NATO Article 2 - Protecting the Birth of Capital Globalization

NATO - Article 2

The Parties will contribute toward the further development of peaceful and friendly international relations by strengthening their free institutions, by bringing about a better understanding of the principles upon which these institutions are founded, and by promoting conditions of stability and well-being. They will seek to eliminate conflict in their international economic policies and will encourage economic collaboration between any or all of them.

Article two represents the private sector and was implemented after World War II to protect the borders of a half-globalized capitalist globe that would eventually expand four decades later after the end of the Cold War.  This article in the Washington Treaty (NATO) clearly shows a strong correlation between establishing a multi-national military security coalition and the protection of an international capitalist market, now known as globalization, and the western implemented international organizations such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization.  At the time of NATO initiation, international capitalism was still checked by the Soviet Union and threatened by a vulnerable war-ravished Europe that was socially and economically susceptible to anti-capitalist sentiments and communism.  It was obvious that the creation of NATO military contributions would be necessary if all of the U.S. capital that was poured into post-war Europe through the Marshall Plan was to be protected and an international market promoted [1].  At the same time the “Bretton Woods agreements of July 1944, establishing the International Monetary Fund to supervise and maintain global financial relations and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, popularly called the World Bank, to offer large-scale capital loans” [2] would begin to regulate international capitalism, and since stability is the key to capital generation and so-called free trade, it was essential for states invested in capitalism to establish a multi-national military coalition to promote and protect the market regions against communism or socialism, after all….the wretched economic conditions left on the European continent after World War I gave birth to socialism and leaders such as Stalin and Hitler.

While the IMF and World Bank were bypassed by the U.S. for implementing the Marshall Plan after World War II, an international security force such as NATO was necessary in the early stages of international capitalism to further link western member states with common capital interests through the IMF, World Bank and World Trade Organization in the spirit of Article two by “strengthening their free institutions, by bringing about a better understanding of the principles upon which these institutions are founded, and by promoting conditions of stability” [3].  It should be noted here that representation within the Bretton Woods institutions is weighted by financial contributions and not democratic vote, and therefore while the government states, comprised of tax payers, shoulder the military expenses of regional and multinational military protection for capital interests through organizations such as NATO, it is the private sector that continuously regenerates capital based on those requirements and then utilize the regenerated capital to lobby and influence representative democracies to further their interests for further regenerating capital accumulation.

International structure evolutions do not occur overnight though, and this is why Article two of the North Atlantic Treaty was so important.  This can be clearly seen after the collapse of the Soviet Union, which left the overall mission of NATO in question until the appearance of the phantom menace of borderless terrorism, as many of the post-soviet states were usurped into globalization and brought under the Bretton Woods organizations.  The first phase was directly after the collapse of the Soviet Union through IMF loans to former soviet-satellite states as “in May 1992, all 12 of the former Soviet Socialist Republics that had constituted the core of the Soviet Union, and the three Baltic states that had been forcibly annexed in 1940, joined the IMF” [4].  Looking at the World Trade Organization and the expansion of international capitalism after soviet disintegration, “Nine of the 30 countries that acceded through the end of 2012 were formerly part of the Soviet Union, and another ten either had been or remained non-market economies; seven of the 25 countries that were then in the process of accession were similarly former Soviet or Yugoslav republics” [5].  Last but not least, referring back to article two of the treaty, after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the early expansion of international capitalism, many of the same post-Soviet states demonstrated their willing-ness to become full members of NATO while others “such as Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova, Azerbaijan, Uz-bekistan (before 2005) declared themselves NATO’s allies – while some (Georgia, Ukraine) set their medium or long term goals to joining the Alliance in the future”[6]

While the main emphasis when studying NATO has always been on Article five of the treaty, NATO was a system originally implemented to protect capitalist expansion and was pivotal in establishing the transition from a bi-polar international stage to an international free market stage of trade blocs, labor exploitation and natural resource extraction established through Structural Adjustment Policies attached to IMF and World Bank loans under globalization.

[1] Aybet, Gnlnur, and Moore, Rebecca R.  2010.  NATO in Search of a Vision. (Washington, DC, USA: Georgetown University Press, 2010): p. 12

[2] Kunz, Diane.  1997.  “Marshall Plan Commemorative Section: The Marshall Plan Reconsidered: A Complex of Motives,”  Foreign Affairs (June 1997).  Accessed on January 8, 2015.  http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/53056/diane-b-kunz/marshall-plan-commemorative-section-the-marshall-plan-reconsider

[3] North Atlantic Treaty.  1949.  Transcript of the North Atlantic Treaty.  North Atlantic Treaty Organization.  Accessed January 7, 2015.  http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_17120.htm

[4] International Monetary Fund.  “After the Fall: Building Nations out of the Soviet Union”  Regional Issues, International Monetary Fund: p. 350..  Accessed on January 8, 2015.  http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/history/2012/pdf/c8.pdf

[5] World Trade Orgnaization.  “Assessions,”  The History and Future of the World Trade Organization (world Trade Organization): P. 121.  Accessed on January 8, 2015.  http://www.wto.org/english/res_e/booksp_e/historywto_04_e.pdf

[6] Parkhalina, Tatyana.  2013.  “NATO and Post-Soviet Spaces,”  Atlantic Voices 3, no. 7 (July 2013): p. 2.  Accessed January 8, 2015.  http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CC0QFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ata-sec.org%2Fdocs%2Fdoc_download%2F163-nato-and-post-soviet-space-july-2013&ei=-PWuVPKBHcKaNu6qgogB&usg=AFQjCNEIwY52M0s64Ro8MW3GuO9KiMWJYA&sig2=aetIP2My_64ClJR6vtYL0Q