No, NATO, even in a distributed form, will never be multi-polar. There isn’t a European contender for US hegemony. What I mean by balkanized is that the USA’s strategy of blowback (building up terrorist cells, let them run wild, go in and fight them again) may be coming to Europe (build little transnational militaries, let them fight, justify intervention).
A balkanized NATO would look like small regional hybrid command centers that employ private military contractors (in true neoliberal form) and since it’ll be in Europe they’ll be led by the current evolution of the fascist leave-behind armies created during Operation Gladio. That means distributed nuclear-armed private fascists given cover, legitimacy, and propaganda support by socdems and outright neofascist governments (who don’t get their hands dirty). This would be the next evolution of the white nationalist decentralization playbook that has been happening in the USA for the last 30 years, which itself was modeled after the leave-behind program of Operation Gladio, so it makes sense it would bound back at the next level of abstraction.
I feel like if the Ukrainian situation destabilises, and it’s hard to imagine that Ukraine is currently in a state of equilibrium right now or that it will persist in the long-term, it’s not a wild overreach of imagination to assume that there’s a possibility of some/all of the armed, trained, blooded fascist (para)militaries might pack up from the frontlines in the east and decide to head westward to stir up trouble.
Am I saying it’s a safe bet that it’ll happen? Absolutely not.
Am I saying that there’s a European Mujahideen phenomenon just waiting to happen if the conditions are right? Definitely.
No, NATO, even in a distributed form, will never be multi-polar. There isn’t a European contender for US hegemony. What I mean by balkanized is that the USA’s strategy of blowback (building up terrorist cells, let them run wild, go in and fight them again) may be coming to Europe (build little transnational militaries, let them fight, justify intervention).
A balkanized NATO would look like small regional hybrid command centers that employ private military contractors (in true neoliberal form) and since it’ll be in Europe they’ll be led by the current evolution of the fascist leave-behind armies created during Operation Gladio. That means distributed nuclear-armed private fascists given cover, legitimacy, and propaganda support by socdems and outright neofascist governments (who don’t get their hands dirty). This would be the next evolution of the white nationalist decentralization playbook that has been happening in the USA for the last 30 years, which itself was modeled after the leave-behind program of Operation Gladio, so it makes sense it would bound back at the next level of abstraction.
I feel like if the Ukrainian situation destabilises, and it’s hard to imagine that Ukraine is currently in a state of equilibrium right now or that it will persist in the long-term, it’s not a wild overreach of imagination to assume that there’s a possibility of some/all of the armed, trained, blooded fascist (para)militaries might pack up from the frontlines in the east and decide to head westward to stir up trouble.
Am I saying it’s a safe bet that it’ll happen? Absolutely not.
Am I saying that there’s a European Mujahideen phenomenon just waiting to happen if the conditions are right? Definitely.