NATO’s Out-of-Area Strategy

As is known, NATO is a military alliance established after the Second World War to protect the military security of the West against communism and Soviet expansionism. Beyond being merely a military alliance, NATO is a war machine that has also assumed the mission of maintaining the West’s political, diplomatic, strategic, and even cultural superiority. In the 1990s, when the Soviet system collapsed and the Warsaw Pact dissolved, NATO, in a sense, should have become functionless because its adversary had disappeared, but that did not happen.

After the Soviets, the West felt the need to define a new threat for itself, and at the 1992 London meeting, “Islamic fundamentalism” was identified as the threat to the West. In fact, what was meant by the fashionable rhetoric of that period, “Islamic fundamentalism,” was Islam and the Muslim world. After the aforementioned meeting, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher made a statement to the effect that “from now on it has been accepted that the West is threatened by Islamic fundamentalism.” From then on, “NATO would protect Europe’s security against this threat.” Countries such as Greece and Serbia, where bloc nationalism had become a form of social hysteria, embraced this new threat definition wholeheartedly. While the Serbs subjected 2.5 million people in Bosnia to ethnic cleansing, massacred 250,000 innocent people, and raped 50,000 women, they took refuge in the threat of fundamentalism. In recent years, however, “fundamentalism” has been replaced by “terror.” In the new situation, at the national, regional, or global level, whoever is an opponent is declared by governments to be “a terrorist or associated with a terrorist organization,” even if he has not even picked up a pocketknife. Of course, this labeling has no legal value.

In the June 10, 1990 issue of The Sunday Times, the following article appeared: “The West must first assess the danger and accordingly draw up strategies to eliminate this danger. For example, NATO forces must be prepared to be used outside Europe to protect the interests of the West. As Margaret Thatcher said at the NATO Ministerial Council Meeting in Scotland, NATO’s military power will inevitably have to intervene outside the European theater in the future. Because some Islamic countries will soon possess nuclear weapons and the capability to launch them at targets of their choosing.” Less than two years after the aforementioned NATO Ministerial Council Meeting, in June 1992, NATO officially began discussing the idea of “out-of-area intervention.”

NATO was a military alliance established on April 4, 1949, to ensure Europe’s security against the Soviet Union and the threat of communism. It was understandable that it served this purpose until the 1990s. However, after the Soviets withdrew from the stage of history in 1991, communism collapsed, and the Warsaw Pact dissolved, NATO should have dissolved itself in accordance with the principle that “when the cause disappears, the ruling also disappears.” During the Cold War, threats came either from alliances or from nation-states; after this date, threats came from socio-economic problems such as organized crime organizations, human trafficking, non-governmental organizations, and terrorism. The solution to these problems was not the use of military force, but taking social and economic measures and establishing a more just and livable international order. As liberal capitalism imposed on the world under the name of “globalization” deepened inequalities, the potential for conflict and threats increased to the same degree. Instead of solving the problem through a just and sharing-based order, the West found the solution in building more military power and transforming NATO into a “global gendarme.”

Finally, the West found the opportunity it had been waiting for in the events of Bosnia in 1995 and Kosovo in 1999. By bringing these tragedies to the forefront, it tried for the first time to demonstrate how necessary out-of-area military operations were, although in reality the factors that played a role in the emergence of the massacres in both Bosnia and Kosovo were its own work. The Bosnia intervention seemed, in small terms, to have benefited the Muslim Bosniaks, but in reality, in large terms, it caused them great loss; because if the intervention had been delayed a few more days, the Muslims would have delivered the final blow and gained full military initiative. NATO consciously did not allow this. After the Bosnia and Kosovo interventions, this time, by placing the Islamic world at the center of its field of intervention, NATO declared that it could intervene anywhere by defining threats itself with justifications such as “the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; the destabilization caused by chaos emerging in collapsed states and regimes; and terrorism,” and it did so.

Indeed, NATO decided to expand in 1999, approved cross-border operations at the 2006 Riga summit by putting forward the Bosnia and Kosovo operations—it undertook missions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya—and, although it was none of its business, began interfering in the educational, social, and economic structures of countries—of course, only Islamic countries—under the name of “humanitarian missions.” In July 2011, NATO forces bombed six Islamic countries at the same time—Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Iraq, Libya, and Somalia—and massacred thousands of innocent people.

It is possible to list NATO’s strategic objectives in the new period as follows:

1. Not allowing the Islamic world to form a unity of power against the West—or outside the permission of the West;
2. Preventing the formation of any power that could resist the West;
3. Not allowing the emergence of a power in the region stronger and more effective than Israel;
4. Controlling the Islamic world’s energy resources, energy transmission lines, human and natural wealth;
5. Preventing Islam from asserting itself as a socio-cultural religion, an alternative civilization, and a regional-global system.

NATO’s New Mission

In this context, the fundamental changes did not stop. At the NATO summit held on November 28, 2006, in Riga, the capital of Latvia, one of the important decisions in NATO’s history was taken. Accordingly, NATO was determining a new position for itself not only militarily, but also within the framework of the “alliance of civilizations.” Thus, with the Riga summit, NATO reached the stage of assuming a new mission.

The paradox was that the United States, NATO’s greatest power—and in fact its undeniable patron—on the one hand was still conducting operations in the Middle East within the framework of the “clash of civilizations” thesis and working to deepen conflicts, while on the other hand it approved assigning new missions to NATO on the ground of the “alliance of civilizations” initiated under the leadership of the UN. What appears to be a paradox stems from the difference in language and discourse between what is apparent and what is hidden; in reality, there was nothing new on the Western front.

The NATO Secretary General of the time, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, had said that the alliance should no longer “play the role of gendarme,” but should assume “a role that will strengthen global partnerships.” There were two questions occupying minds here:

1. Since the early 1990s, NATO has been speaking of a “global threat” against which it will position itself; this global threat, which has become a phrase on everyone’s lips, is “terror.” The Secretary General said, “We live in a very dangerous world. The global threat has dimensions that will spread across the whole earth. Because terrorism can occur at any time and in any place.” Here, if we look at the dominant discourse that, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, a relationship was consciously, systematically, and purposefully established between “Islam” and “terror,” and that the global threat stems from “Islamic terror,” that is, from Muslims, we can conclude that in the new period NATO has positioned itself against the Islamic world. This is neither exaggeration nor paranoia.
2. The Secretary General speaks of global partners and says that the partners will gather around “common interests and common values.” What is known is that one of the targets—perhaps the final and main target—of the military operations carried out by the United States and its allies in our region is to put pressure on the forms of existence of Islamic values in the face of the modern world. In other words, hegemonic civilization sees Islam as the sole obstacle before its economic, political, and cultural development. One dimension of the operations is also related to the ongoing conflicts in the field of values. Let us recall that when Tony Blair joined the occupation of Iraq, he said: “Iraq is a field of conflict that will show that our own values are stronger, more principled, and more attractive than their values.”

In the new period, alongside “the fight against terrorism,” NATO will also be used as a deterrent, and when necessary an interventionist, force in “preventing cyberattacks” and “protecting natural resources”—and we know that 65 percent of these natural resources are in the Middle East and 72 percent are in the Islamic world, including Africa. It appears that with its new strategy, NATO is giving its mission depth not only horizontally, but also vertically. Within this framework, in Afghanistan, NATO constantly concerns itself with “the Afghan woman to be saved from the burqa and the Taliban it portrays as savage.”

In this case, NATO’s taking a new position within the framework of the “alliance of civilizations” and seeking global partners for itself means the formation of a new front, and the conclusion follows that among the civilizations that will take part in this alliance, “Islamic civilization” will not be included with its original and authentic identity. According to NATO’s new concept, if Islam is to take part among the civilizations in alliance, it will be an Islam that does not object to the global interests of the West and that is in harmony with Western values; regarding those who object, the judgment to be given is that they must be declared “terrorists” and neutralized.

Well then, what is “Turkey’s role” in this new configuration? We must reflect on the answer to this question.

NATO, Turkey, and the Islamic World

If our observations regarding NATO are not “wrong, unjust, and blindly ideological-partisan” rhetoric; and if, as both officials and experts underline, NATO’s main strategic objectives in the new period are “not allowing the Islamic world to form a unity of power against the West—or outside the permission of the West; preventing the formation of any power that could resist the West; not allowing the emergence of a power in the region stronger and more effective than Israel; controlling the Islamic world’s energy resources, energy transmission lines, human and natural wealth; preventing Islam from asserting itself as a socio-cultural religion, an alternative civilization, and a regional-global system,” then what is Turkey’s place, mission, and role in this concept?

It is very clear: since the first years of the 21st century, NATO has been occupying Islamic countries and killing people who fight for their homeland as well as innocent civilians. It conducts operations in some places under the pretext of “weapons of mass destruction,” in some places under the promise of bringing democracy and freedom, in some places under the pretext of preventing terror and terrorists, and in some places under the pretext of liberating women.

This means that there is no unity of interests between the Islamic world and NATO, and this applies to all countries that are members of NATO. That is, because of its positioning, its new threat assessment, and the wars it is currently conducting, Turkey too, in the first and final analysis, is not on the side of the Islamic world; rather, as an active member of the NATO alliance, it has taken its place against the Islamic world and beside a global power that has a hostile attitude toward it.

This reality implies the following to us:

1. Turkey, with this position and role, cannot be a “leader” in the Islamic world. Indeed, what is correct is for Turkey to explore and realize the possibilities of a new unity together with the Islamic world. If Muslims are to form a political unity with the consciousness of the “ummah,” the root-source of the unity (umm) and its leader (imam) is the ummah itself.
2. Turkey cannot determine an independent foreign policy and stance on its own. The discourse that has been suggested to us for a quarter century—“We are an independent country; without our permission, not even a leaf moves in the region”—is not based on any truth.

In essence, in the new period, countries cannot be expected to be “fully independent,” nor is it a condition. What is essential in the current global conjuncture is “interdependence.” However, for this to be considered a process that works in your favor, it is related not only to your being “a determined and affected country,” but also to your being “a determining and affecting country.” In this international position, Turkey is only “a determined and affected country.” We saw this within the NATO framework in “the return of Greece and France to the military wing of the alliance, the election of Rasmussen as Secretary General, the deployment in Malatya of the radar system established against Iran and Russia, and the bombing of Libya.” While NATO forces were killing civilians in Afghanistan, while American soldiers were urinating on Muslim corpses, while copies of the Qur’an were being burned, and while madrasas were being bombed, Turkey did not raise its voice.

NATO’s interventions are gradually expanding. They may also spread to Syria, Lebanon, Iran, and other Islamic lands; and we, as Turkey, will again set the propaganda machine in motion and try to explain “what a great country we are, how the people of the region admire us, and how Muslim people in occupied countries sob when they see the Turkish flag.” One day we will see that the Islamic world has come entirely under the invasion of foreign powers, just as it did in the time of the Mongols and the Crusaders, and that we have become part of this invasion.

However, in some cases, not only tactics and operations but also strategies change. In the recent Iran/U.S.-Israel war, a rift emerged between the United States and European countries; EU members declared that the attack launched by the United States and Israel against Iran was “not their war,” and left the United States alone. This issue may be regarded as the first sign of a new change. It must be considered carefully.