Afrasianet - Israel hosted an unprecedented meeting, held in the Negev desert, attended by the foreign ministers of the United States of America, Egypt, Morocco, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, in addition to the Israeli foreign minister, as the host and the invitee, in a precedent that is the first of its kind in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Israel has reportedly deployed a radar system in several countries in the Middle East, including the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. These moves are widely believed to be aimed at creating a military alliance that some have not hesitated to call "Middle Eastern NATO."
Before we get to the heart of this topic, let's first look at NATO itself, as the frame of reference for interpreting what is happening in the region.
NATO is an abbreviation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), meaning that we are dealing with a military alliance created by an international treaty concluded in 1949 between a number of countries on both sides of the Atlantic, including two American countries located on its eastern bank, the United States and Canada, and ten other countries, all of which belong to the European continent on its west bank, hence the name "NATO."
The reason for the creation of this alliance is due to the desire of the United States to contain the Soviet Union, its former ally in World War II, after it sensed its threat to its global ambitions in the post-war period, through a collective security system that links it to its European allies, away from the global collective security system that it included in the UN Charter.
There is no doubt that the decision to establish this alliance, regardless of the debate that was raised about the legitimacy of its establishment from the perspective of its consistency With the text and spirit of the UN Charter, he reflected an American vision that aimed to enable the United States to participate in the leadership of the world order, by working to contain the Soviet Union, on the one hand, and placing Western Europe under its sole hegemony militarily (through NATO) and economically (through the Marshall Plan).
When the Soviet Union decided in 1955 to respond to this hostile move by creating a counter-military alliance of Eastern European countries, called the Warsaw Pact, the world was institutionally divided into two conflicting camps with a "Cold War" that lasted for four consecutive decades.
However, when the Cold War came to an end, with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the Warsaw Pact dissolving itself, NATO did not make such a move, as expected, because the United States wanted it to become its main instrument in the Enabling it to monopolize the world order.
The alliance did not only maintain its survival and continuity, but decided to expand and expand eastward to include all the countries of Eastern Europe and the former republics of the Soviet Union, which happened through a series of waves of expansion, the most important of which took place in 1999 and 2004, which led to the increase of its membership from 12 countries at the time of its establishment to 30 countries today.
In terms of legal form, NATO appears to be merely an international organization of collective self-defense, in line with the text of Article 51 of the UN Charter, which is implied by Article 5 of the Charter itself: "The Parties agree that any attack or armed aggression against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered aggression against all of them.
Accordingly, they agree that, in the event of such armed aggression, each Party, in implementation of Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, shall provide support and assistance to the party or parties under attack by taking self-action, in cooperation with the other parties, without delay, including the use and assertion of force of arms, which it deems necessary to restore security to the North Atlantic region.
To inform the Security Council, without delay, of every attack and armed aggression and all countermeasures taken against it. The measures shall be suspended, once the Security Council has taken the necessary steps to restore international peace and security."
In fact, however, it is no longer the case, but has become the military arm of U.S. foreign policy, as evidenced by:
1- The United States refused to dissolve it, despite the end of the Cold War and the "Warsaw" Pact dissolving itself.
2- Insistence on expansion and expansion to the east, despite the absence of military necessity for this.
3- Its use during the past three decades in military operations that cannot be considered self-defense, by intervening in the conflicts that broke out in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, the Gulf of Aden, and Libya. etc., and often without the permission or authorization of the United Nations.
How do we understand, in the context of the above, the significance of the current talk about the creation of an Arab or Middle Eastern NATO?
There is no doubt that the United States is keen to continue its unilateral hegemony over the world, and it has great interests in the Middle East that require protection, especially since the war in Ukraine is reviving the atmosphere of the Cold War, but it is more likely that it has not and will not propose to the Arab and Middle Eastern countries to conclude an international collective defense treaty that includes mutual guarantees for all parties.
It is aware that this region of the world is full of contradictions and conflicts and there are no alliances in it, hence its preference for a mechanism Bilateral relations as a tool to defend its interests in this turbulent region of the world, especially in light of what happened in the 1950s, during the experience of the Baghdad Pact, which fell despite the fact that it did not join it, and preferred to lead it from behind through Britain.
Therefore, I do not believe that they will accept contractual guarantees to any Arab country, and I completely rule out that the goal of the current moves in the region is to conclude an international treaty to establish a military alliance with the countries of the region, similar to the treaty that established NATO with European countries.
It is just that the United States wants to use the momentum generated by the so-called Abraham AccordsTo help fully integrate Israel into the region, by extending the scope of normalization with Arab states to military aspects, which is, in my estimation, extremely dangerous in itself, and perhaps even far more dangerous to Arab interests than the establishment of a contractual military alliance in which the United States participates.
I have no doubt that moving Israel from the U.S. Command Area in Europe to the Central Command Area responsible for the Middle East is a step in the same direction.
It is useful to remember that U.S. goals in the Middle East are limited to:
1- Maintaining Israel's security by ensuring its military superiority over the countries of the region as a whole.
2- Maintaining the security of energy, its supply and prices, in a way that guarantees the economic interests of the company and its allies.
3. Cooperation with the ruling Arab regimes in the region, but in proportion to the level of support they provide to achieve the two previous goals. Otherwise, there is no indication, near or far, that the United States is ready to provide collective contractual security guarantees to the countries of the region, especially to the Arab states.
This is the lesson of history, so when will the ruling regimes in the Arab countries absorb it?
The involvement of Arab countries in a military alliance with the Zionist entity would be submission to hell with chains of gold, and to march towards disaster with open eyes.
