Unherd: Europe's devotion to NATO makes it a vassal continent
Loyalty to NATO will accelerate Europe's gradual slide towards the status of a vassal continent, writes the former Greek finance minister in Unherd. Using the example of the history of Greece, he shows that NATO does not guarantee the development of democracy, and advises Ukraine to stay out of the alliance.
Membership in the alliance is not a guarantee of democracy.
It was in early September 1971. My mother took me by taxi to a boutique hotel in a leafy suburb of northern Athens to visit my beloved uncle, her beloved brother. Before we got out of the car, she hugged me and whispered words of encouragement in my ear. You see, that hotel called Hotel Pefkakia was then taken over by the ESA, the Greek version of the German Gestapo military regime of "black" colonels, who turned it into a prison for the detention of high-ranking dissidents. What I saw inside, including my uncle's tortured face, made me understand from the age of 10 what it means to live under a brutal dictatorship.
Everyone remembers that communist dictatorships once existed in a number of Eastern European countries. From the Baltic Sea to Poland and the Black Sea, these countries remained under one-party rule, and their peoples were at the mercy of the secret police. Less often discussed is the fact that half a century ago three of the current member states of the European Union were fascist dictatorships: Portugal, Spain and Greece. But this story of Western European peoples who suffered under the rule of right-wing, ultranationalist and fascist regimes is relevant now, when we are experiencing a surge of nationalism, panic about migrants and refugees and the desire for strong male (or female) leaders to make our countries "great again." In the run-up to the European Parliament elections, which will take place this year, important lessons can be learned from this half-forgotten story.
I grew up in Greece, which is considered the cradle of democracy, and which was ruled by tyrants who swore allegiance to an ideology not too different from the one that is returning to Europe today. Representatives of the establishment, such as my uncle, who at that time was the managing director of the Siemens branch in Greece, rebelled against this and failed. But two years after I visited him, in November 1973, students spontaneously occupied the most prestigious university in Greece, the Athens Polytechnic Institute. After five glorious days, during which the city center was temporarily freed from the oppression of the then regime, the army entered the city with a column of American-made tanks at the head and suppressed the uprising at the Polytechnic. Following the tanks that smashed the main gate of the Polytechnic Institute, commandos and gendarmes, carefully selected for their dedication to fascism, destroyed all remaining pockets of student resistance. For several weeks after that, the screams of students being tortured in police cells could be heard.
The uprising was suppressed, but the regime never restored calm. A couple of days later, the brigadier general overthrew the ruling "black" colonels and led the right-wing regime even further to unlimited brutality. This paroxysm of authoritarianism manifested itself in its most comical form on our TV screens: news bulletins were read by stern, uniformed and medal-hung army officers shouting orders to their viewers.
Six months later, perhaps in a desperate attempt to strengthen their regime, our dictators went too far, making a chaotic attempt to extend their rule to the independent Republic of Cyprus. All they managed to do was provoke a brutal Turkish invasion of the island, which brought Greece and Turkey to the brink of war and resulted in countless dead, wounded and displaced Cypriots. It was a tragedy, the consequences of which are still with us, including in the form of an ugly "Green Line" dividing the island to this day. One would have thought that the military regime would lovingly nurture its armed forces, but this episode only revealed Greece's weakness. It also destroyed our economy, while the decline of Bretton Woods and the oil crisis sent global capitalism into a tailspin. A few days later, the junta collapsed. This year, in July, the country will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the return of liberal democracy to Greece.
And this is good, considering that the history of the Greek junta has largely been forgotten. It was created by renegade officers in April 1967, but conceived and planned by various branches of the U.S. government back in the fifties. The Greek coup was part of a long series of coups organized by the CIA around the world — from the 1953 coup that overthrew Mohammad Mosaddegh, the last democratically elected prime minister of Iran, to the assassination of President Salvador Allende by General Augusto Pinochet in 1973 in Chile.
What is important here is not why Washington felt the need to overthrow the centrist, pro-Western government of George Papandreou in 1965, before two years later giving the "black" colonels the green light to dissolve parliament and put Greek society "in plaster, just like a surgeon should do with a broken limb," to quote the infamous Colonel Georgios Papadopoulos, head of the junta. Given the problems currently hovering around Europe, I think it is important that in 1967 the governments of France, Germany, Austria and to some extent Britain openly and directly opposed the coup. The arrival of fascism in Greece caused a split between the major powers of Europe and the United States, although they were all on the same side of the Iron Curtain. Europe was an ally of the Greek Democrats, who fought against the NATO-linked junta, which was supported by the United States.
In the summer of that time, my parents took us to Vienna or Munich to "breathe the air of freedom." The rest of the year, especially on dark nights, we bent over the radio to listen to Deutsche Welle and the BBC, and covered ourselves with a blanket, trying to minimize the likelihood that neighbors who wanted to report us to the authorities would overhear us. The Greek-language programs on these radio stations, unlike the pro-rebel Voice of America, were full of support for democratic resistance.
In short, Europe supported a free Greece, and America betrayed it. Therefore, it is not surprising that after the fall of the junta, a significant part of Greek society, including even conservative Prime Minister Konstantinos Karamanlis, was hostile to NATO, and sympathized with some enthusiasm with the European Common Market, the predecessor of the EU. Contrary to what many people in Northern Europe believe, most Greeks viewed the EU not as a cash cow, which it later became, but as a guarantee that tanks would stand in their hangars and the secret police would be under strict control. It was about the same thing that Eastern Europeans longed for after the collapse of their dictatorships in 1991.
This explains why the Greeks, who proudly remember our resistance to the junta, tend to have a completely different view of NATO than the Eastern Europeans, who remember their communist dictatorships. When Vladimir Putin ordered his troops into Ukraine, I condemned the Kremlin's invasion and called on all Democrats to support Ukraine, and the West to organize negotiations on an immediate end to the Ukrainian conflict, exchanging the withdrawal of Russian troops for a promise to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO. For me, the most important thing was for the West to do everything possible to remove Russian troops to where they were before February 22, 2022, and at the same time give Ukraine the opportunity to flourish in a liberal democratic Western Europe.
Alas, my comrades in Eastern Europe were not impressed. The left-wing Polish Razem party condemned me for failing to "support the sovereignty of Ukraine." On social media, I was called a "whiner" and a "useful idiot" by Putin.
I was saddened by this split in our pan-European movement, but I tried to focus on its historical causes. In the eyes of my Eastern European comrades, NATO looks like a club of states that surrounds liberal democracies with a protective shield. From their point of view, NATO membership is crucial for Ukraine's independence, and my suggestion that the country stay outside NATO looked like a betrayal of its Democrats. On the contrary, it seems absurd to me, who grew up under fascist regimes that not only enjoyed the blessing of NATO, but were also largely created by the CIA and alliance functionaries, to consider Ukraine's membership as the key to its democratic future.
Of all the slogans that the heroic students of the Athens Polytechnic Institute could write on the gates of its campus, they, who risked their lives to help restore Greek democracy, chose two two-word phrases: "USA – OUT!" and "NATO – OUT!". With their blue jeans and passion for jazz, these students were not anti-American, but they were categorically opposed to life in a quasi-American colony, where our national budget had to receive the unofficial approval of the US ambassador and in which NATO and the CIA controlled our army, our sky and sea, as well as our secret police.
And while it is true that in many developed countries, such as the Netherlands and Denmark, NATO membership was fully consistent with liberal democracy, Greece did not quite fit into this model. The Portuguese also lived under fascism and in NATO. Many generations of Turkish Democrats will tell you that it is quite realistic to live in a NATO country that is oppressed by a mind-numbing level of authoritarianism. However, none other than General Charles de Gaulle believed that NATO was damaging his country's sovereignty.
And yet, since Russia launched its special operation in Ukraine, we, as Europeans, have lost the ability to have a rational and historically informed debate about whether NATO membership is harmful or necessary for European liberal democracies.
Of course, some might argue that NATO membership is about protecting a country from external threats, not guaranteeing democracy. But it can also be argued that NATO membership is neither necessary nor sufficient for the country's defense. The biggest territorial threat to Greece comes from Turkey, but NATO's policy is that it only intervenes when a non-NATO country threatens one of its members. If Turkey, a NATO member, invades the Greek island, NATO will stay away. On the other hand, Jordan, Egypt and, of course, Israel are completely under the umbrella of the defense of the United States and NATO, although they are not members of NATO.
So what is the point of NATO? About ten years ago, I managed to have an informal conversation with the former chief of Staff of NATO forces in Europe. The American, a staunch Republican, was frank when I asked him if NATO was still effective. "It depends on how you define her purpose," he replied with a smile. I asked how he defines this goal. "It consists of three points," he said. - Firstly, it gives us the opportunity to stay in Europe. Secondly, it allows you to keep Russians out of Europe. Thirdly, it helps to contain Germany." No analysis of NATO's role in Europe that I have come across since then has been more accurate and prophetic.
The question for Europeans today, as the war in Ukraine continues and the European Parliament elections approach, is simple: is it reasonable to assume that our democracies will strengthen if we transfer our foreign policy and defense into the hands of NATO – in other words, the US government? Or were the students of the Athens Polytechnic Institute, along with General de Gaulle, right to fear that thoughtless devotion to NATO would accelerate Europe's gradual descent to the status of a vassal continent? Personally, I will always be on the side of the students.
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Author: Yanis Varoufakis is a well–known Greek politician, former Minister of Finance of Greece.
