BY ARGIRIS MALAPANIS
The government of Canada has taken new steps toward
confrontation with Washington over military policy in NATO.
These follow the accord between the British and French
governments to give the European Union (EU) a role in military
affairs in Europe and beyond, which was announced on December
1. That agreement heightened tensions between the imperialist
regimes on the two sides of the Atlantic that belong to the
reactionary military alliance.
The dispute among imperialist powers over military policy has now expanded within North America itself.
"The Canadian Parliament has taken another step toward confrontation with the United States over inclusion of nuclear weapons in NATO arsenals," said an article in the December 11 Washington Post. "After a two-year study and a divisive internal debate, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Commons has released a report accusing the United States and other nuclear powers of clinging to a Cold War mentality in their defense doctrines."
The report called on NATO to renounce the first use of nuclear weapons and to detach nuclear warheads from the missiles and bombs on which they are deployed. The document, released December 10, augmented calls on Washington and other major capitalist powers by Canadian foreign minister Lloyd Axworthy to reduce their nuclear arsenals.
Similar proposals were earlier floated by the government of Germany, whose representatives repeated them at the meeting of foreign ministers of NATO member countries in Brussels December 11. But the three powers in NATO with massive nuclear arsenals - Washington, London, and Paris -have categorically rejected such demands. Unlike these governments, Bonn and Ottawa are not nuclear powers.
"The committee report criticizes the United States for talking out of both sides of its mouth on the question of nuclear nonproliferation," the Post article said, referring to the Canadian parliament document, "urging countries such as India and Pakistan to renounce nuclear weapons, while keeping them at the ready for its own use."
This course by the Canadian government has provoked sour retorts by the White House. The Post article concluded with the following paragraph: "`Minister Axworthy is pursuing a course that could lead to a growing and dangerous rift within the alliance,' a U.S. official said."
Shift of alliances sharpens rift
Tensions within NATO have also grown between Washington and
its imperialist allies in Europe.
This was reflected in the accord between London and Paris pledging the support of both governments - the main powers in western Europe capable of quickly deploying sizable combat forces abroad - to giving the European Union a military role for the first time. This signifies a weakening of the "special relationship" of military and economic cooperation between Washington and London that has been in place for half a century. It also registers a step forward for the French rulers, who have had the sharpest conflicts on military tactics and other policies with their U.S. counterparts.
Washington tried to put a positive spin on the development. But U.S. government officials could not hide their concern that the deal may weaken the domination of NATO in Europe, undercutting the hegemony of the U.S. government as the number one military and economic power in Europe.
"As Europeans look at the best way to organise their foreign and security policy co-operation, the key is to make sure that any institutional change is consistent with basic principles that have served the alliance well over 50 years," wrote U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright in an article in the December 7 Financial Times of London.
The first of these principles, Albright stated, is "to avoid decoupling: NATO is the expression of the indispensable trans- Atlantic link. It should remain an organization of sovereign allies, where European decision making is not unhooked from broader alliance decision-making."
A number of bourgeois politicians and pundits pointed to the growing conflict these statements registered.
"Albright's article in the Dec. 7 Financial Times was clearly propelled by the historic British-French decision that the European Union must have its own defense role," wrote ultrarightist politician Patrick Buchanan in a syndicated column published December 12. "Prime Minister Tony Blair is taking Britain deeper into Europe and away from the United States."
With the disintegration of the Soviet Union nothing can hold the Atlantic military alliance together, Buchanan said. "The EU is creating a single-currency zone larger than the United States as a rival. It is consolidating defense industries to cut dependence on U.S. weapons. It disagrees with U.S. Mideast policy, rejects our policy in the Gulf and ignores our sanctions on Cuba, Iran and Iraq."
At the Brussels meeting, Albright pushed the latest White House proposals to maintain NATO's dominance. These include making formal the jurisdiction of the U.S.-run alliance to intervene beyond the borders of its member states and deployment of military forces without seeking authorization of the United Nations Security Council - as has been the case in Yugoslavia.
"We must be prepared because we know that events beyond NATO's immediate borders can affect vital alliance interests," Albright said.
These proposals were not welcomed by many of Washington's imperialist allies in the EU. French foreign minister Hubert Védrine said December 8 that by implementing this course "we would run the risk of diluting the alliance and dividing the allies, which, of course, should not happen."
"Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer of Germany said it would be a mistake to make a rule out of the exception that the allies made this fall in Kosovo," said an article in the December 9 New York Times. "NATO threatened bombing to halt government attacks against ethnic Albanian civilians in the Kosovo province of Serbia, even though the United Nations Security Council had not explicitly authorized military action."
The conflict over how to carry out imperialist intervention in Yugoslavia has been at the center of tensions within NATO. It was on the blood of the people of Yugoslavia that the U.S. government established itself as the major "European" power. As the rival capitalist classes in Europe wore themselves out in futile attempts to displace one another as the winner in the new Balkan wars, Washington unfurled its NATO banner in 1994 and decisively moved in. The U.S. rulers' aim has been to establish U.S. supremacy in Europe and create the conditions that one day will facilitate the restoration of capitalist social relations throughout the Yugoslav workers state.
Parallel to this "success" in displacing its imperialist competitors in Yugoslavia, was Washington's push to expand NATO into eastern and central Europe bringing U.S. troops closer to Russia's borders. During a NATO summit meeting scheduled for April in Washington, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the military alliance, Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic are supposed to be taken into NATO membership.
At the same time, U.S. army officers are being used in 13 countries in Central and Eastern Europe to "train" military officers of those regimes. This is part of building a military ring around the former Soviet Union, in anticipation of future confrontations with working people in Russia in order to reestablish the domination of capitalism there.
The policies Albright announced in Brussels are supposed to be ratified at the April NATO meeting. The prospects for that gathering are not so rosy for Washington's goals, however.
"NATO's mid-life crisis," is the front-cover story of the December 12 Economist. "Just as it was preparing to hang out the bunting for its 50th birthday next April, the world's strongest military alliance has teetered on the brink of real trouble," said the magazine's lead editorial. "In backroom discussions, NATO diplomats found they could not agree on what the alliance is for, what weapons it would threaten of us and in what circumstances. In the absence of the Soviet threat that once glued NATO and its 16 members together, such disagreements have an ominous feel about them; however effective it has been in the past, nothing guarantees that this partnership will last for ever."
Disagreements are also mounting over Washington's policy of attempting to overthrow the regime of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. On December 14, UN secretary general Kofi Annan said the Clinton administration's calls for toppling the government in Baghdad fall outside approved UN resolutions. Annan indicated that other powers in the UN Security Council are not backing U.S. government policy either.
Behind the brewing conflict within NATO is intensifying interimperialist competition over markets, trade, and who will superexpoit the oppressed nations of the world.
Conflicts between themselves notwithstanding, the capitalist powers in the European Union are about to launch a common currency, the "euro," in order to better compete as a block against their chief rival in Washington. The December 16 Financial Times reported that many leading financial companies are predicting the euro will be a stronger currency than either the dollar or the Japanese yen; that Nippon Life of Japan, the world's largest life insurance company, is considering shifting much of its overseas assets from dollars to euros; and the British government is publicly considering moves to join in the euro in as little as eight months.
The increased competition has also been registered in recent conflicts over agricultural trade, like banana exports, and sales of commercial aircraft, where the French-based Airbus appears to be gaining an edge in its competition with the U.S. giant Boeing.
Recently, a number of companies in Europe building weapons and combat aircraft are pushing the creation of an EU-wide conglomerate in the war materiels industry. U.S. government officials are not too happy with this prospect, which is far from being materialized. "I do not like a world in which you have three large United States integrated contractors - Boeing, Raytheon and Lockheed - and one in Europe," said John Deutch, a former U.S. undersecretary of defense. This situation would "essentially not be competitive."
These trade conflicts could develop into shooting wars. And all the imperialist powers, with Washington at the helm, are getting ready for that eventuality, which includes not only military assaults against semicolonial countries like Iraq but the possibility of fighting between the imperialist powers themselves down the road.
This year the Pentagon has asked for the largest increase in military spending since 1984, during Ronald Reagan's first administration. Secretary of Defense William Cohen is seeking a 4 percent increase in the Pentagon's $258 billion budget for next year, or at least $10 billion, and a $112 billion increase in the next six years.