Pax NATOcana? Mark Rutte’s laughable fantasy

Mark Rutte, NATO Secretary General, recently threatened India and few other countries with secondary sanctions for continued trade with Russia.

Phrases like pax NATOcana or pax Atlantica do not exist in the international relations vocabulary, and sound playful and mischievous when juxtaposed with established phrases like pax Britannica (Latin phrase for British peace), pax Americana, or emerging ones like pax Sinica or pax Indica. Nevertheless, Mark Rutte, NATO Secretary General, recently threatened India and few other countries with secondary sanctions for continued trade with Russia.

NATO is a collective security body. However, when even pax Americana is not enforceable, NATO’s dictat as (self-declared) hegemon hell bent on imposing ‘peace on its terms’ necessitates a wider debate over its competencies, or capabilities, to do so.

A hegemon’s fading strength

Such threats were ‘known normals’ during the Cold War period when pax Americana and pax Sovietica were in vogue. The two superpowers were quite powerful, militarily and economically, to impose their will on recalcitrant camp followers.

The Cold War’s demise ended pax Sovietica but pax Americana continued throughout the unipolar moment. However, power in contemporary international relations is diffused and pax Americana is a pale shadow of its former self. The US is not able to impose peace on its terms in many parts of the world.

Afghanistan was a glaring example where the American military and economic might failed to induce a change. Presently, the US is trying to broker a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine – but it is much tougher than President Trump originally thought!

NATO’s weakening bond

NATO may have taken up the secondary sanctions issue on behalf of the US. However, it has its own interests in negotiating the protracted Russia – Ukraine War to save the latter. NATO coalition, including the US, has imposed sanctions on Russia for quite some time. Nevertheless, Russia has navigated its way out, through oil sales to many countries, including some from NATO. Threats of secondary sanctions only shows that NATO members suffer from end-means confusion.

Ending the Russia – Ukraine War should have been the foremost priority for NATO; instead, the focus is more on procedural matters like additional sanctions. In doing so, NATO perhaps displays a disregard for the economic dignity of other nations for whom cheap oil remains sine-qua-non for propelling national economies.

Changing economic order

NATO’s sanctions threat also reflects its ‘false hegemonic attitude’. True, the NATO members, collectively, have large share in global trade. However, the collectivity of NATO members have also seen continuous decline in their proportional economic size in world economy and share in international trade. At present, all NATO members suffer from very low growth rates. In some cases, the national economies are good as ‘stagnant’. Their future growth prospects, irrespective of protectionist trade policies and stimuli packages, are bleak.

Until couple of decades back, the European Community pushed for an integrated market through a hyper-globalisation method. It now looks to save jobs through protectionist methods. Concurrently, countries at the receiving end of NATO sanctions threat, i.e. China, India and Brazil, have come a long way though economic, military, and political empowerment.

Three false assumptions

NATO’s ‘peace at its terms’ assumption is laughable, on at least three counts.

First, NATO was a Cold War creation, intended to defend European countries against a communist adversary – the Soviet Union. The Russian threat is relatively less though NATO countries still make a monster out of it. Instead, the theatre of super power conflict has shifted to East Asia and Indo – Pacific with China as the future adversary. These developments are pushing NATO towards irrelevance.

Second, NATO is an increasingly incoherent group with issued-based internal divisions. There is a growing chasm between the US and its NATO allies on the issue of Ukraine, Greenland, defence budget increases, climate financing, trade relations, and Gaza. Even on Russia, Trump is seemingly friendly with President Vladimir Putin, much to the chagrin of his NATO friends.

Third, NATO’s sanctions threat is also reflective of a larger problem - the defective cognitive mapping of many NATO leaders like Mark Rutte. These leaders suffer from Eurocentric mindset and like dictating agenda for entire international relations, even though they do not have commensurate resources of their own. NATO leaders, for example, refuse to come out of the Cold War hubris and do not realise that there is a ‘rest’ beyond the ‘West’.

A “warmongering club”

NATO, in raising the secondary sanctions issue, is proving to be a long-lost leader in war and peace. It has metamorphosed into a laggard, bandwagoning US policy and economic support for major policy implements on European security.

It forced Ukraine to the war-front and got the US to subsidise the defensive operations against Russia. Nevertheless, luck has run out for NATO coalition since the US is less inclined now to foot the bill. Developments in last six months cast doubt on NATO’s own future. In continuously pushing for more weapons and financial resources for Ukraine’s war efforts, NATO is reduced to a warmongering club and would have to re-invent itself for any meaningful existence.

Even if NATO manages to convince the US to implement the secondary sanctions against the intended countries, they will still scratch though with marginal effects. However, NATO will equally suffer in terms of reputation, cohesiveness and strategic gaps with emerging great powers and even with the rest of the world. Emerging great powers do have the option of exploiting the internal divisions in NATO through well-crafted wedge strategy. Alternate diplomatic platforms like BRICS would get additional stimulus. There is also space for reduced arms imports from NATO countries.

Therefore, in threatening secondary sanctions, NATO coalition has displayed a wrong strategic instinct. It does not have the stature and competencies (even with the US support), to outrightly punish other countries. Therefore, diplomatic engagements and not verbal gymnastics is the way out to navigate the national positions of other countries. The just concluded in-principle agreement on contentious issues of India – European Union Free Trade Agreement (FTA) shows that there are diplomatic possibilities. Probably, NATO needs to talk more.

(Note: The author is in the Indian Defence Accounts Service. Views are personal and do not represent the stand of this publication.)