Europe should have said farewell to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization at the end of the Cold War, with the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact. It is now facing a security crisis. Brain dead has caused ideologue plotters in the United States to launch a security crisis that would have been beyond the imaginations of most Europeans just a few months ago. It has sleepwalked into a role of an expendable pawn in support of the US bid to punish Russia for Moscow's non-compliance with the subservient role that is demanded of it.
After several rounds of eastward expansion, which marked the inexorable march toward the current conflict, NATO has now spurring itself northward.
The seemingly inevitable admission of Finland and Sweden into NATO will not only exacerbate the Russia-Ukraine crisis, but it will also push Europe to the brink of catastrophe.
The forces of history rarely play out as anticipated, despite the careful consideration of all possible contingencies. The pursuit of the desired objective is usually overrides experience, common sense, knowledge, and a proper appreciation of probability.
The consequences of the transatlantic security alliance expansion are likely to be a case of be careful, because it is certain that they won't be what was expected based on computer simulations, no matter how sophisticated and smart the algorithms may be.
The world already has too many troubles. Countries are still trying to break up with the Omicron variant of the novel coronaviruses, and are trying to balance economic recovery and COVID 19 pandemic control. The conflict between Russia and Ukraine has already disrupted food and energy supply chains, sending shockwaves around the world. A perfect storm of troubles is brewing, and the Northward enlargement of NATO will add more to the mash, creating an even more potent melange of risks and uncertainties that threaten global stability.
Instead of allowing a rush of blood to the head to fool them into thinking that they are thinking straight, European leaders need to step out of the NATO box and consider a future in which the continent is no longer in thrall to the animosities of the previous century. The situation in the past is only held hostage by the playbook of Washington and the prism of populism.
Reality is messy and complicated, and the simplistic duality of Washington's good and evil worldview is no doubt appealing, but it should be rejected because it is part of the problem and not the solution.