NATO, instrument of control of the European rimland and its military industries

NATO, instrument of control of the European rimland and its military industries

Robert Steuckers

It is well known, but it cannot be repeated often enough, that the general strategy of the United States, a major power with the added advantage of being "bi-oceanic", both Atlantic and Pacific, is to control the European and Asian coasts that face it, so that no power emerges there that could overtake Washington. We also know, although we quickly forget it as soon as we stop reading or leave the occasional seminar, that the geopolitics of the Anglo-Saxon thalassocracies is based on the work of Halford John Mackinder, Homer Lea and Nicholas Spykman. While Mackinder was concerned about the inaccessibility of the Russian Heartland and the effectiveness of the means of communication it organised on its territory (in this case, the Transiberian), Spykman modified his approach somewhat, following the military and strategic results achieved with the Heartland, which had been identified as the main enemy in the decade immediately preceding the First World War. For Spykman, the key to American power was control of the rimlands, i.e. the European and Asian coasts bordering the Sino-Soviet bloc, between 1948 (the year of the Prague coup) and 1972 (the year in which the tacit alliance between Beijing and Washington was forged following Kissinger's diplomatic negotiations). 

NATO, the Baghdad Pact or CENTO (Iraq, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, United Kingdom - the United States joined later) and OASE (Pakistan, South-East Asian countries, Australia, New Zealand, France) were created after the Second World War, as part of the new confrontation that was the Cold War, and are therefore instruments (rather than alliances between equal partners) used to consolidate and perpetuate Spykman's geopolitics, which advocates holding the "rimlands" at all costs by stemming any real or presumed advance of the Heartland towards the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans. There was also talk of American "pactomania", or the creation of motley alliances to contain Russia and China. The Baghdad Pact broke up when the Iraqi Baathists took power in 1959. OASEO was dissolved in 1977, following a number of defections, including that of Laos, which had become neutral, Pakistan, which had not felt supported in its wars against India, and Gaullist France, which intended to follow an original path. Finally, the American withdrawal from Vietnam demonstrated the fragility of this construction. 

Of all the instruments designed to control the European and Asian "rimlands", only NATO has survived, proving by its survival that the only things that matter are controlling Europe, a potential competitor, and containing Russia. That the only policy truly desired and implemented by the United States is the debasement of Europe, is to prevent any German-Russian cooperation: the front which today, as these lines are being written, extends from the Arctic, via the Baltic and the Black Sea, to the Eastern Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf clearly proves this. The aim is to block land communications between a Europe whose geographical centre is Germany and whose most densely industrial workshop is also this country with, in addition, the "Carolingian banana" and its extension into the Po plain. We now have a blockage in the sabotaged gas pipelines in the Baltic, and a blockage in the Don and Volga basins (linked by the Lenin Canal). The project to create an International North-South Economic Corridor (INSTC) between Bombay and the Arctic is being held up.

The project, suggested by the Americans themselves, to create a dynamic around an axis of communications running from India to the Emirates and Saudi Arabia, then to Jordan and Israel, to reach the European ports of Greece and Italy, has been cancelled by the conflict between Hamas and the Hebrew State, which certainly did not break out by chance, at this precise moment, without the tacit, secret approval, or even a "false flag" intervention, of Washington. Before 7 October 2023, Hamas was not renowned for training paragliding virtuosos. Europe's energy supply is blocked in the Baltic Sea, will soon be blocked in Ukraine (whose gas pipelines will no longer supply anything to Hungary, Austria or Slovakia in the coming months), will probably be blocked in Turkey and is now blocked by the impossibility of developing gas fields in the Levant, given the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, the repercussions of which will be palpable in the long, even very long, term.

By its very nature as an American instrument, NATO is the worst nuisance for Europe.
NATO does not allow for any form of national independence: if some people in France understood this as early as the 1960s, others in Europe were also aware of it, both in the ideological-political fringes and in the ministries. Neutralist threads ran through political theatres all over Europe, often subservient to or guided by left-wing forces that were viewed favourably in the Soviet Union. But even at the most tense moments of the Cold War, a neutral space existed between the two blocs, more precisely between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, with Finland, Sweden, Switzerland, Austria and Yugoslavia, not forgetting Ireland in the far west of the continent, freed from the British yoke after a very long cultural, political and revolutionary struggle. After the disappearance of the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall, and even from the first signs of the thaw or the proclamation of what was called "peaceful coexistence", this area should have been enlarged. This was not done. Because we didn't have the right political staff. Because these incompetent politicians co-opted more incompetent people or accepted the presence of Trojan horses in the centres of power, in particular the Young Global Leaders. We are all paying the consequences today, and the century ahead will bring even greater hardship to the peoples of Europe. 

Si vis pacem, para bellum. If you want peace, prepare for war. This Roman adage, which also applies to all Clausewitzian states, implies mobilising national intelligence, the engineers of the indigenous people, in the development of effective and dissuasive weapons. This Clausewitzian nature and this spirit of mobilisation dictated by the spirit of survival and (historical) continuity have been definitively lost by the peoples of Europe over time, since the years of the Marshall Plan, which was supposed to put Europe back on its feet after the Second World War. American control of "Rimland" also, and above all, meant controlling its military supplies and arms industries. This was done from the outset: the French armies absorbed surplus American weapons, and the Belgians were entitled to surplus British weapons, including rotten Spitfires. NATO's primary purpose is therefore to sell American military equipment, often old and sometimes new, to member countries, especially aircraft.

This was emblematic of the famous "deal of the century" of 1975. Against all technical considerations, the Americans succeeded in imposing the YF-16 on the Belgian, Dutch, Danish and Norwegian air forces, to the detriment of the French Mirage F-1 and Swedish Saab Viggen aircraft. The same scenario was repeated in 2018, when Charles Michel's government opted in Belgium for the American F-35, considered to be unreliable and difficult to modernise, against the French Rafale and the Eurofighter Typhoon. These two masterstrokes in the elimination of more worthy European competitors were widely publicised, especially in the 1970s. However, other operations of the same type have been far more beneficial to the Americans, while being passed over in silence by the media. In May 2003, the little magazine I edited with Robert Keil, Au fil de l'épée/Arcana Imperii, published a series of articles translated from the Berlin weekly Junge Freiheit on the American takeover of the major European military industry consortiums. 

In this dossier, which should be reread, the German journalist Alexander Griesbach dealt with the Carlyle Group, founded in 1987 by David Rubinstein as a subsidiary of United Defence, with enormous capital at its disposal, aiming to "make war a permanent engine of economic growth". The group was later led by Frank Carlucci, former defence secretary under Reagan, friend of the warmonger Donald Rumsfeld and James Baker, Bush's foreign secretary. Among Carlyle's most eminent advisers were John Major, former British Prime Minister and Bush-father himself. The neo-conservative, warmongering lobby uses Carlyle as its commercial tool. And Carlyle's promoters find it a not inconsiderable source of plentiful income. Between 1990 and 2000, when the neoconservative/neoliberal war cycle began (and never stopped), Carlyle's dividends averaged 34% a year. Bringing about the "end of history", perpetuating American unipolarity in the words of Francis Fukuyama, pays off handsomely. 

But how do you eliminate potential competitors from the Old Continent? By absorbing them. The first takeover took place in Italy. It involved Fiat Avio, Fiat's aircraft production division. The American offer was tempting and enabled Fiat to consolidate its car division, which was struggling a little. A simple business deal? No. The military reasons were obvious: Fiat Avio produced important components for the Eurofighter and the Airbus A400 transport aircraft, not to mention rocket thrusters for the ESA's Ariane programme. Second takeover planned: MTU Aero Engines of Munich in Bavaria. This German company also supplies components for the Eurofighter and the Airbus A400. In the same issue of Au fil de l'épée, German General Franz Ferdinand Lanz, former head of the Bundeswehr's Armaments and Technology Department, deplores, in a very revealing interview, many other purchases that are leading to the Americanisation of European armaments companies and, consequently, to Europe's being sidelined in military terms: United Defence has bought Bofors, the Swedish weapons systems company; 'Bank One' is taking over the German submarine manufacturer HDW; General Dynamics is taking over Santa Barbara Blindados, an old Spanish state-owned company producing, among other things, the German Leopard 2-E tanks. The components of this armoured vehicle will then be included in the American M-1 Abrams tank. General Lanz put it bluntly: "Any army dependent on a foreign military industry is a second-class army". 

Since the early years of the 21st century, Europe's military industry has come under American control, including in Sweden, a neutral country that had not yet joined NATO. It is therefore easy to understand that the Ukrainian affair, in which Europeans were invited to donate their equipment to Zelensky's army, will later contribute to fattening up American companies themselves and European companies controlled by American investment funds such as the Carlyle Group, run by the most emblematic figures of neoconservative warmongering. The European states will have to re-equip themselves, which will benefit the arms producers... who are no longer European, or are only European in appearance. The Polish state prefers American and South Korean equipment (K-1 tanks, a copy of the American Abrams from Genral Dynamics!), while at the same time forging close relations with the United Kingdom, which is no longer in the EU, within the framework of a "Partnership 2030", in which Poland becomes the "continental sword" of the British and Americans on the European continent, facing Belarus and Russia. This new position means, of course, that Polish divisions have to be over-armed. At the same time, the old idea of the Intermarium, dear to General Pilsudsky before 1939, was revived to become NATO's front line, encompassing the whole of Ukraine. Biden's trip to Warsaw in February 2023 confirms Poland's role and the new Atlanticist enthusiasm for the Intermarium. 

On the Asian flank of the new great war against Russian and Chinese illiberalism, the Americans are trying to reactivate OASE, defunct since 1977, by launching AUKUS, an alliance between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, three components of the "Five Eyes". France was the butt of the joke, despite its return to the NATO fold thanks to Sarkozy: Australia had planned to buy eight nuclear-powered submarines for a total of 56 billion dollars. At the last minute, the order was cancelled. France lost the contract. Italy, through its naval firm Fincantieri, was due to sell Australia nine ultra-high-performance frigates, with no other equivalent on the world market. The order has also been cancelled in favour of a British firm. Europe, including the powers that have been members of NATO since it was founded, is deliberately excluded from the Pacific. As in Orwell's fable, all animals - sorry, allies - are equal, but some are more equal than others.

In the Eastern Mediterranean, France had managed to sell Rafales to Egypt, which welcomed its first deliveries, then suddenly came an American veto, based, once again, on legal arguments, on the pretext that a microchip in the Rafale did not comply with the ITAR (International Traffic Arms Regulations) standard. Dassault was dealt another slap in the face after the YF-16 and F-35 cases.

We could extend this article indefinitely, and go into the financial and technical details of each of these cases, but that's not the point. The lesson to be learned from this situation, and from the repeated low blows the Americans have dealt Europe, is that Europe is Washington's main enemy on the world stage, not Russia, China, Iran or Venezuela. To eliminate this major enemy, which is officially considered to be an "ally", we need to cut off its lines of communication, enclose it as it was before 1492, when it was besieged by the Ottomans and had no knowledge of the New World, cut off its sources of energy, create areas of turbulence on its borders in Libya, the Donbass and the eastern Mediterranean, make its societies composite and therefore unmanageable by importing populations alien to its humus, and control its arms industries. Above all, we need to impose impolitical creatures trained (or rather deformed) in institutes across the Atlantic, Young Global Leaders as in Spain, France, Italy, Finland and elsewhere, so that they pursue policies diametrically opposed to the interests of their nations. And so condemn them to political death, stagnation and implosion. 

Signed in Forest-Flotzenberg, November 2023.