trump admitted that he’s rather wage war with economic means: “If I want to invade a country, I’ll do so economically. We have a tremendous economic power that can resolve issues to our advantage.”

No Threat

Applied to Europe, the Trump approach calls for the continent to solve its own issues, including the war in Ukraine and the future relationship, if any, with Russia. Mr Trump may claim some credit for prodding NATO allies to spend more on their military although it was the threat of Russian expansion beyond Ukraine that caused defence budgets to spike.

Mr Trump does not consider Russia a threat to American interests or national security given the rather underwhelming performance of its forces in Ukraine. Thus, it makes little sense to keep issuing blank cheques to Kyiv, especially since the European countries that share the neighbourhood possess the means to counter Russian aggression, if not the will. However, Mr Trump is unlikely to turn away from Europe and NATO entirely. The realist in him – dig deep enough and you’ll find him – will want to make Europe pay – in cash and trade. This the continent will do with or without howls of indignation.

NATO at 75 is to become a much more transactional proposition.

Cover photo: NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.

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© 2018 photo by NATO