Are we on the verge of a global hot war?

SÜLEYMAN SEYFI ÖĞÜN,  AA  MONDAY, 04 JULY 2022

The last NATO Summit made our public more interested in terms of Türkiye's reservations about Sweden and Finland's membership applications and it’s perfectly understandable since this was one of the most critical items on the table at the NATO Summit. However, NATO's conceptual shift was overshadowed by this issue.

I'm not going to go into details. But it seems that after Biden came to power, the world was set on a dangerous course. With the slogan "America is back", Democrats in the U.S. rolled up their sleeves and got to work. NATO, which was weakened during the Trump era, was brought back into focus. Russia and China were subjected to comprehensive policies of hostility. Dissenting voices from the EU have been suppressed. Using the Russia-Ukraine war as an excuse, the EU joined NATO with the help of the current shortsighted political elites. At the last NATO Summit, this process has been deepened by large-scale armament programs involving Pacific powers such as Japan and Australia. According to some, the world has come back to the conditions of 1914. Many observers say that a new Cold War climate has been ushered in. Actually, this finding doesn't seem all that accurate. The Cold War was built on its own norms and codes in order to mutually eliminate the risk of a possible hot war. What is happening today, on the contrary, represents a rapid departure to a hot war.

In my previous columns, I pointed out that this was the necessary result of a systemic crisis linked directly to capitalism. This systemic crisis spans the whole world, starting from the U.S. and including China. The question is: Will the world find a solution to this problem? Let's ask it another way: Will the will of human beings be able to stop this course despite the imposition of deepening material necessities?

Now let's ask the following question: In terms of material conditions, the present state of the world can be compared to 1914. Can we say the same things in terms of non-material conditions?

Christopher Clarke's famous book “The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914” explains humanity being in a state of denial as it grapples with the somnambulism syndrome as the war is raging. Against such a possibility; This is the state of semi-consciousness called "Nope, no it cannot be". Before the Russia-Ukraine war, he asked Ukrainians in the street, “Will there be a war?” The majority who were asked the question by reports answered, “No, how can such a thing happen? We and the Russians are brothers”. And then we saw what happened next.

The state of sleepwalking in the face of the possibility of war can be explained by the reflex of dismissing this possibility from the mind. This reflex indicates that humanity has no desire to fight. But it's also a childlike reflex. Just as it is childish to believe that when things go wrong in the economy, the "invisible hand will step in" to eliminate imbalances, it is just as childish to believe that when the possibility of war arises, invisible logic will step in and eliminate this possibility.

The lords of the militaristic economy and military strategies are, of course, always prepared for war. Political strategists, on the other hand, are two-sided. On the one hand, they are prepared for war; On the other, they make an effort to avoid this possibility. The sleepwalking public, on the other hand, does not believe that war will break out easily in their daily hustle and bustle. But one spark is enough to turn everything upside down.

What is frightening today is that the political spheres, strangely enough, do not care about commenting on the possibility of war and excluding it. The recent NATO Summit makes this clear. What has been done develops on the axis of preparation for war, simply by adding fuel to the fire. It's a purely political eclipse. In 1914, the global left had developed a right-wing anti-militarism. Today, the left is experiencing the most disgraceful phase in its history. Its ties with the working classes are severed. Leftist ideas work as a "middle-class opium." It is consoled by cultural and environmental issues, which they have turned into an object of pity, and detached themselves from their social and economic contexts. These disconnections of context eventually resulted in warmongering in the Greens. Considering the current loss of rationality, I can say that the war has broken out forty times so far. The only reason that stops this is the looming threat of nuclear weapons. I'm not so sure about that anymore. The most advanced stage of insanity is the state of utter madness. The latest NATO Summit indicates that we are on the verge of something quite similar…

 Globalizing NATO for 2nd cold war: analysis

We are entering a period of 'Cold War II' that will encompass Asia-Pacific, even polar regions

AA  SUNDAY  03 JULY 2022

The messages given by the heads of state and government on NATO's transformation at the 31st official meeting of the alliance on June 14, 2021 in Brussels were implemented in this year's summit in Madrid.

- A paradigm shift in NATO

NATO, whose existence began to be questioned after the end of the first Cold War, had already assigned a global role to itself at the Washington Summit in 1999. The terror attack targeting the US on Sept. 11, 2001, the effects of the 2008 global economic crisis and optimism that reached Russia as a strategic partner in 2010 delayed the action toward the transformation of the alliance.

The inertia reached such a level that in 2019, French President Emmanuel Macron claimed that “NATO is brain dead.”

"Facing the war in Ukraine, Türkiye and France are more committed than ever to the unity and power of the Transatlantic alliance,” the French president said after the NATO summit in Madrid on June 29 regarding the geopolitical climate changed by the Russia-Ukraine war.

Although it was stated at the Madrid Summit that there was a transition to a new strategic concept, it would not be out of place to say that this is a more radical paradigm shift than it seems in terms of the alliance.

With the participation of the heads of government and state of Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and South Korea, it has been confirmed that the alliance will go beyond its Transatlantic identity and wave a flag in the Trans-Pacific geography by 2023.

The place occupied by the People's Republic of China in the new strategic concept document is also proof of with which target the Trans-Pacific identity was created.

Russia, which is mentioned 17 times in the 16-page document, and the People's Republic of China, mentioned 10 times, are in the first two places. While the term “terrorism” is used seven times, Africa is mentioned four times, the Middle East three, the Balkans and Afghanistan once each.

- NATO's journey from Europe to Asia

When Washington established NATO in 1949 to stop the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics), whose expansionist ambitions were detected, the purpose shared with the public was that Western Europe would not again face a totalitarian threat like Nazi Germany.

The threat became concrete in a short time -- first as the USSR and later as the Warsaw Pact. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the dissolution of the USSR in 1991 were not enough for NATO's mission to come to an end. Developments such as the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the Yugoslav Civil War served to preserve the belief in the existence of a global military alliance.

Although the Sept. 11 attacks and the global fight against terrorism reinforced this need, the turning point for the future of the alliance was developments in the global economic competition that brought the US and China face-to-face.

In messages given first by then-US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2011 and a year later by US President Barack Obama during their visits to Asian countries, Washington declared that the "honeymoon" with the Beijing administration had come to an end.

Beginning in 2012, the US navy began to have a greater presence in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea. The first step of the strategic concept change in Madrid was taken in May 2018. Visiting the Pearl Harbor naval base in Hawaii on May 30, 2018, US Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis announced that the name of the "United States Pacific Command" had been changed to "United States Indo-Pacific Command." This was the first concrete step in the construction of NATO's Trans-Pacific identity. The operation to encircle China had begun.

- Chinese-Russian strategic relations, Ukraine War

The victory of Joe Biden, the Democratic Party's candidate in the presidential election, in 2020, brought the US declaration that it would again take the lead in the struggle for global leadership. While the Biden administration's claim to leadership inflamed the unipolar-multipolar debate, it deepened the strategic relations between China and Russia.

The increasing tensions centered on Ukraine in 2021 caused China to enter the alliance's radar at the NATO Summit held in Brussels that same year. The Biden administration has not only targeted China-Russia strategic relations. Along with 2021, the policy of rapprochement with the Beijing administration, built by then-US President Richard Nixon and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger in 1972, by pushing Taiwan aside, became history.

Another concrete step toward the containment of China at the military level was the declaration of the US-UK and Australia alliance, AUKUS, in September 2021.

Although it was initially perceived as a submarine tender that the US threw at its ally, France, through the transfer of nuclear submarine technology to Australia, it was clear that the target of the alliance was China. The attempts by the US and UK to include Japan in AUKUS for a more effective siege against China were also reflected in the press.

The Ukraine War, which started on Feb. 24, clearly drew front lines. Sanctions put into effect after the war revealed that the West intends to defeat Russia not only militarily but also economically and politically, and to come to China's doorstep by changing the Putin administration.

The parties said their last words in June 2022.

At the 25th St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Russian President Vladimir Putin said they will not allow the unipolar world order that the US wants to establish and that European countries will be harmed by sanctions imposed on the country.

Similar messages were echoed by Xi Jinping at the 14th BRICS Summit, hosted online by China on June 23. Arguing that the reality of the multipolar world order cannot be prevented, Xi warned the US-led West by saying: "Those who try to politicize the global economy and use their dominance in the international financial and monetary systems as leverage and weapons for themselves will eventually harm themselves and others, and bring disaster to the whole world."

While addressing the leaders of China, India, Brazil, and South Africa at the summit, Putin argued that the US-led Western world is trying to make the whole world pay for its macroeconomic mistakes. The Western world responded harshly to calls by China and Russia for a multipolar world order, first at the G7 summit in Germany and then at the NATO Summit in Spain, supported by new economic sanctions and military measures.

- NATO's Trans-Pacification process has begun

In the new strategic concept of NATO, which includes a paradigm shift at its core, China was included for the first time as a source of "threat."

Expressing the Beijing administration as a state "trying to overthrow the rules-based international order" indicates that the alliance can put into effect several measures on an unprecedented scale against the country.

A statement saying "the malicious hybrid and cyber operations of the People's Republic of China and its confrontational rhetoric targets the allies and harm the security of the alliance," is among the accusations targeting China in the strategic concept document. In the strategic concept document, it was stated that cyber and hybrid attacks could activate Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty for the total protection of allies.

2023 will be the beginning of a period when NATO will not be satisfied with making an extraordinary build-up in Europe.

We are entering a period in the Indo-Pacific region where NATO navies will display the flag, regional military alliances such as AUKUS will engage more closely with NATO, and the second cold war will encompass the Asia-Pacific and even the north and south polar regions.

By Mehmet A. Kanci

- The writer is a Türkiye-based journalist, who writes analyses on Turkish foreign policy.

 Norway strike could cut gas output by 13% next week

Strike could result in daily oil output loss of 130,000 barrels and drop in gas production of 292,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day

AA  MONDAY 04 JULY 2022

A planned strike by Norway's oil and gas sector workers is poised to have a substantial impact on gas exports, with losses of about 13% of the country’s daily gas exports, the Norwegian Oil and Gas Association (NOG) announced on Monday.

NOG said the Lederne union had already given notice that it will take 74 members out on strike on Equinor's Gudrun, Oseberg South and Oseberg East offshore platforms and that operations would shut down as a result of the stoppage.

The association also confirmed that a further extension of the strike had been notified for July 6, when 117 members of the Heidrun, Aasta Hansteen and Kristin offshore fields will go on strike.

"The result will be a daily loss of oil output totaling 130,000 barrels, while gas production will fall by 292,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day or 13 percent of the total for the Norwegian continental shelf (NCS)," NOG said.

These reductions are a consequence of Lederne calling a strike after it became known on June 30 that the union’s members had rejected a settlement for the offshore collective pay agreements negotiated through mediation earlier in June.

Lederne has operator-employed members in the following companies: Equinor, ConocoPhillips Norge, Neptune Energy Norge AS and OKEA ASA.