Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

Not yet. However reform is long overdue. At the end of the cold war I declared that with the disbanding of the Warsaw Pact, NATO too should stand down, since the threat which it was designed to deter had gone away. The problem with military alliances is that if they are not needed to counter a threat, they can easily create one, because their very existence is threatening to those outside it.

As long ago as 2009 I wrote and published that if NATO was to remain, especially if it was to expand east into the old Warsaw Pact territories, Russia should become a member, as it was a European power. Future threats to Europe would come from outside Europe not within. This did not happen and Russia found not only that it was excluded, but that everyone else, right up to its border, was to be included. Alarm bells rang in Moscow. Recalling invasions from the West by Napoleon, the Kaiser and Hitler, Russia set about modernizing its military. We know the rest.

Meanwhile NATO, although it had the wits to refuse to join in the invasion of Iraq in 1991, engaged itself in the Balkans and Afghanistan then blundered into Libya. The Balkans were stabilized, Afghanistan is a mess, Libya is a chaotic mess, Al Qaeda has morphed into IS and, as part of the chain reaction, Syria has been all but destroyed in a terrible civil war.  The same fate now seems to be engulfing Yemen. Clearly reform, realignment and remodeling across the whole international scene is a matter of priority. Whilst NATO sees itself as part of the solution, it is also part of the problem. The wind of change must blow though its corridors also. It very likely will, because President Elect Trump has expressed sentiments very similar to those set out above.  The terms will be simple. If NATO wants his money it will have to do his bidding.

There are reports that Donald Trump’s transition process is proving bumpy. This is not surprising. Like Brexit, few believed even in his own team that he could actually win and preparations for such a dramatic outcome were limited. But the biggest problem Trump will be battling just now is that he is his own man, the presidency was his project and during the journey he was abandoned by his party, for whom in the end he not only delivered the White House, but also both Houses of Congress.

Quickly Republicans of every stripe rush to his side. Obama sets off overseas to assure nervous Europeans that Donald is a good guy with their interests at heart. The idea, of course, is to tame the outsider, so that the firebrand of the campaign trail becomes the pussy cat in the Oval Office.

Well dream on. Donald Trump is his own man and will be his own president. He owes nothing to nobody, but such as Republicans have, they owe in large part to him. Expect a lot more firings yet. This will be Donald Trump’s White House and nobody else’s. There will be a few kind words and a little reaching out, but nothing to compare to the reaching, of the  Republican establishment, for a slice of humble pie.