America pulls Europe's strings

Commenting on the state of trans-Atlantic relations in 2008, former American president Jimmy Carter argued that European Union governments are “not our vassals” but “occupy an equal position with the U.S.”. Documents released over the past month appear to offer a different view.

In a report finalised earlier in December, the European Union’s foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton signalled that the EU’s main purpose internationally is to “help” Washington “achieve its global objectives”. By coincidence, a series of secret cables from U.S. embassies around the world – made public by the website WikiLeaks - indicates that America expects Europe to constantly act as its subordinate.

A memo approved by William Leach, then U.S. ambassador to Paris, in 2005 deals with French opposition to the war declared against Iraq two years previously. Leach takes comfort in learning that the anti-war stance of President Jacques Chirac was not supported by some prominent members of Chirac’s own party, the Union for a Popular Majority (known by its French acronym UMP).

The memo summarises a visit which Leach received from Hervé de Charette, a former foreign minister and then head of international relations for the UMP. De Charette, according to the memo, called Chirac’s position on the war “embarrassing”. Giving the impression that he was speaking on behalf of Nicolas Sarkozy, now France’s president and the UMP leader at the time, de Charette identified a sturdy relationship with the U.S. as “the basis for French foreign relations”. De Charette also described the Israel-Palestine conflict as “the key issue” for both the EU and U.S. and suggested that he wished to counter the perception that France was more sympathetic to the Palestinians than to Israel.

Another cable from 2005 pinpoints Britain and the Netherlands as America’s most trusted allies in western Europe. Drafted by Clifford Sobel, who was about to step down as the U.S. envoy to The Hague, it labels the Dutch as “go-to guys” when disagreements arise between the EU and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). Sobel says that the Dutch helped “push back” plans by France and Germany to develop a European military capability that could act independently of NATO, a US-dominated alliance. He applauds the Dutch, too, for providing “early logistic support” for the war in Iraq by allowing the U.S. military pass through Rotterdam, when it was unable to use other European ports for that purpose.

Furthermore, the cable celebrates the willingness of Dutch diplomats to act as “eyes and ears” for America. It recommends that – because the Netherlands has a history as a coloniser in the Caribbean- the Dutch should be given a role in countering the rise of left-wing politicians in Latin America. According to Sobel, the Dutch are “deeply concerned” about “meddling” by Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez in the Caribbean. “As a Caribbean power, the Dutch have good reasons to lead an effort to balance traditional Spanish dominance on Latin American issues in the EU, but the U.S. and others will need to push them to take this role,” the cable adds.

Eva Golinger, a New York lawyer who has written several books on Chavez, said that the cables published by WikiLeaks underscore Washington’s “obsession” with relations between Cuba and Venezuela. Claims that Cubans have penetrated every aspect of Venezuelan government and economy are redolent of Cold War warnings about “communist expansion” in the Southern hemisphere, Golinger wrote on her internet publication Postcards from the Revolution. She also accused US diplomats of painting a false picture of Venezuela. Whereas one cable alleges that the quality of hospitals has declined under Chavez, his administration has pumped billions into a public healthcare system which guarantees free treatment to all citizens.

Two decades after the Cold War was widely assumed to have ended, the cables show that at least 200 American nuclear weapons remain on European soil. Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Turkey are named as some of the countries hosting these weapons.

In addition, the cables appear to offer proof that NATO is planning for a confrontation with Russia. A document from January 2010 shows that the alliance approved a plan during that month to expand an operation known as Eagle Guardian, under which preparations would be made for fighting with Russia in Poland and the three Baltic states (Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia).

The decision follows NATO’s encroachment into countries surrounding Russia over the past decade. This enlargement occurred despite promises made to Moscow by James Baker, the U.S. secretary of state from 1989 to 1992, that NATO would not expand eastwards. As members of NATO since 2004, the Baltic states have accommodated both military bases for the U.S. and operations training soldiers preparing attacks on Afghanistan.

Writing in September, Rick Rozoff, a blogger with the campaigning website Stop NATO, noted that the warplanes from a variety of NATO members fly “round-the-clock” over the three Baltic countries, all of which adjoin Russia. Rozoff intimated that these operations are bound to increase friction between Russia and the alliance.

“NATO’s new members on the Baltic Sea are delivering on the demands imposed upon them by accession to the alliance,” he added. “They host NATO – particularly U.S. – troops, bases, warplanes, warships and missiles. They provide troops for wars far abroad. They supply training opportunities on the ground and in the air for the war in Afghanistan and for future conflicts with none of the restrictions that exist in North America and Western Europe. And they render those multiple services near Russia’s western border.”

·First published by Inter Press Service (www.ipsnews.net), 22 December 2010

Pentagon pulls Europe's strings

One little known fact about Brussels is that it a sliver of the city has a US address. American staff working in NATO headquarters can send letters to mom and pop or take deliveries from on-line retailers like Amazon, paying the same postage and shipping fees as they would within their home country. Under the “Air Post Office” zip code applying to this mail, the Belgian capital is considered part of New York City.

This may seem trivial but it is symptomatic of how the Pentagon regards most of Europe as its puppet. Worse again, senior officials working for our governments promote the subservience as desirable. “What is the point of the Belgian army today?” Robert Cooper, one of the EU’s top politico-military strategists and a former adviser to Tony Blair, has written. “It is not to defend Belgium, since no one is going to attack it. Rather, it is to demonstrate a sufficient commitment to the ‘West’ that friends and allies, above all the USA, will be there if ever Belgium should need help.”

During their summit last week, the EU’s presidents and prime ministers tasked foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton with drawing up a blueprint for developing closer ties between the Union and NATO. No doubt, Ashton will do her best to present the military alliance as a benevolent one, intent on preventing nascent conflicts from escalating. Gamblers could not expect high odds on terms such as “we wish to exploit the synergies between the two organisations” appearing in her blueprint.

Yet no amount of turgid phrasing can mask how NATO and the EU have already become deeply enmeshed. Officially, six of the EU’s 27 countries are not full members of NATO: Austria, Finland, Sweden, Ireland, Malta and Cyprus. Stealthily, however, the entire Union is being drawn into the US-dominated alliance. Sweden and Finland both have troops serving under NATO in Afghanistan, eroding their pretence to be neutral. Cyprus is the only EU country to have so far remained outside NATO’s misnamed Partnership for Peace.

In the past, the “Partnership” has often proven to be a waiting room for NATO accession. There is one exception to this general trend: Russia. Despite joining the Partnership in 1994, Russia has seen its relations with NATO deteriorate over the past decade. A military doctrine approved by Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president, in February identified NATO’s continuous expansion into eastern Europe as one of the “main external threats of war”.

Rather than trying to assuage the Kremlin, NATO is still provocatively stretching its tentacles into Russia’s immediate neighbourhood. Ukraine failed to have its bid to join the alliance accepted at the 2008 NATO summit, but has more recently been promised a compensation prize. Within the next five or six years, Ukraine is scheduled to be the first country outside the alliance admitted to its “response force”. This carries the real risk that Kiev will sign up for participation in a conflict that Moscow opposes.

Russia has every right to be concerned, too, by the content of the “strategic concept” that will be rubber-stamped when NATO leaders assemble in Lisbon in November. This policy document will be based on the findings of a recent report indicating that competition for oil and other energy sources will be an issue of critical importance for the alliance in the decades ahead.

Drafted under the guidance of former Shell chief executive Jeroen van der Veer, the report eerily echoes a warning contained in a Russian intelligence assessment from 2007. According to that assessment, a confrontation between Russia and other nations determined to exploit the Arctic’s resources is a distinct possibility. Russia has sounded a bellicose note itself lately; for the first time in 20 years, it has resumed air patrols in a region containing 30% of the world’s undiscovered natural gas and 13% of undiscovered oil, if estimates by American geologists are accurate. Canada, one of several NATO members asserting a claim over the Arctic, has further ratcheted up the tension with Russia by conducting a series of “sovereignty exercises” in the Arctic.

It is no secret, of course, that the US has a seemingly insatiable lust for fossil fuels. Barack Obama may be trying to convince us that America is winding down its military operations in Iraq but major corporations have no intention of quitting the country’s oil-fields. The colonial conquest of Afghanistan, meanwhile, cannot be separated from a plan that the US has had since at least the 1990s to transport natural gas from Turkmenistan via Afghanistan. In 2007, Richard Boucher, then the US assistant secretary of state, acknowledged that Washington hoped to source energy from a pipeline linking south and central Asia.

As if the spiralling costs of these wars were not high enough, the US – egged on by Israel – is preparing to attack Iran, home to about 10% of the world’s oil and gas reserves. A recent article by Michel Chossudovsky, economics professor with the University of Ottawa, contends that US wishes not only to control Iran’s energy supplies but also to challenge the influence of Russia and China in the Middle East. The reasons he cites appear far more credible than the official narrative from Washington about wishing to stop Iran from developing a nuclear bomb.

By parroting American propaganda, its allies in NATO and the EU are trying to hoodwink the public into accepting another disastrous war.

•First published by New Europe (www.neurope.eu), 19-25 September 2010