Nato Allies with Brics and EU Defense Extended to the Balkans: Crosetto’s Proposal

The West, old and tired, ‘dances on the edge of the precipice. And it seems not to understand, not to react, not to elaborate.’ Guido Crosetto, who had commented on the US National Security Strategy yesterday (‘Trump simply made it clear that Europe is of little or no use to him’ in the competition with China), today shared his recipe to awaken our part of the world in an interview with Avvenire, based on the need to dialogue with the powers that have been on the opposite side of the barricade until now. ‘By 2100, the Italian population will plummet to 35 million inhabitants,’ the Defense Minister emphasized, ’40 percent less than the current population, while Africa will reach 3.7 billion.’ These numbers depict a declining birth-rate emergency that Europe and Italy must address. ‘Without population growth, the welfare systems of the entire West will collapse. A catastrophe. GDPs will plummet, healthcare systems will not withstand aging, pensions will no longer be paid.’ How can we remedy this? ‘We should introduce, immediately, a shock measure to try to reverse the trend: zero taxes for families with more than two children.’ If we do not act to reverse this trend, ‘we must be afraid. At least as much as Russia and China do.’ Regarding this, ‘I do not think that Russia will wage war on Europe,’ says Crosetto. ‘But what my colleagues in Northern and Eastern European countries tell me is a fear that, in their eyes, seems more than justified. For them, the issue is only to understand ‘when’ it will happen, not ‘if’ it will.’ What can our part of the world do to avoid catastrophe? ‘We must, all together – by ‘all’ I mean all countries and global multilateral organizations, including countries that used to belong to the ‘global South’ – rethink multilateral structures and institutional systems,’ and ‘what is needed is also a new Europe and a new NATO, more inclusive, global, looking far beyond the Atlantic. I think of an ever more pressing, necessary, true European defense, convinced that the EU-27 is too small. The need is for a continental defense that involves countries currently outside the EU’s ‘borders,’ such as the United Kingdom, Norway, Albania, and Balkan countries.’ Not only that. ‘A deep and rapid transformation of NATO is needed, making it a structure capable of ensuring an alliance for peace in the world, an armed yet democratic ‘arm’ of a renewed UN, moving away from the role of defending the ‘Atlantic’ West alone.’ How to achieve this? NATO, traditionally perceived for decades as an enemy by Southern countries and Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), must open up and expand instead. It must consider the world, not just a part of it.’ The idea that India and China could in some form enter the NATO orbit is hard to imagine: why would Beijing and New Delhi approach the Atlantic Pact, an anti-Russian alliance, when China buys oil and gas from Moscow to keep it economically alive during a war that could bankrupt it without this intervention? Regarding India, in 2023, the US House Special Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party had proposed that India join an expanded version of the NATO Plus mechanism, but only for collaboration and in an anti-Chinese context. Therefore, the idea that India and China – currently both close to Russia – could enter or collaborate with NATO seems contradictory.