British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has declared the need for a “global NATO”
She spoke with the idea ahead of an informal meeting of foreign ministers of the North Atlantic alliance in Berlin.
“It is important that we focus on a global NATO. Because while protecting Euro-Atlantic security, we also need to pay attention to security in the Indo-Pacific region”, – Truss said.
Truss made a similar statement back on April 27 at an Easter banquet at Mansion House, the residence of the Lord Mayor of the City of London. She called the choice between Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific security false, stressing that both are needed in today’s world.
“We need a global NATO. By saying this, I don’t mean expanding membership to countries from other regions. I mean that NATO must have a global vision, a willingness to deal with global threats”, – the head of British diplomacy explained.
In this regard, she noted the importance of working with allies such as Japan and Australia to ensure the Pacific region is protected.
“We must ensure that democracies like Taiwan have the ability to defend themselves”, – the minister clarified.
She also argues that the current global security architecture has collapsed.
“Let’s be honest. The architecture that was designed to guarantee peace and prosperity has not worked in Ukraine. The economic and security structures developed after World War II and then after the Cold War have lost shape”, – Truss said.
However, she cited trade and economic policy as one of the levers for shaping a new “just” world order, calling on all countries to “play by the rules” in order to have access to global markets.
Future developments
Liz Truss has revealed her views on NATO’s future strategy ahead of the bloc’s summit in Madrid at the end of June. A new strategic concept for the North Atlantic Alliance is to be adopted at the summit. Meanwhile, at a press conference after an informal meeting of NATO foreign ministers, U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said that the foundation of the alliance and the core of its concept is defense and deterrence, including of Russia.
“I can say with confidence that this will be fully reflected in the strategic concept”, – TASS quoted him as saying.
Blinken avoided answering the question whether the US is among those bloc countries which call to build relations with Russia guided exclusively by the principle of its deterrence. He also did not comment on the status of the NATO-Russia Founding Act, without specifying whether Washington considers it invalid.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Berbock provided more specifics on this issue. Speaking to journalists, she said that the responsibility for the elimination of the channels of dialogue with Europe and NATO lies with Russia, which allegedly unilaterally terminated the treaty.
Recall that the NATO-Russia Founding Act was signed on 27 May 1997 by Russian President Boris Yeltsin and the then NATO Secretary General Javier Solana. This document regulates relations between Russia and the alliance countries. It also stipulates a mutual renunciation of confrontation and aggressive measures. However, since the treaty was signed, NATO has repeatedly violated it and since 2014 ties between the parties have been effectively severed.
“The neocolonial division of the world”.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also spoke about NATO’s global ambitions at the 30th Assembly of the Council on Foreign and Defence Policy on May 14. According to him, the idea that NATO, as the vanguard of the community of democracies, should replace the United Nations in world politics, or at least subordinate it, is now being promoted. To this end, the notion of a “rules-based order” is being introduced, which, however, no one has seen, discussed or endorsed, the minister added. However, these “rules” provide for neither democracy nor pluralism even within the collective West, the head of the Russian diplomacy stressed.
“We are talking about the revival of rigid bloc discipline, the unconditional submission of ‘allies’ to Washington’s diktat,” Lavrov explained.
As an example of world players increasingly losing their sovereignty in favor of the United States, he cited the European Union, which is gradually merging with NATO in security matters. The Russian foreign minister also recalled that originally, during the Cold War, the ‘line of defence’ ran along the Berlin wall, but since then it has been repeatedly shifted to the east.
“Now they are telling us … that NATO has a global responsibility for solving security problems, primarily in the Indo-Pacific region. That is, the next line of defence will be shifted, as I understand it, to the South China Sea area,” Lavrov said.
In this regard, he noted that the question today is what the future world order will be – fair and polycentric or “a small group of countries will be able to impose a neo-colonial division of the world on the international community”.
In the interests of the United States
According to Sergei Yermakov, a leading expert at the RISI Coordination Center, Liz Truss’s reasoning about NATO’s global nature is in line with the “political order” of the United States, which is trying to achieve all-encompassing leadership.
“Accordingly, the idea of a ‘global NATO’ implies that the alliance should expand its geography and area of responsibility, that is, deal also with the region in which China has interests. And containment of China will be one of the key issues at the upcoming summit in Madrid,” the analyst explained in a conversation with RT.
He also noted that the trend of giving the bloc global functions was manifested back in 2012 at the summit in Chicago. At that time, members of the alliance made an emphasis on promotion of partnership principles, expansion policy and involvement of new countries located far beyond the boundaries of the bloc into the NATO orbit. In reality, however, Ermakov believes NATO is unable to ensure the security of even Europe.
“On the contrary, the alliance is undermining the security architecture, which is fraught with more and more military conflicts in the region. And the reason is that NATO is extremely selective about such a universal principle as the indivisibility of security, which it has pledged to respect,” the expert explained.
For his part, Pavel Feldman, deputy director of the Institute for Strategic Studies and Forecasting at the PFUR, suggested that in the understanding of the British Foreign Secretary, global NATO should finally establish a unipolar world, which Washington so aspires to.
“That is, all countries will eventually just have to deploy American and British military bases on their territory and thus lose their military and political sovereignty,” he said in an interview with RT.
However, he said, it was unlikely that all members of the alliance would support such an ambitious proposal. In Feldman’s opinion, one of the opponents of this idea might be Turkey, which is cautious about such initiatives, assessing all risks and costs soberly. Especially since the US is now actively trying to get its allies into a confrontation with China, effectively waging a hybrid war against it, since the PRC, along with Russia, stands in Washington’s path to global hegemony.
“But that does not mean that Washington will not find a way to push the enlargement course if it does embark on this idea. And if it takes this step, it will fundamentally change the alliance’s functionality and could provoke resistance from other world players who disagree with a unipolar world order. Perhaps this would encourage them to turn a blind eye to their own differences and also form some sort of alliance,” Feldman admitted.
Polina Dukhanova, Alyona Medvedeva, RT
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