Vassals of the US

NATO is a product of war. Since its establishment in 1949, NATO has always been a military tool for maintaining and promoting US’ and Europe’s Cold War strategy. It is also a political group with an inherent motivation to consolidate and advance ideology.

In its early days, NATO’s main task was that of military defense while preventing the resurgence of German militarism. From the 1950s to the 1980s, the confrontation and escalating deterrence of Europe’s two major military blocs, NATO and the Warsaw Pact, became a great threat to global peace. The reason why the Cold War did not turn into a “hot war” was because of the continuous escalation of deterrence actions on both sides, forming a “balance of terror,” although there was a thrilling moment in the form of the Cuban missile crisis. The confrontation between the two major blocs in Europe has become the best realistic embodiment of the well- known “balance of power” theory.

NATO is also a political bloc that serves ideology. After the end of WWII, both the US and the Soviet Union had a great sense of fear of each other. They also believed that the type of civilization promoted by the other side was bound to decline.

Former US president Richard Nixon once defined US strategy during the Cold War as deterrence, competition, and negotiation. Among them, competition was the most important one. Both deterrence and negotiation were aimed at maintaining the balance of military power and the sphere of influence while expanding strategic influence. All these efforts were made to win the ideological competition.

The confrontation between the two blocs showed the violent clash of different ideologies, meaning the pace of the expansion of Western civilization in the world has never stopped. This expansion was a major reason for war in many regions during the Cold War era.

As a military tool, NATO has always been at the beck and call of the US global strategy, and its role changes in accordance with the adjustment of this strategy. As long as the US does not change its ambition to maintain its global hegemony, NATO will definitely exist. As Marwan Bishara, a senior political analyst at international news channel Al Jazeera, pointed out, “NATO has decidedly been the military arm of a privileged club of Western capitalist democracies.”