Trump hat in Brüssel die niedrigen Rüstungsausgaben der Nato-Partner angeprangert. Angesichts seiner Annäherung an Russland fehlt dem Vorwurf die politische Logik. Dazu kommt: Höhere nationale Rüstungsbudgets lösen nicht das Hauptproblem, dass in Europa alle Armeen das Gleiche tun. Sie unterhalten alle ihre Panzer, Flugzeuge und Geschütze. Die militärische Arbeitsteilung ist trotz Nato und EU minimal. Das nationalstaatliche Denken beim Militär erhöht die Kosten und senkt die Effizienz.It's unlikely that Russia, which is relatively weak in conventional military power, has any real intention of annexing former Soviet Republics like Ukraine, Georgia, Belarus, or the Baltic states Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. But they actually did annex the Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. This kind of violation of legal national borders is a violation of international law. And the NATO countries have to take that seriously.
Kein europäischer Nationalstaat könnte gegenwärtig im Ernstfall ohne US-Hilfe bestehen.
Politische Freiheiten, Gewaltenteilung und Pressefreiheit, für die der Westen steht, sind es wert, verteidigt zu werden.
Gefährdet werden sie von den eigenen autoritären Nationalisten, von Donald Trumps Amerika und den von Washington gesponnenen merkwürdigen Allianzen.
[Trump in Brussels demounced the low armaments expenditures of the NATO partners. In light of his rapprochement with Russia, the accusation lacks political logic. On that matter: Higher national defense budgets will not solve the main problem, which is that in Europe all the armies do the same thing. They all maintain their tanks, planes, and guns. But the military division of labor is minimal, despite NATO and the EU. The national-state thinking in military affairs increases the costs and reduces the efficiency.
No European national state could presently last in case of emergency without US help.
Political liberties, separation of powers, and freedom of the press, for which the West stands, are worth defending.
They are being endagered by our own authoritarian nationalists, by Donald Trump's America and by the strange alliances that Washington has knitted together.]
Then German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer gave what is one of the the best descriptions I've ever heard of the danger of belligerent nationalism when he was arguing for the NATO intervention in Kosovo. I supported that intervention at the time but the postwar view of the results made me highly dubious of its necessity or desirability, as I explained in James Galbraith on lessons of the Kosovo War 05/13/2004. And my view since then has only gotten more critical. But what Fischer said then is still worth noting:
Fischer made these comments on the PBS Newshour of 05/25/99 (the given link is now dead):
If you were to ask me a half year ago whether we [the governing coalition in Germany] would politically survive a bombing campaign of 60 days, I would say "never." We are now very united not only in Germany, but also in the alliance. I think this is a very positive result. On the other side, I mentioned it before, you must understand that in Germany, there is a trauma of the two world wars and especially in the older generation. Germany, for example, accepted much more refugees than all other countries. Why? Because many of us, my family is for 200 years lived in Budapest. We are ethnic Germans from Budapest. After-- in 1946, we were sent back like hundreds of thousands of other Germans to Germany after 200 years. So the experience to be displaced persons or refugees is very substantial in our people. So I mention that, that I think tradition and historical experiences, historical fears are very important. ...That applies to the Russian annexation of Crimea, as well.
I was a peace activist against colonial wars. But this is not a colonial war I think. This is an aggressive confrontation against aggressive nationalism. In the 30's, Milosevic would fit -- would have fitted wonderful in the political landscape of a fascist Europe and fascist means not only the extreme -- most extreme form of fascism of the Nazis. Mussolini, Franco and all the others. It's an aggressive nationalism and is believing in the right of its own people to attack, to fight for territory for whatever and to suppress others, the Balkans is full of this heritage. They all have their maps in their pockets. And these maps mean bloodshed and means real disaster. And Milosevic is acting in that way. And we cannot accept it. This would mean that Europe, the principals of Europe, of unification would be, I think, attacked and if Milosevic will win, others will follow in the Balkans and then we will have a real security problem. Therefore, he must be stopped. [my emphasis]
Democrats at the moment don't like to hear it, but NATO's action in Kosovo, including recognizing Kosovo as an independent country, was one factor shaping Russian policy in Crimea. That does not justify it. And the referendum conducted there also does not justify annexing part of another country without that's country's agreement. Americans even half-familiar with the history of our own Civil War shouldn't need a lot of explanation about the problem with that idea. It's also a ploy that Britain has used and still uses today to justify holding illegal colonial possessions, including the Malvinas/Falkland Islands (Argentina) and Gibralter (Spain).
The smaller portions of territory in Ukraine and Georgia that Russia also de facto controls are practical measures from a Russian point of view to prevent the incorporation of either country into NATO. But those are also a problem, based as they are in part on the presence of ethnic/linguistic Russian populations in those areas. As Fischer said in 1999, "They all have their maps in their pockets. And these maps mean bloodshed and means real disaster." It's not only in the Balkans where that is so.
But Russia is the single biggest military security worry for NATO countries. And especially for Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, which were part of the former Soviet Union like Georgia and Ukraine and therefore viewed by Putin's government as a legitimate Russian sphere of influence. As a practiacl matter, every step of the post-1990 NATO expansion was dubious and risky, each one more than the others. But with the Baltic countries, NATO accepted countries that were atually part of the old Soviet Union. And did so apparently thinking that it was not such a big deal at all.
But it is. Even if it was a bad idea to incorporate them into NATO, there are NATO allies now. And if the Russians were to take part of their territory and NATO does not respond militarily to push them out, that would call into question that value of the NATO alliance, to put it mildly. As Löw puts it, Trump's approach already means, "Europa ist dabei, seinen weltpolitischen Anker zu verlieren. Der amerikanische Schutzschild über der Nato, inklusive der ehemaligen Sowjetrepubliken im Baltikum, gilt nur mehr halb." ("Europe is already on the point of losing its world-political anchor. The American protective shield over NATO, including the former Soviet republics in the Baltics, now only half applies.")
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