NATO’s Unity Non Existent as more States Reject US & UK Vision of Alliance

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NATO and EU leadership signed a third joint declaration on January 10 which broadened cooperation between the two blocs and declared that they play a “complementary, coherent and mutually reinforcing role.””NATO has been and remains in crisis – seeking to justify new missions to replace its original construct. It is currently poorly led, and highly politicized,” retired Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, a former analyst for the US Department of Defense, told media.

“Its own members are beginning to exercise their own power to reject the US and UK vision for NATO, as we see with Turkey, Hungary, even France and Italy.”

Even though the European Union is an economic bloc first, it has been deepening its cooperation with the military alliance NATO since 2016 when the first joint declaration between the two was inked.

The 2016 declaration outlined seven areas of cooperation between the two: countering hybrid threats; operational cooperation including at sea and on migration; cyber security and defense; defense capabilities; defense industry and research; exercises; and supporting Eastern and Southern partners’ capacity-building efforts.Two years later, in 2018, NATO and the EU signed a second Joint Declaration in Brussels calling for swift and demonstrable progress in implementation.

The third declaration has proclaimed Russia and China its major challenges, calling for “closer cooperation” between NATO and the EU, which appears to be losing its veneer of a merely economic union.

“NATO and the EU play complementary, coherent and mutually reinforcing roles in supporting international peace and security,” the declaration stipulates. “We will further mobilize the combined set of instruments at our disposal, be they political, economic or military, to pursue our common objectives to the benefit of our one billion citizens.”