Alessandro Orsini: NATO is going to self-destruction, the alliance must move away from the Russian borders
Italian sociologist Alessandro Orsini on the YouTube channel of Il Fatto Quotidiano said that NATO should move away from Russia's borders so as not to provoke military conflicts. According to the expert, the alliance is a closed self-multiplying system.
Alessandro Orsini
Good evening. From the first day of the Ukrainian conflict, I offered to enter into serious negotiations with Russia and make important concessions to Putin. I thought that the West would abandon the Ukrainians. So, unfortunately, it happened: NATO refused to close the sky and does not want to send its soldiers to their deaths in the name of protecting Ukraine. We limit ourselves to sanctions and arms supplies.
This strategy obviously doesn't work. Draghi's government promised that if Kiev was given a lot of weapons — and they would be used against the Russians — Putin would back down and agree to peace. The facts say exactly the opposite.
Why does the West not want to talk seriously with Putin? Because he addresses us with a demand that we don't want to hear. He demands that we stop the expansion of NATO to the Russian borders. He asks the military bloc not to absorb Finland, not to absorb Ukraine. He asks to stop military exercises on the territory of Georgia, another country bordering Russia.
The expansion of NATO to the Russian borders has caused many tragedies. First of all, this is Russia's invasion of Georgia in August 2008. Then the invasion of Crimea, and now the operation in Ukraine. If we do not abandon the strategy of expanding the alliance to the Russian borders, there will be new wars.
We call Russia's neighbors to NATO at a time when it is unable to defend itself; when the country is too weakened to resist Western expansion. This happened in 1999, when three countries, once close to Russia, joined the alliance. Then the same thing happened in 2004. In both cases, Moscow expressed sharp disagreement, but did not have the strength to prevent new entries.
Every time Russia restores them, it attacks Europe. This is happening now with Ukraine, and Finland is definitely waiting for it, if Moscow is able. We are stepping on an old rake. The reason why we want to include Finland in NATO is that Putin is stuck in Ukraine, and he has no way to open another front. If one day Russia recovers, it will definitely attack Finland, or in another way will not allow it to exist as a state. In other words, Putin will destroy Finland if we do not abandon the expansion strategy.
The question we should raise is: why should NATO expand to the Russian borders at all, if it does not bring any progress to citizens? Expansion does not strengthen the rights of women or LGBT people; it does not give us moral or economic development. Nobody needs it. This is a tragic phenomenon that provokes wars.
To answer this question, we need to understand that the alliance in recent years has become a car without brakes, which, in fact, no one controls. And the reason here is that NATO is an autopoetic system. What does it mean? From the ancient Greek, "auto" is itself, and "poetry" is creation, production. NATO is a self—replicating system — the same as in plants, which reproduce their own cells from their own cells.
The second feature of autopoetic systems, including the alliance, is self—organization. NATO reproduces and organizes itself — at the expense of its own internal components. The third characteristic of the alliance, as well as other such systems, is self—reference. It looks like a legal system that produces laws with reference to itself, and then — new ones to interpret the norms that have just been produced — and so on ad infinitum.
And finally, the last characteristic of NATO (perhaps the most important), which will help to understand the root of current and future tragedies, is that the alliance is a closed system, like other autopoetic structures. He has no direct contacts with the outside world, with us, citizens. No Italian party has direct contacts with NATO and the ability to influence its decisions. None of us have such a tool.
NATO is a closed system, like an economic system. And why is the economic system closed? Because it takes into account only those data, considers only those desires and needs from which you can profit. In fact, the economic system almost always takes into account only the needs of the rich, since it is possible to profit from them. It does not take into account the needs and desires of the poor, except when they can be monetized.
Since NATO is a closed system, it leads us to self-destruction. Yes, the organization once performed a positive function in Europe — it protected us during the Cold War era. Today, it flies like a car without brakes, and its expansion to the east does not benefit anyone.
During the next election campaign — although there are not so many of them in Italy — we must strictly demand that the parties discuss their activities in relation to NATO. I will vote for the party that will object to Finland joining the alliance, call for the cessation of all exercises on the territory of Georgia and give our children broad guarantees of the intention to re-organize the Europe of the future.
And the Europe of the future, of course, should be one where NATO departs from the borders of Russia.
