NATO - my humble view

I think that an ideal solution would be either to completely dissolve NATO (maybe I am wrong, but my impression was that in the beginning of 1990, even Vaclav Havel had been promoting the dissolution of NATO and the conversion of the armament industry to peaceful production), or to admit into NATO absolutely all the European countries including Russia. If neither of these two ideal solutions are possible at present, than the best next thing would probably be to leave this relict from the cold war unchanged for the time being. What I do not like the most about the gradual expansion of NATO is the fact that some of the countries that would not be invited into NATO at present, would feel slighted (or would have the pretext to feel slighted) however well you would try to explain it to them, or even feel threatened.

I do not think that there is such a precipitous difference between Central Europe and Balkan as claimed by Gwynne Dyer (who claimed that Balkan is a different world where tyranny, violence and ethnic conflicts are endemic), at least not in the amount of violence that these two regions were able to generate in the past. Do not forget that so far nobody in Europe (perhaps with the exception of Stalin) has outdone (and hopefully will never outdo) the horrors that originated right there in Central Europe, in Germany, during World War Two. The amount of (unofficial) violence used also during our own ethnic cleansing of Sudeten after the war may had not been much less than what accompanied the recent civil war in Bosna (perhaps a historian who has at hand the detailed numerical data should try to compare it more precisely). What has been going on recently in the former Yugoslavia may have been just the aftermath and the last echoes of hundreds of years of external interference and competition of various foreign powers for influence in this region.

In any case, Greece and Turkey, whose long-lasting mutual conflict has not yet been completely solved, are also Balkan countries. That it has not turned into a military conflict in recent decades may be just thanks to the fact that both countries are members of NATO. Therefore, for the pacification of the whole Balkan region, it might really be beneficial if all the countries of this region became the members of the same organization requiring strict discipline.

My main point is that during the European integration, emphasis should not be on military solutions and on arming a select group of countries against some unspecified danger, or just because somebody wants to make profit by selling them arms. Emphasis should be on steps in which all European countries could participate equally, given their present economic capabilities, so that exactly the same feeling of security and mutual trust is created in all of them. At the same time, continuous negotiations on simultaneous arms reduction should be conducted, so that the means wasted on defence could be used for more reasonable purposes.

Even if people directly connected with arms production, or even whole countries specializing in arms export, may get rich on the production and development of new arms, from the point of view of the whole World, everything put into the arms production is wasted. Beside that, if new arms are developed, there will always be generals who would want to test the new arms in field conditions, and will find some pretext for another small local war. In addition to the money wasted on the production of arms, further values are destroyed during the use of these arms.

For example, at a time when in Czechia there is not enough money for education and the health system, and when there is no enemy in view nowhere on the far horizons, it is beyond my comprehension that somebody would think about buying new expensive fighter planes.

Some time ago, I read an article about how a fantastic experience it is to sit in the cockpit of a supersonic fighter plane. How what their pilots feel borders almost on ecstasy - it looked to me almost as the description of a state induced by narcotics. When reading it, it occurred to me that the present-day nations actually devote a large portion of their budget to financing a personal hobby (bordering perhaps on something of a drug-addiction type) of a few tens up to a few thousands (depending on the size of the country) of their citizens - the pilots of supersonic fighter planes. I know: modern fighter planes are the miracles of technology, piloting them requires a lot of knowledge and courage; but what all the taxpayers who have to pay for all that, get back from it? Beside a few more or less police actions of the superpowers, these machines are rarely used in action. Wouldn't it be simpler if we aimed at an agreement to reduce, and finally completely eliminate this type of arms? (This is of course true also about all arms of mass destruction, but the fighter planes are an especially expensive proposition where one could perhaps start.) There are so many other more useful areas of humam activity where it would be beneficial to apply the miracles of modern technology and the personal courage.