Does NATO really matter beyond the West?

When the Soviet Union dissolved itself in 1991, after Boris Yeltsin did a deal with the leadership of Ukraine and Belarus, without telling President Mikhail Gorbachev, the Warsaw Pact which had been unravelling, also came to an end. It’s Western counterpart, NATO, did not and this year celebrates its 75^th anniversary with NATO leaders this week gathered in Washington DC. In truth those leaders are probably spending more of their time privately assessing whether they think that President Biden is capable of winning a second term, never mind serving a full four-year term, than focusing on their 75^thanniversary.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, NATO has expanded to include two previously neutral countries; Sweden and Finland. Russia is determined that it should not expand yet further east into Ukraine. Yet NATO has struggled to get Member States to agree to increase defence funding, and at a time when Russia has partially transformed itself into a more recognizable Soviet stye war economy. Officially NATO is continuing to take a strong line against Russia, but all the while its leaders fear that the return of President Trump could see an accommodation with Russia – for Trump has promised to end the war in Ukraine ‘within 48 hours’. This is an unlikely aspiration but given a little longer it is entirely possible.

Elsewhere, in most parts of the World, including the Maghreb, the NATO meeting might just as well be taking place on the Moon for all of the relevance that it has. More so, as the global South hears Western consternation and promises of more weapons to Ukraine in response to Russia’s recent flurry of missile attacks, which included the hitting of a children’s hospital in Kyiv which killed four children and two adults, while there is silence when the same happens in Gaza. 

At the same time that the Kyiv missile attack was happening, it was reported that Israel’s military had killed at least 77 Palestinians, including dozens sheltering at a school, in one of the deadliest days the enclave has endured in recent weeks. Elsewhere in the strip, tens of thousands were ordered to evacuate from Gaza City yet again, while the Anglican Church emptied the City Hospital of patients claiming that the Israeli Defence Force had ordered it to do so, prior to more military action in the surrounding area. Those hoping that Western leaders would be equally outspoken against the continuing and unrelenting attacks on civilians in Gaza, were to be disappointed.  As far as many people in the rest of the World are concerned, the West speaks out for Ukrainian civilians, but has little to say about Palestinian civilians. Worse, the West, in particular the United States, but also Britain and other European countries, supply missiles to Ukraine to allow it to protect civilians, while at the same time providing Israel with missiles that kill civilians. Both Russia and Israel are in open breach of international law. And yet while Western leders call for an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for Vladimir Putin, the United States, which is not a member, does its best to block the ICC from doing the same to Netanyahu. This hypocrisy rankles now in the extreme. It has in turn given rise to a new take across the Maghreb and the global South that it is effectively; ‘the West versus the rest’.  

*Mark Seddon is a former Speechwriter to UN Secretary-General Ban ki moon & former Adviser to the Office of the President of the UN General Assembly