Jeffrey Sachs on Nato

[Ajay0]

American economist, academic and public policy analyst Jeffrey Sachs on Nato...

https://www.jeffsachs.org/newspaper-articles/ap6xhb4f2h8taxn3f9486kallhnsxw

 

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The big mistake, thereafter, is that the US regarded the new peace as a unilateral victory of the US over Russia, not as a victory of peace together with Russia. When the Soviet Union disbanded in December 1991, and with Russia as the successor state of the Soviet Union among 15 new independent nations, the US decided to go back on its word and begin to expand NATO eastward. By now, there are 32 member states in NATO. 

Indeed, American policymakers decided that the US was now the world's sole superpower in a unipolar world. Thus, an age of extraordinary US arrogance arose in 1992 that has taken us to many unnecessary and costly wars up to now. The US arrogance is still at the base of US foreign policy, even though it is now very clear that we live in a multipolar, not a unipolar, world. 

Specifically, in the 1990s, the US decided that it would keep expanding NATO eastward to partially or entirely surround Russia, and thereby weaken Russia. NATO enlargement up to Ukraine and Georgia aimed to surround Russia's naval fleet in the Black Sea, weakening Russia's military power and geopolitical role. This was the same approach as Britain took in the Crimean War in 1853. It is the fundamental cause of the Ukraine War. 

NATO is a military alliance led by the US. Since the US is not a defensive power, but an offensive one, so too is NATO. NATO has taken many offensive actions, such as in Serbia-Kosovo, the NATO occupation of Afghanistan, NATO's bombing of Libya, and also the NATO arming of Ukraine in the US-Russia proxy war in Ukraine. 

In short, NATO should have been disbanded in 1990, and history would have been very different, far more peaceful, cooperative and productive, and with far fewer wars. NATO should have been replaced by the OSCE, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which includes countries of Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and the former Soviet Union. With NATO disbanded, and a strengthened UN, we probably would have avoided the disastrous US "wars of choice" since then.