A truly global NATO

Acknowledgements

Thanks go to Professors Roger Nelson and John Ikenberry at the University of Princeton, who encouraged me to pursue the ideas presented in this book.

Thanks also go to the Cambridge Review of Eurasian Affairs, for generously permitting the republication of the chapter on the Security Dilemma, and Humanities and Social Sciences, for generously permitting the republication of the chapter on political evolution. Some other parts of previous writings are republished with generous permission of the publishers.

Finally, I want to offer my heartfelt thanks to the University of Hull for generously allowing me to focus fully on research in the process of writing this book.

List of Figures

Figure 1: Wars

Figure 2: Economic and financial crises

Figure 3: Personal crises

Figure 4: History of wars. Source: William Edward (1992): Civilizations, Empires and Wars. A Quantitative History. Jefferson: McFarland & Co., 55

Figure 5: Global deaths in conflicts since the year 1400. Source: Max Roser: War and Peace. Online: <https://ourworldindata.org/war-and-peace>

Figure 6: Population growth over history. Source: M. Kremer (1993): Population Growth and Technological Change. One Million bc to 1990. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 108:3, 681–716

List of Tables

Table 1: Depression rates per country in specific years

Table 2: Major periods of war and political theory classics

Introduction

In all other areas but Security, global integration and unity are thought to be recipes for peace. This is the reason why we have the UN system, globalization, democratization, the Internet, and so forth, which are all at least intended to be globally inclusive. Only in the area of Security do we find the belief – supported by the main proponents of Neorealism¹ – that bipolarity is benign, and hence we support a bipolar system with NATO versus Russia and her allies.² Prominent thinkers of Neorealism, such as Kenneth Waltz and John Mearsheimer, have promoted bipolarity as the most stable international constellation.³ This means, in essence, the presence of two centres of power. Apparently, the history of war speaks for the assumption that bipolarity is stable, and the history of the Cold War seems to confirm this. However, we must consider that all major wars and conflicts in recent history started out of a bipolar constellation. In the two world wars, we had the Triple Entente versus the Triple Alliance, as well as the Axis versus the Allies, and they were both, therefore, a bipolar constellation.⁴ The same goes for the Cold War. One could argue that the two world wars were multipolar constellations, but they presented as bipolar conflicts (cluster bipolarity). In ←1 | 2→the end, without a bipolar front of two alliances against each other, one cannot have a major war. It takes two to tango.

The Security Dilemma literature hints at the fact that the military armaments of states cause mutual threat perceptions, which are at the root of wars. Ken Booth and Nicholas Wheeler in their book, The Security Dilemma,⁵ state that the threat especially stems from the militaries. They propose trust and regimes as solutions. Why not go further and apply processes that serve the peace in other areas and think of military integration? We could call it the ‘Globalization of Security’.

A novel and further reaching solution than any past suggestion for the Security Dilemma would be the integration of the militaries into one common global alliance. If the militaries were joined in such a way, the mutual threat would naturally diminish. Within a global alliance – to imagine this one would need to think of a global NATO – the mutual threat between states would be abolished, cooperation and coordination would occur between states, and the likelihood of wars would be much diminished.

Within NATO, the mutual threat between states is virtually abolished, and so it can be said that the Security Dilemma is abolished within NATO.⁶ States pooled their militaries, and put them under joint decision-making; therefore, instead of mutual threat and fear, there is trust and collaboration. To create this trust globally, one would need to think of a global NATO, like the UN. A common argument against globalizing NATO is the political differences between the democratic states and autocracies. However, for the UN, this difference does not seem to present a major problem. The UN does include all states on a global level, even if they might be dictatorships. Why then should political differences present a hindering condition for abolishing war by globally expanding NATO?

This idea of global military integration is historically novel. In all peace proposals in history, two unknown authors for Europe have only mentioned military integration only for Europe following the Second ←2 | 3→World War.⁷ This idea is also more practical than those promoted by the World Federalist Movement after the Second World War, who argued for the abolition of all militaries – an impossible goal – and the creation of a UN army instead.⁸ The integration of all militaries – even if utopian – is a more practical goal, and one which follows the ideas for peace that have been pursued since the creation of the League of Nations.

A truly global military and a truly global NATO – but one would probably need to find another name for it – would mean that the militaries could not threaten each other anymore, because they are joined into one; therefore, wars between states would be abolished. Also, world wars would no longer be able to occur because the development of two opposing alliances would be impossible.⁹ Finally, if NATO was global, then this would mean including Russia in its ranks. The inclusion of Russia in NATO would be a necessary condition for the abolition of nuclear weapons. As long as an expanding NATO encircles Russia, it will see it as a threat and believe in the need to deter NATO with its nuclear capabilities.¹⁰ Only if Russia and the US are joined in one common, formalized alliance will there be a possibility that the mutual threat level will be low enough to fulfill the goal of nuclear abolition.

Creating a truly global military alliance might also create resistances that are not possibly knowable. Some authors claim that the development of the UN system after the Second World War was partially a cause for the start of the Cold War, as Russia resisted the ideas promoted by the United States.¹¹ What the risks in creating a global NATO would be, as well as ←3 | 4→where the opposition would come from, cannot be known at this time. However, all the justifications above should show that the idea for a truly global military alliance with the purpose to abolish war between states and nuclear weapons is meaningful, reasonable, and based on International Relations theory and wisdom.

This chapter will summarize the ideas to be presented in this book and for this purpose proceed in a number of steps. First, I will set out the originality of a truly global military alliance. Such an idea has not yet been formed in history. Peace proposals have previously centred on global democracy or international law.¹² Military integration is a new approach to world peace. Theoretically, it is grounded in Constructivism and Institutionalism, while it challenges Neorealism. Constructivism calls for a world state, Institutionalism argues for global integration, while Neorealism maintains the importance of bipolarity. The latter is here challenged. The next part of the chapter will defend the idea of global NATO, and a global military alliance, and show how it would help with the abolition of war and nuclear weapons. It will, for this purpose, analyse the Security Dilemma and present military integration as a new solution. It will also show some additional ideas for the promotion of world peace, such as a global welfare state and an early warning system for war based on international depression data. I will then proceed by looking into International Relations theory and the history of war and peace. Both are necessary to understand the background for this idea and show why the war in Syria was an appropriate time to develop this idea.

Origin and Novelty

The idea for military integration on a global level came to me in October 2015 when Russia intervened in Syria without warning, and this nearly provoked a nuclear crisis between the US and Russia. At this time, the ←4 | 5→use of nuclear weapons was indeed threatened by the US. Back then, I thought if Russia had been integrated into NATO, such a crisis would not have occurred because it would have been involved in any decision-making and there would have been communication and coordination amongst Russia and the US.

The same thought later expanded and led me to think of a truly global military alliance where all militaries are integrated into one global organization. This, I believe, would provide a new answer on how to abolish – instead of only mitigate – the Security Dilemma. I wrote an article about the Security Dilemma and military integration that was published with a Cambridge journal and started to speak at conferences and to other professors about it.¹³ The idea to integrate all militaries into one common unified organization is historically completely novel. The anthology, Searchlight on Peace Plans,¹⁴ summarizes all known peace proposals throughout history. In most of them, we find demands for a global judiciary, international law, and global democratic institutions. Only in two of them, by unknown authors, one anonymous, propose military integration. Both were written for Europe only after the Second World War. Military integration on a global level is a historically completely new idea. It could make history.