Paris, June 15, 2021 (Nouvelle Solidarité)—Among the things “accomplished” at the short NATO meeting of June 14 was the approval of the “NATO 2030 Agenda”, a quite radical proposal for a vast reform of NATO’s strategy to replace the previous such document going back to ten years ago, when the “threat” posed by China and Russia against the alliance was not yet identified.
The implications of this reform are such that last March, a group of some 40 retired generals and colonels of the French army Center for Inter-army Evaluations (CRI), risked publishing a scathing report in a major magazine, Capital, accusing the proposed reform of 1) violation of national sovereignties, 2) globalization the NATO structure, and 3) trying to embark Europe on a US war against Russia and China. On May 28, it was the French Defense Ministry which told the media that the French response to a proposal circulated by NATO secretary general Stoltenberg, calling for a 20-billion-euro increase in spending for NATO, based on that report was : “No, thank you.” The Defense Ministry was furious to learn about the proposal via the media, and asked whether NATO was now demanding the dilution of the national sovereignties of all member states into NATO, because France would not be able to modernize its own defense while assuming such costs for NATO. Macron said he would demand further explanations from NATO.
The context for the 2030 agenda is the need to reinforce unity among the allies, to be able to deal with a highly degraded strategic environment due to the double threat posed by two systemic rivals, Russia and China. Entitled “A Political Role Suited to a New Era”, it is actually a proposal for a kind of political putch by NATO. NATO, they claim, has been able to organize, since 2014, when Russia “annexed” Crimea, “the most important reinforcement of a collective defense ever to have been carried out in a generation”. The challenge is now to be able to “carry out a political adaptation to accompany the progress carried out in the military sphere.”
In its introductory remarks, the report says NATO is called upon to become “the only and essential forum towards which allies must turn themselves for dealing with the major challenges of national security to which they are confronted.” “The allies,” it says, “must work to put their national policies in conformity with the line of conduct elaborated by NATO”. The member states are even called upon to consult the line “before upcoming meetings of international organisations, (…) for example, the United Nations, the G20 or other fora”, to be able to respond to those challenges.
