Is NATO likely to get involved in Gaza?

By Leila Nezirevic

LONDON (AA) - Russia was virtually absent from the international stage, while China was very much inward-looking, when the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) carried out airstrikes for several months on Serbia during the Kosovo war in 1999.

The NATO operation came in response to a new wave of ethnic cleansing of Kosovar Albanians in the Western Balkan region by the Serbian military, formerly known as the Yugoslav Armed Forces.

The bombing continued until an agreement was reached, which led to the withdrawal of Serbian troops from Kosovo who were then replaced by NATO forces.

As far as NATO is concerned, there is “virtually no chance” that the alliance would get involved in Israel’s deadly campaign against the Gaza Strip in the same way it did at the end of the raging war in former Yugoslavia, Adnan Huskic, a political scientist specializing in EU and Western Balkan affairs, told Anadolu.

Huskic, also a professor of politics at Sarajevo School of Science and Technology, said there is a strong desire within NATO to side with Israel, which is driven mostly by the very firm position of the US.

However, at the same time, he said there are some conflicting views within NATO in terms of how to proceed when it comes to Israel’s brutal aggression in Gaza.

“So, what you’re actually seeing is the almost mathematical result of these two diverging directions or sets of thought within NATO,” he said.

According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, in just over two months, over 18,600 Palestinians have been killed and nearly 50,600 injured in Israeli attacks on Gaza, with UN experts warning that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is carrying out a genocide in the making.

NATO, however, has so far only called for a humanitarian pause, but not a cease-fire.

Despite the geopolitical situation at the time, it was still not an easy decision to make for the alliance to get directly involved in former Yugoslavia, as there were unheard calls by some dissident voices for airstrikes much earlier during the Bosnian war that led to genocide against the Muslim population in the country.

An estimated 100,000 people were killed during the war in Bosnia between 1992 and 1995, while over 2 million Muslim men, women and children were displaced and forced out of the country.

The brutal war was perpetrated by Bosnian Serb troops under the orders of former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic.

The predominant sentiment was that nothing should be done during the Bosnian war because any kind of intervention on the part of NATO or anyone else “would simply exacerbate the conflict.”

NATO was also worrying about its own troops’ safety when it refused to get involved, said Huskic.

The situation changed when the US “simply gave up on Belgrade” and the Milosevic regime, and decided to punish Serbia for refusing to make certain concessions, he said.

As soon as the sentiment shifted in Washington, the UK and others went along despite that up until then “there was literally no consensus on how to approach a conflict and what to do to stop or prevent further bloodshed,” the political scientist added.

Drawing parallels between the war in former Yugoslavia and the war on Gaza, Huskic said NATO’s behavior is more dependent on geopolitics, rather than some international widely accepted norms.

The decision to get involved in the Balkans was not based on the atrocities committed but rather it was simply a result of international lobbying, where several prominent figures were “actually pressing their governments to change their attitude towards the conflict in former Yugoslavia and in Bosnia in particular,” he added.

- Turning a blind eye

The US is an integral part of NATO and if Washington is not interested in intervening “to stop the bloodshed in Palestine,” then “I don’t think it’s going to happen,” Huskic said.

He said Western countries must play a stronger role in ending the aggression against the Palestinian people.

But “what we’ve seen so far is something entirely different,” where most of the Western countries are “basically turning a blind eye to what’s currently happening in Gaza Strip,” arguing that Israel “has the right to exist and right to self-defense, which is actually disputed,” said Huskic.

Even if that was the case, Israel is not respecting international standards when it comes to self-defense, he said, adding that Tel Aviv will only stop the bloodshed if it faces enough international pressure from Western actors.

That will force Israel to “stop what they’re doing right now” and resort to different means of dealing with a problem, and perhaps return to the negotiating table, he said.

Right now, there is no political pressure, only some realization in some Western capitals, according to Huskic.

The reaction of Arab states to the Israeli aggression against Palestinians has also not been as strong as one might have expected, he said.

In this sense, he said, it will be interesting to observe how the situation will evolve, or what kind of relations will resume between Israel and some of the Arab countries after the Gaza war.

If the atrocities continue on the same scale, then in Huskic’s opinion, the world will be forced to apply much more pressure on Netanyahu’s government “to stop this unnecessary annihilation of Gaza,” and to look for different ways of dealing with what it perceives to be a security threat.

- Volatile and unstable world

​​​​​​​The current situation in Gaza reflects a totally expected global realignment and a shift in geopolitical sense, said Huskic, adding that what we are seeing is a decline of Western influence.

In his view, the US is now focusing solely on the Pacific region and China in particular, which in turn is acting as a catalyst for the changes in the global political configuration.

The world is currently volatile and unstable due to a power struggle between the West and several alternative actors emerging, Huskic said.

“This is what happens when you have a dominant power which is no longer as dominant and it’s no longer the major normative actor,” he explained.

“I would actually expect this situation of insecurity, instability, new conflict to increase as we’re moving towards more stable balance in the future.”

He called on global actors to reaffirm international humanitarian standards when it comes to the war in Gaza and in general, stressing that “this is the only thing that actually binds us together.”

However, Huskic pointed out that he is more inclined to believe that the world is moving towards a situation where international standards no longer apply, where smaller unprotected countries and nations are going to be jeopardized by their geopolitical positions.

“I believe that the whole world is heading in a completely different direction, towards the suspension of the law rather than upholding it,” said Huskic.