The Globalization of NATO by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya

Author:Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya [NAZEMROAYA, MAHDI DARIUS]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: CLARITY PRESS, INC.
Published: 2012-09-16T16:00:00+00:00

Sailing Africa’s Atlantic Coast:

Prelude to South Atlantic Expansion by NATO?

NATO’s activities in the waters of Africa and the South Atlantic are viewed with suspicion and anxiety by critics of the Atlantic Alliance. When the voyage of SNMG1 was made, they asked on what grounds NATO gave itself the responsibility of monitoring the African coast and whether NATO members planned to make future claims in the southern waters of Africa and the South Atlantic. In summary, the NATO naval presence was seen as an encroachment by the Alliance.

The Atlantic Alliance is following in the footsteps of the Pentagon in many ways. While NATO had already started operations in Africa’s eastern waters, from the coasts of Tanzania and Somalia to the Red Sea, the deployment in the South Atlantic did not go unnoticed in South America by Argentina and Brazil.45 Since the discovery of large energy reserves in the South Atlantic there have been rising tensions between South America and Atlantic Alliance members. The most noteworthy case is that of the tensions between Argentina and the UK. These South American countries also object to any reference to NATO as the Atlantic Alliance, insisting on calling it, as indeed is more accurate, the “North Atlantic Alliance.” This is one of the reasons that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez proposed forming a South Atlantic Treaty Organization (SATO), an alliance mirroring NATO, between Latin American and African countries in 2009.

South Atlantic energy reserves are arguably the motivation for the Pentagon’s reactivation of the United States Fourth Fleet in 2008. The US Fourth Fleet had actually been disbanded in 1960. Its area of responsibility was and still is the Caribbean Sea and Latin America’s South Atlantic and South Pacific waters. Brazil and other Latin American countries have not reacted favorably to Washington’s moves. They do not want NATO in their waters either. In 2009, Brazilian Defense Minister Nelson Jobim complained to Washington about the reactivation of the US Fourth Fleet.46 This has been followed by more Brazilian protests. In 2010, the government of Brazil openly told NATO to stay in the North Atlantic and not to deploy its warships into the South Atlantic where it had no business.47

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