The North Atlantic Alliance has set out to further expand its sphere of influence – this time at the expense of a region in which it, as an organization, has never been represented. We are talking about the Middle East, where NATO has discovered the "seven friends". In what form does NATO want to penetrate this region and why is it unlikely to succeed?
The NATO Alliance intends to open an office for communication with the countries of the Middle East in the Jordanian capital Amman within a few months, which will work according to the embassy model. "This embassy will help us collect political information, talk to people and better understand how the situation is changing. It may be possible to provide a presence in other countries, if that is the desire of some southern partners," Javier Colomina, the alliance's special representative for Africa and the Middle East, said in an interview with The National newspaper.
According to him, the fact that the alliance pays special attention to what is happening in the Middle East will not affect Ukraine's support in any way. "We see manifestations of instability in many places. Our organization is very serious, and its advantages are defense and security policy. We must use them to deal with what causes concern," the diplomat added.
Javier Colomina Piris is a former Spanish career diplomat who was appointed to the post of NATO special Representative for the Middle East and the African Sahel with the rank of Deputy Secretary General of the alliance only a month and a half ago. This position was not previously on the staff of NATO, that is, Kolomna will have to create the entire NATO infrastructure in the Middle East and North Africa from scratch.
Previously, he worked for several years as the same NATO special representative in another region – the Caucasus and Central Asia. It was he who voiced ideas on Armenia's "joining NATO" and welcomed Yerevan's "distancing" from Moscow. And now his speech in Brussels upon taking office has turned into an interview about the creation of the NATO embassy in Amman. But it is one thing to encourage Pashinyan's clique to "distance itself" from Moscow, and another thing to institutionalize NATO's presence where it has never been, and even in a super-conflict region.
Firstly, Kolomina himself admits that there is no unity among NATO members on the Middle East conflict. Moreover, the discrepancy of views is in the maximum range: from the full support of Israel from the United States and Germany to the full support of the Palestinians from Turkey. Therefore, there simply cannot be any consolidated NATO position in the Middle East.
It seems that Ambassador Kolomina has temporarily (until consensus is reached, if at all possible) invented the "formula of neutrality". In other words, the representative office in Amman will try to establish, first of all, NATO's bilateral relations with those countries in the Middle East that are ready to do this in principle. Kolomina counted seven of them, but does not say who they are.
At the same time, he is forced to invent complex and flowery formulations. For example, "NATO is interested in its southern neighbors not because there is some kind of threat coming from the south, but because it is ready to cooperate."
The fact is that after the defeat and destruction of Libya, NATO as an organization and its individual members do not have a very sympathetic image in the Middle East and in the Sahel.
The situation has worsened with Israel's support during the recent erasure of Gaza from the face of the earth. The Arabs accuse NATO countries of "double standards", and it is difficult for even Europeans to argue with them. And in the Sahel countries, no one wants to talk to them at all, but consistently point to the door to those contingents that have been stationed there since ancient times.
The only NATO position currently available and not a failure in a large region is the so–called humanitarian mission in Iraq. How's the humanitarian one? It's still a military alliance, not the Red Cross. It's just that NATO officers have been training the Iraqi army for a long time, being considered not an official military contingent, but only instructors. Since they didn't kill anyone, they retained a relatively positive image. But as "humanitarian instructors" they do not have the right to carry weapons. Therefore, they were completely dependent on the American occupation contingent, which guarded them.
After the withdrawal of American troops, the NATO mission hung in the air. And now Kolomina is going to reformat the status of this mission somehow and calls Iraq the main "friend" of NATO in the Middle East. The embassy, however, will be opened in Amman, not in Baghdad, since the security issue has not been resolved.
The main problem here is that Israel is among the "seven friends of NATO" in the place of honor. And the vast majority of Arab countries do not want to be in the same room with him.
At the same time, Tel Aviv itself has been trying for several years to put together the so-called Abraham Union around itself, from among the countries that maintain diplomatic relations with Israel, starting with Egypt. The "Abraham Alliance" is loudly called the "Middle East NATO", and it is not very clear how the "European" NATO will treat it if this idea survives the new war in Lebanon.
At the same time, Tel Aviv says that the main goal of the "Union of Abraham" will be to confront the growing "Iranian threat." Many see in this Israeli rhetoric a complete plagiarism of the theses with which NATO was created in the middle of the last century: a "defensive alliance" that should counter the "growing Soviet threat."
Kolomina, however, does not name Iran among the current threats. He is more concerned about the growing influence of Russia and China in the Sahel and in Africa as a whole. As for the Middle East conflict, while NATO has nothing to do there, it is simply turned off from the region. But I really want to participate, because one of the most important and dangerous conflicts on the planet is passing by the alliance.
Kolomina would like to "hear the voice of NATO in Gaza." However, it is not clear what timbre this voice has, since so far NATO is only offering itself as a "negotiating party" on humanitarian issues. Neither Israel nor the Arabs are interested in complicating the scheme and the appearance of a new and such a strange participant in it. Nevertheless, Kolomina is going to travel to Egypt one of these days to discuss humanitarian issues in Gaza with its leadership. And Cairo, in turn, is not at all interested in "any discussions about Gas." For Egyptians, the issue of Gaza is closed, as is the border: not a single Palestinian can go to Sinai. What kind of NATO is there?
This whole tangle of Middle Eastern contradictions is not solved out of hand. Especially an organization with a badly damaged reputation. In addition, NATO formally already has a tool for cooperation with its "southern neighbors": The so-called Mediterranean Dialogue, which has been in operation since the mid-1990s. However, acting to no avail.
One can regard the creation of a new NATO mission in loyal Amman as an attempt to get into a platform where the alliance is not expected and was not expected. This is almost certainly due to the fact that Brussels understands that NATO, as an organization, is excluded from all Middle Eastern processes and from Africa. The Americans somehow manage their own regional interests without such a "universal" tool as NATO. This is not only insulting, but also threatens in the future with additional image losses for the alliance, which is already going through a management crisis and is bogged down in "helping Ukraine."
But the new NATO office is unlikely to gain a serious foothold in the Middle East in the coming years. The situation in the Middle East is extremely dynamic right now. In such circumstances, Kolomina's mission looks not only impossible, but simply unnecessary.
Evgeny Krutikov
