The Anti-NATOists

Weapons and military matters have never been close to my heart. I never liked playing with rifles and pistols, not even during my military service in the former JNA. There I did everything I could to get them to send me home, or at least leave me alone. I ended my active military engagement at my first weapons exercises at the end of my first year at university, when I literally threw my rifle into the cornfield. A few weeks later, an official on Mačkova Street cut my military booklet in half.

Even more than military matters and weapons, I dislike war. Because in wars people die and towns and villages are destroyed. So I sincerely wish that wars, all wars, would end as soon as possible. And that peace would reign.

My aversion to military matters does not mean I don’t respect people in the military profession, and even more those who are prepared to take up arms and risk their lives in the fight for freedom. Like the Slovenian Partisans once, or the Ukrainians today, in a national liberation struggle against a fascist occupier. I only wish they didn’t have to. Because they would live in a world ruled by peace and friendship among nations and freedom for all. But the world we live in is not (yet) like that. That is why I think about military matters not only emotionally but also rationally and critically. I don’t like armies and defense budgets and spending on armored vehicles and shells, but I understand that we need all this nonetheless. At least for now. I hope not for too long.

It may take two to make a war, as the “peace activists” loudly try to convince us, but that doesn’t mean both are always equally responsible for it. Because often one of them is the aggressor and the other the victim. And a war that ends with the defeat of the victim does not bring peace but the victory of the aggressor and an incentive for new wars. Nor are all wars the same. The best are those that never begin. It would be loveliest if there were no wars, because all countries in the world were friendly and it never occurred to them to attack anyone. But, as I said, we are not there yet. In this non-ideal world, we can therefore prevent wars effectively above all by deterring potential aggressors in advance from their intentions to commit aggression against others. Because they know it won’t pay off. Because they risk getting a bloody nose. To be convincing in deterring potential aggressors, we must be ready to defend ourselves. That requires investment in weapons and the military, even if these things are otherwise not dear to our hearts. But we are prepared to accept them. Because we dislike war even more than we dislike weapons.

And then we come to NATO. It was founded soon after the end of the Second World War to protect Western democracies from the military danger threatening them from the Soviet Union. And it did so quite effectively. The Cold War period is not something one looks back on with fond nostalgia, but the operative word in that phrase is “cold.” That states on both sides of the Iron Curtain did not come to blows for so many decades is no small thing. Especially since there was always the danger that they would use nuclear weapons in doing so.

After the end of the Cold War came a thaw, which also brought closer relations between NATO and Russia. At that time I was working in Brussels and watched at NATO headquarters as a booth for interpretation into Russian was built into the hall where the North Atlantic Council meets. A world in which peace and friendship would reign never seemed closer than then. But after that everything went more or less downhill. Much of the credit for this goes to Vladimir Putin, who swung himself onto the Kremlin throne at the end of 1999. That does not exclude the fact that the West, including NATO, also has plenty to answer for. We can and must be critical of how some military interventions came about and how they were carried out and ended. It is true, though, that it mostly began its operations with a United Nations mandate. Not all of them, since international lawyers still argue above all about the mandate for military intervention against Milošević’s Yugoslavia after the mass violence against the Albanian population in Kosovo. The same goes for the decision of the European Court of Human Rights, which rejected a complaint against European member states over their participation in the bombing of the Serbian television building, in which 16 employees died. After the use against Serbian forces in Kosovo of ammunition containing depleted uranium, I wrote an article for my then boss Russell Johnston, President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, which The New York Times published in January 2001 under the title “A Case of Depleted NATO Ethics in the Balkans.”

That NATO has at times acted questionably in the past is a fact. That it is essential to ensure that it always and exclusively acts to provide defense against aggression and to protect international law is equally so. That is the task and responsibility of all member states, among them Slovenia. It is also true that there is an objective difficulty here, in that by far the greatest influence in the alliance belongs to the US, which you can always count on to protect above all its own interests, which are not always necessarily ours too. Just as it is true that we other NATO members voluntarily left them this role, by skimping for decades on investment in our own defense and freeloading on the US as the world’s only policeman. Paradoxically (for some), the way to limit America’s role in the world is not to cut spending on our own defense, but quite the opposite. Through Europe’s strategic sovereignty, as French President Macron said in a recent speech at the Sorbonne. Technologically, in energy and also militarily. Unless we accept that the Russians and Chinese will balance American influence instead of us. Or vice versa.

There are sound rational arguments for NATO membership. The position that we don’t need membership because we are safe is legitimate, and we can agree with it or not. But the belief that we are safe because we don’t like NATO is naive, irresponsible and dangerous. The thesis that reducing our defense preparedness guarantees our security holds only on the assumption that aggressors, as a rule, attack only countries they know will be able to defend themselves.

The “peace activists” resolve the illogic of their positions by basing their argument on a starting point that is dogmatic, ideological and emotional. NATO is the armed wing of the West, and the West is rotten and to blame for everything. Through the prism of this dogma, they see, understand and explain the world around them. NATO is to blame for the war in Ukraine because it expanded toward Russia. For example. If they get into a jam in their argument, as regularly happens, they return to the starting point. The West is rotten and to blame for everything. Anti-Westernism is very widespread in Slovenia, even though we are people who otherwise enjoy the advantages that life in a liberal democracy which (in principle) respects human rights and political freedoms brings us. It would be a paradox if we Slovenians had not built cognitive dissonance into our collective psyche. We are also convinced that EU membership has brought us benefits, while at the same time we couldn’t care less about it, as a recent Eurobarometer opinion survey showed.

It is a paradox, though, that anti-Westernism, which in Slovenia is widespread above all among people who see themselves on the left of the political spectrum, is so much in harmony with the efforts of antiliberal far-right authoritarians. They see international alliances and norms as a conspiracy of progressive liberalism and an obstacle to establishing a “sovereigntist world order,” as Viktor Orbán put it a few days ago at a conference of American conservatives in Budapest. Putin deserves credit for bringing the positions of the far-left and far-right poles closer together, at least on matters that benefit him in carrying out his imperialist policy. In Slovenia, at least among some, this rapprochement no longer resembles a horseshoe but a closed circle. In this sad story, the “peace activists,” by assisting in the nationalist and authoritarian reshaping of the world, are helping to create a very dark future in which they too will not fare well. A foretaste of what may await them is offered by the fate of every Russian peace activist without quotation marks who dares to shout “nyet voyne” in the street.

Because of its dogmatism and blind faith in the basic premises from which it derives its attitude to the world, sweeping contempt for the West resembles a conspiracy theory. “Not NATO, give us peace” and “not vaccines, give us health” reflect very similar patterns of thought. An emotional and ideological departure from logic, facts, responsibility and reason. If, God forbid, we are ever threatened by foreign aggression in the future, I would not be surprised if some smart alecks swore by ivermectin for air defense.