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NATO, The Gargoyle of Globalism

Post-Cold War NATO is an avatar for globalism’s war on the national interest, guarding the church of the liberal international order as a sacred space.
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Given this summer’s much-publicized and feted 75th anniversary of the founding of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), it is natural to reflect on NATO’s effectiveness and legacy. The alliance, after all, was created in the aftermath of World War II to meet specific regional and situational strategic challenges posed by the Soviet Union. So long as it stayed within those original parameters and geographic limits, it successfully deterred the threat of Soviet expansionism in Europe.

However, as NATO’s mission devolved and lost its focus after the end of the Cold War, it has become increasingly apparent that the alliance has shed its defensive basis and been reconceived as an organization whose primary directive is to expand America’s sphere of influence globally through the continuous encroachment on various regional powers’ more immediate spheres of interest. NATO’s rhetoric and actions — especially since its intervention in Yugoslavia in 1999 — signal an intentional strategic shift toward adopting a globalized agenda, thereby facilitating its transition to become the global military arm for the U.S.-led liberal international order. Ironically, this rather aggressive and maximalist reorientation also puts America’s core national interests at risk.

As NATO’s mission devolved and lost its focus after the end of the Cold War, it has become increasingly apparent that the alliance has shed its defensive basis and been reconceived as an organization whose primary directive is to expand America's sphere of influence globally.

This systematic push for subordinating the strategic autonomy of NATO’s relatively powerful members to Washington’s priorities is often achieved through a neo-Wilsonian approach. This approach instrumentalizes the nationalism of smaller states to justify intervention abroad, diluting a more robust idea of American national interest here at home. The national self-determination of smaller states outside NATO is utilized to guilt and unify the alliance behind the U.S. foreign policy establishment’s priorities. In the process, this approach undermines the agency, sovereignty, and foreign policy of many allied states, not to mention those of the American people.

NATO’s new raison d’etre has thus become the global defense of smaller faultline nation-states — which are not party to the alliance — from revisionist great powers that dare to challenge U.S. global hegemony by insisting on their own historical sphere of interest. This is especially questionable in a world moving towards multipolarity and away from the stark binaries propagated by those who defend permanent U.S.-centered alliance networks using ideological frameworks and Cold War logic.

Given its highly bureaucratic and top-down structure, NATO displays intense disapprobation of member states that attempt to assert their own interests. This often occurs when member states seek new minilateral security arrangements with countries outside the alliance or even work together to sidestep the alliance and create more localized alternative arrangements.1Stuart Lau, “NATO’s Bad Boys: Turkey and Hungary play their own game, Politico, July 2024: https://www.politico.eu/article/natos-bad-boys-turkey-and-hungary-play-their-own-game-orban-putin-erdogan/ Such diplomatic and strategic maneuvers are particularly obstructed when their aims contradict NATO’s institutional agenda.2Andrew Higgins, “Orban Endangers Hungary’s Status as an Ally, U.S. Diplomat Says”, The New York Times, March 2024: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/14/world/europe/orban-hungary-nato-us.html

NATO: From Focused Defense to Haphazard Offense

According to the U.S. State Department, NATO was originally conceived as a purely defensive alliance meant to deter Soviet expansion and aggression toward Western Europe and the Mediterranean.3U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian, “The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 1949”, Milestone in the History of U.S. Foreign Relations: https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/nato Lord Ismay, the first Secretary General of the alliance, was quite blunt in stating that the pact’s purpose was “to keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.”4Lord Hasting Lionel Ismay, April 1952: https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/declassified_137930.htm In other words, it was an attempt to solidify cooperation between the anti-Soviet regions of Europe and North America — a specific reaction to the perceived threat of Soviet expansionism in the postwar era.

A key element of NATO’s initial success and its realist conception was that, in those formative years, ideological litmus testing was wholly absent: Portugal, under the authoritarian leadership of Salazar,  became a founding member of the alliance with full Western backing.5Diplomatic Portal, “NATO”, Portuguese Government Portal, accessed 9/2024: https://portaldiplomatico.mne.gov.pt/en/foreign-policy/defense/nato#nato-north-atlantic-treaty-organization Other authoritarian anti-communist states followed. Greece and Turkey became crucial members in 1952, courted for their highly strategic location used to safeguard the Straits of Marmara from Soviet domination. Peace and stability — not ideological posturing or “democracy” — were foremost in planners’ minds: any domestic reform would be a secondary outcome of real gains in peace and security. The common threat of Moscow was the main reason for solidarity among new allies.6“Timeline of NATO Expansion”, The Associated Press, May 2022: https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-business-world-war-ii-sweden-finland-240d97572cc783b2c7ff6e7122dd72d2

In order to become self-perpetuating, the alliance instead transformed itself into a universalist, values-driven ideological project. Its new initiatives subsequently served to create the very conditions that its original founding had intended to fight against.

With the collapse of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact in 1991, the alliance needed a new reason to persist lest it also find itself at risk of dissolution. Leaving aside the philosophical question of whether it too should have ended once Russia lost its superpower status, NATO pivoted away from a defense-focused military alliance that deterred great power war in Europe. In order to become self-perpetuating, the alliance instead transformed itself into a universalist, values-driven ideological project. Its new initiatives subsequently served to create the very conditions that its original founding had intended to fight against,  provoking insecurity and war. NATO’s survival and permanence as an organization was now an end — the end, even — in itself. Early considerations of a new, inclusive European security architecture — through an alternative European defense pact that would include Russia or by offering Moscow a path to NATO membership, for example — quickly fizzled.7Jennifer Rankin, “Ex-Nato head says Putin wanted to join alliance early in his rule”, The Guardian, November 2021: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/04/ex-nato-head-says-putin-wanted-to-join-alliance-early-on-in-his-rule

Instead, starting with Bill Clinton, consecutive U.S. administrations chose to expand NATO onto smaller countries in Central and Eastern Europe. Since these newly sovereign, post-Soviet states were predictably apprehensive and resentful of Russia, Washington was, therefore, able to more easily trade on the historical specter of a threatening Russia to secure buy-in for NATO expansion. The alliance played an active and central role in military operations in Bosnia (1995) and openly intervened in Kosovo (1999) — policies that were determined in Washington, offensive in nature, well outside the Treaty’s original parameters, and did not involve the defense of any actual NATO countries.8Andrew Bacevich. The War Over Kosovo: Politics and Strategy in a Global Age. Columbia University Press, 2001.

The alliance’s famous Article 5 — stipulating collective defense in the case of an attack on a member — was only ever invoked in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, marshaling NATO troops against the Taliban.9“International Community Responds”, 9/11 Memorial and Museum, accessed June 2024: https://www.911memorial.org/learn/resources/digital-exhibitions/digital-exhibition-revealed-hunt-bin-laden/international-community-responds This eventually (if indirectly) led to the somewhat strange situation of troops from various European countries being sent to the Middle East on what was initially a counter-terrorism mission but rapidly became a bloated exercise in “counter-insurgency” and nation-building in Afghanistan and later Iraq. Needless to say, these objectives had nothing to do with European security.10Christopher Mott, “The Unraveling of a Myth: “Nation Building” and Calamity in Afghanistan”, The Institute for Peace and Diplomacy, August 2021: https://peacediplomacy.org/2021/08/17/the-unraveling-of-a-myth-nation-building-and-calamity-in-afghanistan/ Ten years later, NATO would again engage in a regime change operation — pushed mostly by Britain and France — in Libya, which once again saw NATO’s airpower deployed well outside of the boundaries of the alliance. Taken together, all of this shows that, despite the continued rhetoric of a defensive pact, the alliance adopted a consistently offensive, even aggressive, character in recent decades without giving much weight to the long-term national interest of most NATO members.11Jon Schwarz. “Meet NATO, a “Defensive” Alliance Trying to Run the World”, The Intercept, June 2021: https://theintercept.com/2021/06/15/meet-nato-the-dangerous-defensive-alliance-trying-to-run-the-world/

A trend of NATO decoupling from its regional focus toward a more global horizon is also apparent. Afghanistan and Libya were strange enough deviations from the core base of the alliance, but recently growing ties with Japan on the opposite side of the world signal that this trend has become a deliberate blueprint.12“NATO and Japan Deepen Cooperation on Emerging Security Challenges”, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, November 2023: https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_220118.htm In this case,  NATO seems to be preparing for the possibility that a war over Taiwan or the South China Sea could be a trigger to thrust Europe into the Pacific. Recent joint military exercises in the latter involving European NATO members reflect also the artificial merger of different regions, each with its own distinct security needs, into ever-larger strategic concepts like the “Indo-Pacific”. Clearly, such actions belie an agenda for global expansion.13

Didi Tang, “To counter China, NATO and its Asian partners are moving closer under US leadership”, The Associated Press, July 2024:
https://apnews.com/article/nato-japan-south-korea-australia-new-zealand-6c3d9aa6fccc1253ca99ee140073f95c;

See Also, Ayham Simsek, “Germany, NATO partners to conduct air exercises in Indo-Pacific region”, Anadolu Ajansi, June 2024: https://www.aa.com.tr/en/world/germany-nato-partners-to-conduct-air-exercises-in-indo-pacific-region/3260799

It is as if the “North Atlantic” part of NATO has been entirely replaced with vague classifications like the “free world” or alliance of liberal democracies. Thus, in the minds of the NATO hierarchy, there appears to exist a set of chosen nations occupying hollowed ground whose sacred light must be protected from their nebulous barbarian other: this they cast as a battle for the future of human civilization, downplaying questions of actual strategic interest and/or geographic limits.14Takashi Tsuji, “NATO could be drawn into Taiwan conflict, affiliated report finds”, Nikkei Asia, April 2024: https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/International-relations/Taiwan-tensions/NATO-could-be-drawn-into-Taiwan-conflict-affiliated-report-finds

Such an expansive global posture and attitude not only decouples an alliance network from its original basis in regional defense but also decenters its real security and strategic imperatives in favor of moralism and ideological conformity.

The trouble is that such an expansive global posture and attitude not only decouples an alliance network from its original basis in regional defense but also decenters its real security and strategic imperatives in favor of moralism and ideological conformity. Through its globalism, the alliance substitutes a limitless, abstract, and Manichaean justification for self-perpetuation. Arrangements of these types view all conflicts as existential and zero-sum rather than local in origin and context-dependent. What’s more, a NATO fixated on the “Indo-Pacific” is a NATO that no longer sees collective European defense as its main objective: its new aim is, instead, the maintenance and expansion of U.S. hegemony through the liberal international order in such a way that the ideological and geopolitical ends of NATO and liberal internationalism become functionally indistinguishable from each other.15Christopher Mott, “Woke Imperium: The Coming Confluence of Social Justice and Neoconservatism”, The Institute for Peace and Diplomacy, June 2022: https://peacediplomacy.org/2022/06/27/woke-imperium-the-coming-confluence-between-social-justice-and-neoconservatism/ This means that any local flashpoint can easily become a globalized conflagration with missionary undertones as various alliance networks (having consolidated into binary blocs) are activated in response to a random outlier event, similar to how the July Crisis of 1914 spiraled into the Great War.

Within NATO proper, for instance, Hungary and Turkey are regularly singled out for outsize criticism, because they try to pursue a flexible, multi-aligned, and interest-based policy toward the current Ukraine War. Hungary has sought to play a key role in facilitating a diplomatic solution to the conflict — making this push a centerpiece of its foreign policy.16Justin Spike and Vladimir Isachenkov, “Hungary’s Orban meets Putin for talks in Moscow in rare visit for a European leader”, The Associated Press, July 2024: https://apnews.com/article/hungary-russia-orban-putin-visit-ukraine-4755f85d49703be7971b262c18707222 Turkey, meanwhile, has kept diplomatic channels open with Moscow, but it has increased both its arms exports to Ukraine and its influence in the Central Asian countries in Russia’s near-abroad.17Eric Rudenshiold, Nicolas Castillo, and Samantha Fanger, “Türkiye’s Return to Center Stage: Successful Counterbalancing”, Caspian Policy Center, April 2024: https://www.caspianpolicy.org/research/security/turkiyes-return-to-center-stage-successful-counterbalancing Both countries have also threatened to hold up new accessions into NATO until they receive certain concessions, further intensifying the pushback they receive from their nominal allies.18Missy Ryan, Kareem Faheem, Emily Ruahala, Loveday Morris, and Abigail Hauslohner, “Outliers Turkey, Hungary threaten NATO unity in standoff with Russia”, The Washington Post, July 2023: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/07/09/erdogan-orban-nato-sweden/

Moreover, both nations oppose Russian actions toward Kyiv, yet also find the international sanctions regime ruinous. Of course, this is far from a heretical position. The record of sanctions in bringing about desired policy changes is quite dubious even from the American perspective.19Arta Moeini and Christopher Mott, “Economic Sanctions: A Failed Approach”, The Institute for Peace and Diplomacy, September 2021: https://peacediplomacy.org/2021/09/16/economic-sanctions-a-failed-approach/ In September 2024 President Trump — an ardent proponent of sanctions in his first term — himself appeared to admit not only the inefficacy of sanctions as a long-term policy regarding both Russia and Iran but also the risk that the prevailing use of sanctions poses to the global position of the U.S. dollar.20The Economic Club of New York, “Trump Sparks Controversy Hints at Lifting Russia Sanctions to Protect U.S. Dollar, Republic World Channel, September 2024: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itJRlfJ1EU0 This all goes to show how criticisms of NATO consensus may start on the periphery, but could over time spread to other nations, even the United States itself, as the alliance’s official policy comes to clash with the members’ national interests.

Despite the criticism leveled at its outlier members and the explosive growth in the alliance’s global reach, the performance of NATO-affiliated countries in recent military operations away from Europe seems extremely dubious. Wherever these countries insert themselves outside of their core region (in Europe), they end up in quagmires and lose influence. They do very poorly relative to other competing power blocs in terms of power projection, especially one that is economically sustainable in the long run. This can be seen in coalition activities in the Sahel,21Shola Lawal, “Au revoir, Sahel: Did 2023 crush France’s influence in Africa?” Al Jazeera, December 2023: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/31/au-revoir-sahel-did-2023-crush-frances-influence-in-africa and Libya most overtly,22Mohamed Eljar, “Is Europe Exporting Instability to the Southern Mediterranean?’ European Institute for the Mediterranean, December 2020: https://www.iemed.org/publication/is-europe-exporting-instability-to-the-southern-mediterranean-libya-as-a-case-study/ — whereas countries like China have successfully grown their Middle Eastern profile without such costly interventions.23Peter Singer, “How China is winning the Middle East”, Defense One, January 2024: https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2024/01/how-china-winning-middle-east/393483/ The West’s miserable performance leads to further insecurity, bluster, and a growing and questionable list of priorities, including investing in transnational venture capital enterprises from the for-profit sector which have a direct financial interest in increasing cooperative defense spending.24Stavroula Pabst, “NATO takes the plunge into the world of venture capital”, Responsible Statecraft, October 2024: https://responsiblestatecraft.org/nato/

Despite the criticism leveled at its outlier members and the explosive growth in the alliance’s global reach, the performance of NATO-affiliated countries in recent military operations away from Europe seems extremely dubious. Wherever these countries insert themselves outside of their core region (in Europe), they end up in quagmires and lose influence.

Considering the vast resources and influence at the disposal of the Washington-led alliance network, this should not be the case. The question cannot simply be one of resources, but rather how they are allocated and the logic used to justify their misuse. This dynamic is inextricable from policy priorities set by the Blob, priorities that foreground the agenda of globalization at the expense of national interest — reducing America into a beacon for “democratism” and neoliberalism and instrumentalizing the U.S. alliance network, global influence, and soft power toward that end. Today NATO is the embodiment of this mindset. The upshot is the standardization of much of the planet around the values and economic models of the postwar order’s chief architect and most powerful state, the United States.25Christopher Mott, “The Democratist War on Diplomacy”, The National Interest, April 2023: https://nationalinterest.org/feature/democratist-war-diplomacy-206405 In its final iteration (beginning with 9/11 and the Global War on Terror and culminating in the “defense” of Ukraine), the U.S. establishment (and its counterparts in allied nations) have falsely conflated their globalist project with the concept of national interest when they are in fact antithetical.26David Polansky, “The Janus of ‘National Interest’: on the Realist’s Gambit in Foreign Policy”, The Institute for Peace and Diplomacy, February 2022: https://peacediplomacy.org/2022/02/16/the-janus-of-national-interest-on-the-realists-gambit-in-foreign-policy/ This leaves countries that engage in realpolitik and continue to espouse their core national interests at an immense advantage in crafting a more efficacious grand strategy.

The very idea of national interest — a cost-benefit calculation for how a specific state with a defined territory and a set geographical horizon should act in an anarchic and insecure international environment to maximize its own security and autonomy — is thus disproportionately undervalued among Atlanticist countries in no small part due to the globalizing and idealistic objectives adopted by NATO itself. Under conditions of multipolarity, this is a severe disadvantage for it undercuts geopolitical realism as well as the sort of pragmatism and adaptability such realism entails. It is worth examining how the North Atlantic experience — decentering national interest — diverged so much from the norm in other parts of the world.

‘The Rest’ Adapts; ‘The West’ Remains Inveterate

With the end of the Cold War and the dawn of the unipolar moment, the North Atlantic world entered first a decade of immense triumphalism and self-congratulation, followed by a decade of furious vengeance against anyone who had refused to accept the “end of history” and objected to the liberal West’s newfound hegemony. The latter was unleashed in response to the 9/11 attacks and the continued existence of revisionist states such as Iran, Iraq, and North Korea, which were dubbed the “Axis of Evil”. At the same time, much of the rest of the world largely failed to be convinced by the narrative of linear progress where all countries would have to wear a “Golden Straightjacket” and accommodate themselves to the triumph of the neoliberal order.27Thomas Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree. United States: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1999. While perfectly happy to eke out a profit in various trade deals with developed countries, most of the non-Western World simply could not afford to ignore the realities of regional politics and the necessities of self-preservation in their rather precarious positions. In the long run, this privileging of interest-based thinking made them more discerning and pragmatic about their policies, strengthening them in the process.

Such insistence on sovereignty and interest was seen as backward-looking by the then-dominant North Atlantic nations, who were still in the thrall of seemingly perpetual economic growth. Trade barriers were abolished internationally while financialization took over the domestic economies. The downsides of industrial offshoring were not yet fully understood, and, as it turned out, the developing world’s experience with globalized manufacturing would be uneven, with more benefits going to the countries that retained some degree of state regulation over the process. At the same time, the NGOs based in the Global North became increasingly central to “international development”, they were steadily discredited around the world.28Galia Chimiak, “The Rise and Stall of Non-Governmental Organizations in Development”, Polish Sociological Review No. 184, 2014: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24371611

China was perhaps the greatest beneficiary of this experiment in globalization. Adopting an export-led growth model, Beijing used its cheap labor and vast resources to reap massive economic gains while becoming an industrial powerhouse and a major global force. The historical experience of rapid development — going from an agrarian economy to an advanced, industrial one in less than two generations — modernized China’s infrastructure and significantly boosted its technological knowledge and capacity. Importantly, it also signaled the end of the two centuries of humiliation, raising Beijing’s national confidence and ontological security. All this set the stage for China’s rise as a great power and America’s only peer competitor. The new China was open for business and less ideologically driven than Washington allowing it to trade free and agnostic Coupled with the fact that China does not see foreign nations as questionable partners due to their internal domestic political structure, they become an easier partner for many governments to work with.29Jacob Dreyer. “The World China is Building”, Noema, July 2023: https://www.noemamag.com/the-world-china-is-building/

China’s rise was the biggest success story for the non-West, but it was not an outlier. The trend can also be observed on a smaller scale in other non-Western middle powers in the post-Cold War era.30Arta Moeini, Christopher Mott, Zachary Paikin, and David Polansky, “Middle Powers in the Multipolar World”, The Institute for Peace and Diplomacy, March 2022: https://peacediplomacy.org/2022/03/26/middle-powers-in-the-multipolar-world/ Turkey, free from the overwhelming power of the nearby Soviet Union, began a flexible neo-Ottoman strategy to reclaim its historical mantle as the regional hegemon in the East Mediterranean.31Christopher Mott. “Turkey: A Middle Power Pioneer”, The Institute for Peace and Diplomacy, April 2024: https://peacediplomacy.org/2024/04/10/turkey-a-middle-power-pioneer/ Ravaged by an eight-year war with Iraq and U.S.-led economic sanctions, Iran doubled down on its strengths in human capital and capitalized on lessons from the war to develop as an unconventional military power — investing in missile technology and specializing in asymmetric power projection through non-state proxies.32Seth G. Jones, Jared Thompson, Danielle Ngo, Joseph M. Bermudez Jr, and Brian McSorely, “The Iranian and Houthi War against Saudi Arabia”, Center for Strategic and International Studies, December 2021: https://www.csis.org/analysis/iranian-and-houthi-war-against-saudi-arabia Recognizing the future potential of hybrid warfare, Iran cultivated its soft power as a prominent bastion for anti-imperialism in the Middle East; it leveraged its sectarian and ideological linkages with non-Sunni communities in the region to form and train militias. America’s fruitless, endless wars in the Middle East, meanwhile, only granted Ankara and Tehran new opportunities to regularly test their capabilities, cement their strategic prowess, and justify their revisionism to the postwar order.

Emerging or returning powers show the renewed relevance of non-aligned diplomacy and a higher degree of sensitivity and adaptability to the realities of multipolarity than their Atlanticist counterparts. Their regional focus and resistance to the global agenda-setting of the U.S. and its allies also underscore the new-found geopolitical importance of the BRICS+.

Other historical middle powers from India and Brazil to Indonesia and Ethiopia are similarly reasserting their strategic autonomy and regional import, emphasizing their neutrality and multi-alignment, especially in the wake of the Ukraine and Gaza wars.33Ashley J. Tellis, “‘What Is In Our Interest:’ India and the Ukraine War”, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, April 2022: https://carnegieendowment.org/2022/04/25/what-is-in-our-interest-india-and-ukraine-war-pub-86961 This re-regionalization reveals the immense power of place, geography, and necessity in determining one’s enduring national interests. In breaking the straitjacket of the Cold War and its “Manichaean mentality”, these emerging or returning powers show the renewed relevance of non-aligned diplomacy and a higher degree of sensitivity and adaptability to the realities of multipolarity than their Atlanticist counterparts.34Arta Moeini, “Why the Blob Needs an Enemy”, The American Conservative, September 2020: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/why-the-blob-needs-an-enemy/ Their regional focus and resistance to the global agenda-setting of the U.S. and its allies also underscore the new-found geopolitical importance of the BRICS+.35Stewart Patrick, BRICS Expansion, the G20, and the Future of World Order, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, October 2024: https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2024/10/brics-summit-emerging-middle-powers-g7-g20

All these examples highlight that it was only really the North Atlantic Blob that began to conceive of themselves as inhabiting a sanctified fortress of freedom that had to be guarded against the ever-creeping immoral and authoritarian world outside — with NATO as (the Western) Civilization’s gargoyle-like protector pushing back the barbaric forces of history and chaos. But no matter the ideological priors and rationalizations they offered for their globalism, the Atlanticists remain undeniably wedded to the project of the American empire — which took it upon itself to underwrite and promote neoliberalism and liberal democratic society worldwide.

As President Obama’s former Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes acknowledged in an interview with Vanity Fair this month, U.S. primacy and global capitalism go hand in hand: “People separate out our military footprint from our financial footprint, but the reason that people have to trust that the dollar is a reliable currency is because it’s literally backed by the United States military, even though that’s not what we say the mission of the United States military is.”36James Pogue, “Steve Bannon has Called his ‘Army’ to do Battle, No Matter Who Wins in November”, Vanity Fair, October 9, 2024: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/steve-bannon-nato-world-order Indeed, the entire rules-based international order is a token of the American imperium and its neo-imperial, neoliberal arrangement, or to put it in Rhodes’ words, “The more accurate version is that most of the system under which the world functions is US-created, -managed, -perpetuated. So everything from the global financial system to the network of security alliances […] were all built to plug into American wealth.” Put simply, “The G20, IMF, World Bank, NATO” are all “literally appendages of the United States and our interests and our system.”

So the postwar world was made in America’s image. But just as the world orders before it, the U.S.-led liberal international order is historically contingent. And the neo-imperial, globalist drives of the postwar order make it especially unsustainable. The international system is already compelling an adjustment based on the new power distribution. A new world order is now being born, midwifed by the non-Western world as the West continues to willfully resist the tides of change. NATO’s attempts to turn a local European war in Ukraine into a civilizational and existential war for the world, projecting Western interests as global interests and downplaying realpolitik for morality, produced blowback in much of the non-Western world with many emerging powers ignoring or circumventing the Western sanctions on Russia. Those who expressed open dissatisfaction with the North Atlantic’s attempt to drag them into a conflict unrelated to their national interests faced U.S. rebuke in turn.37Christopher Mott, What’s so bad about ‘aggressive neutrality’? Responsible Statecraft, August 2023: https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2023/08/28/whats-so-bad-about-aggressive-neutrality/ On the other side, small NATO members of marginal importance to the overall alliance like Poland and the Baltic states constantly push for maximalist escalation undercutting the larger European powers like Germany and France.38Alex Little, “The ‘we win, they lose’ mentality is alive and well in Northern Europe’, Responsible Statecraft, March 2024: https://responsiblestatecraft.org/baltics-ukraine-russia-war/ Germany, for its part, has seen its interests materially harmed by the Nord Stream bombing in 2022 that allegedly involved fellow NATO members.39Philip Oltermann, “State actor still main suspect behind Nord Stream sabotage, says investigator”, The Guardian, April 2023: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/06/nord-stream-sabotage-pipeline-blasts

So long as Washington regards U.S. primacy as non-negotiable and the North Atlantic nations continue to valorize Western values and the interests of “humanity” over their national interest, they risk being outcasts in the new global order that is being shaped.

Ultimately, as the unipolar period ends, those best able to adapt to the relative decline and overextension of American power will operate at an advantage. So long as Washington regards U.S. primacy as non-negotiable and the North Atlantic nations continue to valorize Western values and the interests of “humanity” over their national interest, they risk being outcasts in the new global order that is being shaped. The upshot of their almost religious devotion to institutional permanence as an end-in-itself and the constant idolizing of the symbolic relics, norms, and procedures of the postwar order, however, is the further diminution of U.S. power and immiseration of the Western bloc — all to underwrite the perpetual expansion of American globalism’s military poltergeist: the NATO alliance. It is strategic and political malpractice.

Re-Centering the National Interest in a Polycentric World

How could North Atlantic states recover a healthy regard for the national interest to compensate for the prevailing sense of uncertainty and loss of strategic direction that plagues Washington and the European capitals today?

First, it must be acknowledged that the process of financial globalization is of mixed results and the allied push to couple the relative successes of global capitalism with global democracy promotion and political liberalization (through coercive means or covert operations) has proved an outright failure. ‘Convergence theory’, the idea that economic development will inevitably produce democratization, has been revealed as a fairy tale.40Patricia Cohen, “Why It Seems Everything We Knew About The Global Economy Is No Longer True,” The New York Times, June 2023: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/u-s-share-of-global-economy-over-time/

Second, it is an undeniable fact that the share of the North Atlantic in the world’s overall economic and especially manufacturing output is not what it once was.41Govind Bhutata, “Visualizing the Share of the Global Economy Over Time”, Visual Capitalist, January 2021: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/u-s-share-of-global-economy-over-time/ The ‘global West’ is poorer in relative terms. Unipolarity is over. We are, as Arta Moeini observes, in a “great transition” to a new world order.42Arta Moeini, “The Resumption of History and the Coming Post-Modern Order”, AGON, November 2023: https://www.agonmag.com/p/the-resumption-of-history-and-the Here it is vital not to enter new cul de sacs — such as by falsely emphasizing the return of bipolarity and promoting old tropes as a ‘New Cold War’ or ‘Containment 2.0’.43Nicolai Petro and Arta Moeini, “The Folly of a New Containment”, The Institute for Peace & Diplomacy, May 2024: https://peacediplomacy.org/2024/05/09/the-folly-of-a-new-containment/ While China’s rise to the level of a great power peer competitor has been spectacular, we should not downplay the systemic impact of the collective rise of so many others as middle powers. Their combined force and autonomous orientation seem to suggest the birth of what Ambassador Chas Freeman has called a “multi-nodal” system — a more diffused multipolarity with multiple economic centers and regional poles that no single power can dream to dominate.44Chas Freeman, “Surviving the World Order to Come”, July 2024:  https://chasfreeman.net/surviving-the-world-order-to-come/ In such a new environment, the quest for global hegemony is especially ill-advised and could spell the downfall of the great power that attempts it.

Yet that is precisely the course that the U.S.-led bloc, under the guise of NATO, has traversed. In this context, it is urgent, therefore, for Western countries to reprioritize their national interest — evolving their policy frameworks to reflect the necessities of power and focusing on geography, industrial capacity, relative gains, and cost/benefit ratio. From a realist perspective echoed by George Washington, no state can afford to constantly offshore the logistics and supply chain of its defense manufacturing to distant corners of the world away from its heartland and stay strategically competitive.45Arta Moeini and Christopher Mott, “George Washington and the Birth of American Realism”, The Institute for Peace & Diplomacy, March 2024: https://peacediplomacy.org/2024/03/11/george-washington-and-the-birth-of-american-realism/ The overall success of emerging powers highlights how the reshoring and re-regionalization of vital industries can increase both relative power and domestic solidarity.

Ours is not a world of a shining cathedral that must be defended by a gargoyle-like NATO from a sea of heathens wishing to extinguish it in a global theater of conflict. Rather, the world is composed of many different shrines — each soaring onto a distinctive horizon with its own protective genius loci.

Ultimately, security alliances are functional pacts, not sacred cows; they must be viewed as interest-based and temporary rather than values-based and permanent.46Arta Moeini, David Polansky, and Coleman Hopkins,  “Toward a Phenomenology of the U.S. Alliance System: Boon or a Scourge on America’s National Interest?”, The Institute for Peace and Diplomacy, September 2022: https://peacediplomacy.org/2022/09/16/toward-a-phenomenology-of-the-u-s-alliance-system-boon-or-a-scourge-on-americas-national-interest/ The prevalent liberal internationalist presumptions that overlapping defense commitments and expanding America’s security guarantees are always beneficial for both the superpower and the global order it underwrites are thus categorically false. In their stead, Western realists must cultivate a greater understanding of the dangers of over-expansion, overreach, and overseas military production in the mainstream foreign policy discourse. Ours is not a world of a shining cathedral that must be defended by a gargoyle-like NATO from a sea of heathens wishing to extinguish it in a global theater of conflict. Rather, the world is composed of many different shrines — each soaring onto a distinctive horizon with its own protective genius loci that reflect the unique geographical terrain, strategic culture, and geopolitical circumstances of a particular realm and region.

Regionalism and the national interest are not mutually exclusive notions but are rather complementary. From the perspective of the status quo powers in the West, the structural shifts currently underway will empower more revisionist powers hoping to have more of a say in the architecture of the next global order: if Washington seeks to counteract the forces of revisionism arising in various regional theaters, then it makes far more sense to base its alliances on a single, well-defined objective and limit their scope to a specific region, creating new ones if and where it is absolutely needed to balance against new challenges and geopolitical rivals. NATO would hence cease to expand, with its operations limited to a single mission and area of focus: collective defense of current members in Europe from military aggression by extra-regional powers. The idea of NATO enlargement would be permanently shelved — for too broad or too grand an umbrella would risk turning a lynchpin of security into an open-ended force for escalation and conflict.

A fenced-in NATO that is confined to Europe does not preclude the possibility of forming a new U.S.-led alliance in Asia that is tailor-made for a likely great power competition with China. Should one day The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or ‘The Quad’ of the U.S., India, Japan, and Australia, formalize its defense ties, the new organization should endeavor to remain independent of NATO and protect its operational freedom.47Sheila A. Smith, “The Quad in the Indo-Pacific: What to Know”, Council on Foreign Relations, May 2021: https://www.cfr.org/in-brief/quad-indo-pacific-what-know Establishing such a buffer will prevent it from having to subordinate its regional interests and dilute its focus on the Pacific over some crisis in Europe. In the decidedly regionalized world of today, such partitioning or fencing off of America’s alliance network is both necessary and beneficial. It would be just as ridiculous to ask French soldiers to die for Taiwan as it would be for Japanese ones to die for Ukraine. The sectioning of alliances also creates a sort of regional safety valve, preventing one possible escalation from spiraling into a global conflagration. It also provides Washington with various regional platforms offering it more diplomatic and strategic flexibility. 

Washington must work with interested partners in a given region to balance against shared rivals and adversaries, but it should refrain from globalizing any security arrangement to bind the fates of all its allies together in anticipation of a planetary showdown.

Washington must work with interested partners in a given region to balance against shared rivals and adversaries, but it should refrain from globalizing any security arrangement to bind the fates of all its allies together in anticipation of a planetary showdown. The United States must also resist the ideological temptation to divide the world into binary alliance blocs by sounding the sirens of some grand crusade for ‘freedom’, ‘democracy’, or ‘civilization’ that — while ringing increasingly hollow the further away one gets from the actual locus of the conflict — could still plunge the world into war.48Arta Moeini, “America: The Last Ideological Empire”, Compact, July 2022: https://www.compactmag.com/article/america-the-last-ideological-empire/ Instead, America should reconceive and recalibrate its alliances, chief among them NATO, to better match the realities of a multipolar world. Such a task inevitably begins with abandoning a permanent global and totalistic forward posture and prioritizing regional defense and national interest as the cornerstones of U.S. grand strategy.

Author
headshot chris mott
Christopher Mott
Dr. Christopher Mott is a Washington Fellow at the Institute for Peace & Diplomacy and a former researcher and desk officer at the U.S. Department of State.
Panel 4: Pathways to Manage Non-Proliferation in the Middle East (4:30 PM - 5:45 PM ET)

The Western powers have failed to effectively manage the increasing threat of proliferation in the Middle East. While the international community is concerned with Iran’s nuclear program, Saudi Arabia has moved forward with developing its own nuclear program, and independent studies show that Israel has longed possessed dozens of nuclear warheads. The former is a member of the treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), while the latter has refused to sign the international agreement. 

On Middle East policy, the Biden campaign had staunchly criticized the Trump administration’s unilateral withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), more commonly known as the Iran Nuclear Deal and it has begun re-engaging Iran on the nuclear dossier since assuming office in January 2021. However, serious obstacles remain for responsible actors in expanding non-proliferation efforts toward a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East. 

This panel will discuss how Western powers and multilateral institutions, such as the IAEA, can play a more effective role in managing non-proliferation efforts in the Middle East.  

Panelists:

Peggy Mason: Canada’s former Ambassador to the UN for Disarmament

Mark Fitzpatrick: Associate Fellow & Former Executive Director, International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS)

Ali Vaez: Iran Project Director, International Crisis Group

Negar Mortazavi: Journalist and Political Analyst, Host of Iran Podcast

David Albright: Founder and President of the Institute for Science and International Security

 

Closing (5:45 PM – 6:00 PM ET)

Panel 3: Trade and Business Diplomacy in the Middle East (3:00 PM - 4:15 PM ET)

What is the current economic landscape in the Middle East? While global foreign direct investment is expected to fall drastically in the post-COVID era, the World Bank reported a 5% contraction in the economic output of the Middle East and North African (MENA) countries in 2020 due to the pandemic. While oil prices are expected to rebound with normalization in demand, political instability, regional and geopolitical tensions, domestic corruption, and a volatile regulatory and legal environment all threaten economic recovery in the Middle East. What is the prospect for economic growth and development in the region post-pandemic, and how could MENA nations promote sustainable growth and regional trade moving forward?

At the same time, Middle Eastern diaspora communities have become financially successful and can help promote trade between North America and the region. In this respect, the diaspora can become vital intermediaries for advancing U.S. and Canada’s business interests abroad. Promoting business diplomacy can both benefit the MENA region and be an effective and positive way to advance engagement and achieve foreign policy goals of the North Atlantic.

This panel will investigate the trade and investment opportunities in the Middle East, discuss how facilitating economic engagement with the region can benefit Canadian and American national interests, and explore relevant policy prescriptions.

Panelists:

Hon. Sergio Marchi: Canada’s Former Minister of International Trade

Scott Jolliffe: Chairperson, Canada Arab Business Council

Esfandyar Batmanghelidj: Founder and Publisher of Bourse & Bazaar

Nizar Ghanem: Director of Research and Co-founder at Triangle

Nicki Siamaki: Researcher at Control Risks

Panel 2: Arms Race and Terrorism in the Middle East (12:00 PM - 1:15 PM ET)

The Middle East continues to grapple with violence and instability, particularly in Yemen, Syria and Iraq. Fueled by government incompetence and foreign interventions, terrorist insurgencies have imposed severe humanitarian and economic costs on the region. Meanwhile, regional actors have engaged in an unprecedented pursuit of arms accumulation. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have imported billions of both Western and Russian-made weapons and funded militant groups across the region, intending to contain their regional adversaries, particularly Iran. Tehran has also provided sophisticated weaponry to various militia groups across the region to strengthen its geopolitical position against Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Israel. 

On the other hand, with international terrorist networks and intense regional rivalry in the Middle East, it is impractical to discuss peace and security without addressing terrorism and the arms race in the region. This panel will primarily discuss the implications of the ongoing arms race in the region and the role of Western powers and multilateral organizations in facilitating trust-building security arrangements among regional stakeholders to limit the proliferation of arms across the Middle East.

 

Panelists:

Luciano Zaccara: Assistant Professor, Qatar University

Dania Thafer: Executive Director, Gulf International Forum

Kayhan Barzegar: Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the Science and Research Branch of Azad University

Barbara Slavin: Director of Iran Initiative, Atlantic Council

Sanam Shantyaei: Senior Journalist at France24 & host of Middle East Matters

Panel 1: Future of Diplomacy and Engagement in the Middle East (10:30 AM-11:45 AM ET)

The emerging regional order in West Asia will have wide-ranging implications for global security. The Biden administration has begun re-engaging Iran on the nuclear dossier, an initiative staunchly opposed by Israel, while also taking a harder line on Saudi Arabia’s intervention in Yemen. Meanwhile, key regional actors, including Qatar, Iraq, and Oman, have engaged in backchannel efforts to bring Iran and Saudi Arabia to the negotiating table. From a broader geopolitical perspective, with the need to secure its energy imports, China is also expected to increase its footprint in the region and influence the mentioned challenges. 

In this evolving landscape, Western powers will be compelled to redefine their strategic priorities and adjust their policies with the new realities in the region. In this panel, we will discuss how the West, including the United States and its allies, can utilize multilateral diplomacy with its adversaries to prevent military escalation in the region. Most importantly, the panel will discuss if a multilateral security dialogue in the Persian Gulf region, proposed by some regional actors, can help reduce tensions among regional foes and produce sustainable peace and development for the region. 

Panelists:

Abdullah Baabood: Academic Researcher and Former Director of the Centre for Gulf Studies, Qatar University

Trita Parsi: Executive Vice-President, Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft

Ebtesam Al-Ketbi: President, Emirates Policy Centre​

Jon Allen: Canada’s Former Ambassador to Israel

Elizabeth Hagedorn: Washington correspondent for Al-Monitor

Panel 4: Humanitarian Diplomacy: An Underused Foreign Policy Tool in the Middle East (4:30 PM - 5:30 PM ET)

Military interventions, political and economic instabilities, and civil unrest in the Middle East have led to a global refugee crisis with an increasing wave of refugees and asylum seekers to Europe and Canada. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic has, in myriad ways, exacerbated and contributed to the ongoing security threats and destabilization of the region.

While these challenges pose serious risks to Canadian security, Ottawa will also have the opportunity to limit such risks and prevent a spillover effect vis-à-vis effective humanitarian initiatives in the region. In this panel, we will primarily investigate Canada’s Middle East Strategy’s degree of success in providing humanitarian aid to the region. Secondly, the panel will discuss what programs and initiatives Canada can introduce to further build on the renewed strategy. and more specifically, how Canada can utilize its policy instruments to more effectively deal with the increasing influx of refugees from the Middle East. 

 

Panelists:

Erica Di Ruggiero: Director of Centre for Global Health, University of Toronto

Reyhana Patel: Head of Communications & Government Relations, Islamic Relief Canada

Amir Barmaki: Former Head of UN OCHA in Iran

Catherine Gribbin: Senior Legal Advisor for International and Humanitarian Law, Canadian Red Cross

Panel 3: A Review of Canada’s Middle East Engagement and Defense Strategy (3:00 PM - 4:15 PM ET)

In 2016, Canada launched an ambitious five-year “Middle East Engagement Strategy” (2016-2021), committing to investing CA$3.5 billion over five years to help establish the necessary conditions for security and stability, alleviate human suffering and enable stabilization programs in the region. In the latest development, during the meeting of the Global Coalition against ISIS, Minister of Foreign Affairs Marc Garneau announced more than $43.6 million in Peace and Stabilization Operations Program funding for 11 projects in Syria and Iraq.

With Canada’s Middle East Engagement Strategy expiring this year, it is time to examine and evaluate this massive investment in the Middle East region in the past five years. More importantly, the panel will discuss a principled and strategic roadmap for the future of Canada’s short-term and long-term engagement in the Middle East.

Panelists:

Ferry de Kerckhove: Canada’s Former Ambassador to Egypt

Dennis Horak: Canada’s Former Ambassador to Saudi Arabia

Chris Kilford: Former Canadian Defence Attaché in Turkey, member of the national board of the Canadian International Council (CIC)

David Dewitt: University Professor Emeritus, York University

Panel 2: The Great Power Competition in the Middle East (12:00 PM - 1:15 PM ET)

While the United States continues to pull back from certain regional conflicts, reflected by the Biden administration’s decision to halt American backing for Saudi Arabia’s intervention in Yemen and the expected withdrawal from Afghanistan, US troops continue to be stationed across the region. Meanwhile, Russia and China have significantly maintained and even expanded their regional activities. On one hand, the Kremlin has maintained its military presence in Syria, and on the other hand, China has signed an unprecedented 25-year strategic agreement with Iran.

As the global power structure continues to shift, it is essential to analyze the future of the US regional presence under the Biden administration, explore the emerging global rivalry with Russia and China, and at last, investigate the implications of such competition for peace and security in the Middle East.

Panelists:

Dmitri Trenin: Director of Carnegie Moscow Center

Joost R. Hiltermann: Director of MENA Programme, International Crisis Group

Roxane Farmanfarmaian: Affiliated Lecturer in International Relations of the Middle East and North Africa, University of Cambridge

Andrew A. Michta: Dean of the College of International and Security Studies at Marshall Center

Kelley Vlahos: Senior Advisor, Quincy Institute

Panel 1: A New Middle East Security Architecture in the Making (10:30 AM -11:45 AM ET)

The security architecture of the Middle East has undergone rapid transformations in an exceptionally short period. Notable developments include the United States gradual withdrawal from the region, rapprochement between Israel and some GCC states through the Abraham Accords and the rise of Chinese and Russian regional engagement.

With these new trends in the Middle East, it is timely to investigate the security implications of the Biden administration’s Middle East policy. In this respect, we will discuss the Biden team’s new approach vis-à-vis Iran, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and Israel. The panel will also discuss the role of other major powers, including China and Russia in shaping this new security environment in the region, and how the Biden administration will respond to these powers’ increasing regional presence.

 

Panelists:

Sanam Vakil: Deputy Director of MENA Programme at Chatham House

Denise Natali: Acting Director, Institute for National Strategic Studies & Director of the Center for Strategic Research, National Defense University

Hassan Ahmadian: Professor of the Middle East and North Africa Studies, University of Tehran

Abdulaziz Sagar: Chairman, Gulf Research Center

Andrew Parasiliti: President, Al-Monitor