The NATO Summit from Bruxelles- more consensus or more tension?
Adriean PÂRLOGThere are only some days left until the NATO Summit from Bruxelles, on 11-12th of July. Its agenda raised a lot of controversies and became the attention of the public, especially after the last events in which the US president, Donald Trump, was involved.
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We mainly talk about every aspect related to the progresses in Syria, the problematical of the Korean Peninsula, the retraction from the Iran Treaty, the nuclear issue, the problems related to the refugees, the relations between US, Europe and China regarding taxes and the perspective of a true commercial war. We are talking also about the possible american pressure against big states from Europe regarding budgetary allocation for defence and endowing, the allied command structures issue, as well as the redeployed forces from the East Allied area.
The complexity of the Summit’s agenda will be offered by the latest progresses, not at all convergent, in the bilateral relations as the ones between the US and Germany, the US-EU, Turkey-EU, Turkey- the US, Canada-US, Italy-US, the Group Countries from Visegrad-EU, Great Britain-EU, etc. The majority of these factors are influenced by the direct or indirect presence of the element called the Russian Federation and its interests. The methods in which the participants at the meeting in Bruxelles will get to balance the main issues that are about to happen, will be a major indicator for the Alliance’s future and its stature as a global power.
All the subjects above are obviously complex, with different national understandings from country to country, and also with issues coming from the current tensional political state in the US. Almost all the initiatives that president Donald Trump had are seen as hostile by the democrats, that show an incredible virulence since the american elections moment, in November 2016, suspected for underground arrangements, and also for a possible support coming from the Russian Federation to Trump’s team.
A proof of these beliefs stays in the current comebacks in the mass media of the most important political events that occurred in 2016: Brexit, the military coup tentative in Turkey, but also the american presidential elections, all of these having in common some suspicious interferences still unsolved.
In the 29th of June edition, the New York Times newspaper published some new information about the recently appeared details regarding the involvement of the Russian Federation in the referendum results of the Great Britain, through the support gave to one of the main sponsors of the Brexit group movement. It is actually Aaron Banks, whose wife is Russian. The public affirmations regarding the involvements of the British business man in the referendum were rejected by Banks who ironized publicly the references of his 6 hours lunch with the Russian ambassador in Great Britain, Alexander V. Yakovenko, 8 months before June 2916, as well as the connections regarding his enrollment car number, X MI5 SPY (with obvious links to the well-known MI5 informational service in Britain). At the end of the lunch, the Russian ambassador would have offered as a gift to the British millionaire a bottle of vodka, especially made for Stalin. The supplementary information, that recently appeared, indicated more visits of Banks and his closest team members at the Russian embassy in London. Moreover, it also appeared information related to the British business man, who sponsored the pro-Brexit movement with almost 8 million pounds (the biggest donation in the history of Great Britain, for events similar with the referendum) and that in the allowance of the event in the summer of 2016, the Russian part would have mediated investment projects in Guinea, in diamond digging area, among with the Russian company Alrosa, and consolidation projects of 6 mines in Russia where gold digs are. Three weeks after the referendum results announcement in Great Britain, the Russian government sold on bourse units at Alrosa, at lower prices than the ones on the market, even when the units prices were officially growing. Among the units’ buyers at Alrosa stands James Mellon, a British business man that introduced Banks to Nigel Farage.
Moreover, similar investigations made in the US show that Donald Trump also supported the retraction of Great Britain from the EU through mutual support agreements with the business men in Great Britain. In his investigation, regarding the Russian involvement at the american presidential elections, Robert S. Muller, had some information, gained from the sharing messages between Banks and Russian diplomats, regarding businesses with gold and diamonds. In November 12th, 2016, four days after the american elections, the new american president met with Banks in Trump Tower. After the meeting with the new president, at his comeback in London, Aaron Banks met with the Russian ambassador and it seems like they talked details about the meeting with Trump.
About these information, the democrat congressman, Adam B. Schiff, declared: “what we saw indicates the existence of some extraordinary parallelisms between the Russian interventions in Brexit and the Trump company”.
Schiff’s affirmations seem to be rejected by Vladimir Putin itself, who during the discussions with John Bolton, in Moscow, at the end of June, assured Trump’s counsellor that Russia never interfered in the american electoral process from November 2016. How much of this is true, history will show us.
Turkey probably, through the voice of the re-elected president Erdogan, will be one of the most vocal presence at the high reunion from 11-12th of July, especially after his new statute, gained after the constitutional adjustments.
He will underline again the country’s wish to make possible its commitments, but will also raise a series of pre-conditions, like the concerns regarding the syrian issue and Turkey’s right to make everything possible for a secure border with Syria and Iraq, simultaneous with diminishing the Kurdish danger and assuring a new correct management for the millions of refugees that are on Turkey’s territory. President Erdogan will probably not forget that, in 2017, Germany and other EU state members rejected the possibility of holding the NATO Summit in Turkey, neither the tense relations with the US after the military coup from July 2016. The Ankara leader will approach, balanced, with a logic that’s specific to political tensions, the strategical military plans issue of endowment, especially those related to F-35 fight planes and S 400 anti-aerial defence system.
If after this information we also add what most of the press agencies announced, that Trump would have offered his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, a preferential commercial relation with the US, if France will retire from EU, at which we add the partial retraction of the american army forces deployed in Germany, we can understand why the NATO Summit in Bruxelles is so important. Probably in Bruxelles France will play an important role comparing with what happened at the previous summits, as president Macron treated really calm the tension moments from the past 2 years.
In these circumstances, and also with the latest reunion of G7 in Canada, where even though they were talking about a comeback at the G8 format, they actually came to the idea of an G6, which definitely showed a US disengagement.
A similar situation registered in 2003, when some of the allies refused to participate in what would have been a “Will Coalition” (for some “Wish Coalition”) in Iraq. The american administration continues to see as less trustable some bilateral projects materialized in Europe, as the one regarding the north hydrocarbons, which exclusively links the Russian Federation to Germany or EU’s protectionist-commercial policy, which makes it comparable with China.
Finally, some rhetorical questions:
Is the NATO Summit a preparatory phase for the Donald Trump- Vladimir Putin meeting in 16th July, 2018, held in Finland?
At the end of the 11-16 July, 2018 interval, seen as one of strategical confrontations, who will win and who will lose? The US, EU, China or the Russian Federation?
