Of late, the issue is being increasingly talked about in some strategic circles in India. The question being raised is about India’s stand vis-à-vis NATO. Will India be joining the military alliance? At present, the US is the leader of the largely European NATO, where 32 nations, democracies all have voluntarily agreed to place their Armed Forces under the strategic command of the USA. Will the world’s largest democracy agree to do so?
At present, the debate is academic. There is no NATO in Asia, and the question of India joining or not does not arise. NATO is basically a European military alliance, set up post World War II to avoid another catastrophe that befell these nations for almost six years when Hitler’s tanks overran most of them. The overwhelming sentiment after the War was: ‘never again’. Though Hitler’s Nazi Germany was trounced comprehensively, the Soviet behaviour ~ a war-time ally ~ post the War turned unbelievably perfidious.
Almost overnight, the anti-Hitler ally and professed friend Stalin, the Soviet dictator turned a murderous foe. After the fall of Hitler, he supplanted Nazi tyranny with Communist tyranny in many of these hapless European nations. NATO, a formal military alliance set up by European nations (plus Canada) with the US in strategic command, has served its original objective admirably. For three quarters of a century after World War II, it has ensured peace in Europe. Blatant Soviet expansionism was effectively checkmated.
Advertisement
The NATO members were all established democracies, a commendable League of Democracies ~ as Dr Kissinger described it. They had all imbibed the lessons of their recent history well. The choice of the US as their leader was both automatic and obvious. It was the military leader of the European Allies during the War and saved the day for democracy in Europe. And not only there but also in Asia, where........