By Henry Srebrnik, [Fredericton, NB] Daily Gleaner
The eminent student of geopolitics and military strategy, Edward Luttwack, recently pointed out the main problems the European members of NATO face in a new world order, facing an uncertain ally in the United States on one side and a hostile Russia on the other.
“Europe Needs a new Great Power, NATO is Just a Social Club” his headline proclaimed in UnHerd, the British news and opinion website, May 24, 2025.
Except for Turkey under Recep Tayyip Erdogan, no NATO member deliberately obstructs alliance decisions. But each has its own objections to joint action against particular countries, he observed. For example, the populations of Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro and North Macedonia are predominantly Christian Orthodox, and their governments are typically unwilling to act against Orthodox Serbia, or indeed against Russia itself.
As Islamic countries, Turkey and Albania are very likely to object to any action against a Muslim antagonist. And the centuries old enmity between Greece and Turkey, who remain at loggerheads over the state of a divided Cyprus and have perilously come close to war at times, would render NATO helpless.
There is even some hostility between Poland and Germany, though to a lesser extent. The horrors of the Second World War remain deeply traumatic in the European country that suffered the largest loss of life per capita between 1939 and 1945.
In other words, NATO cuts across Samuel Huntington’s famous civilizational lines, which, as he predicted, have replaced ideology.
Luttwack deals only with the external potential clash of civilizations among NATO’s member states. But what about their internal issues? Some have become more ethnoreligious domestically, due to mass immigration.
Belgium, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, and Sweden are now roiled with “civilizational” fractures. The reaction has seen the increasing popularity of anti-immigrant right-wing populist parties, many of them more upset with internal problems than with Russia.
The Labour Party in Britain is finding it hard to fend off Nigel Farage’s anti-immigrant Reform UK. Should Reform hold its polling momentum through 2029, it will upend the electoral map, taking seats from both Conservatives and Labour. Meanwhile, the group The Muslim Vote (TMV), launched in 2023, announced that Muslim voters would ‘”no longer tolerate being taken for granted.” Candidates backed by them beat Labour in constituencies with a high Muslim electorate across the country in the 2024 election.
The normalisation of identitarian factionalism has endangered Britain as a coherent country with a shared national culture. Unprecedented levels of immigration, particularly from Muslim parts of the world, has produced growing anxiety in the majority population. Violence is not far below the surface in the UK. There were instances of this last summer, with anti-immigrant riots across England.
On current trends the country’s population growth will be mostly driven by the arrival of nearly 10 million migrants. They will be mostly Indians, Pakistanis, Nigerians and Chinese nationals. How long can such a country, a spent force divided against itself, be counted on by NATO?
France faces unprecedented immigration and a populist National Rally (RN) reacting to these newcomers. Avignon, for instance, is an ancient city on the Rhone where seven popes once lived. But today parts of Avignon, as described in a report by Djaffer Ait Aoudia in the magazine Paris Match, Jan. 27, 2016, are now known as “the city of Salafists.”
“Most passers-by look alike, black veils for women, baggy Afghan trousers for men,” he wrote. “Most wear the believer’s beard, long and sometimes dyed with henna, like in the time of the Prophet. It feels like going back fourteen centuries. The segregation of the sexes is respected: hairdressers for women, inaccessible to men; bars full of men, inaccessible to women. It’s a mini-Islamic republic.” There are many such “no-go” areas, as they are called, in France. (He was recently threatened with death for similar accounts.)
The Church of the Immaculate Conception, located in in Saint-Omer, in northern France, went up in flames last September. Evidence pointed to anti-Christian radicals and Islamists as the primary culprits. This was no isolated instance. The church burnings highlight the tensions brewing in France, and its immigration policies have come under increased scrutiny. Should the NATO-averse RN win power, the ramifications for the alliance would be immense.
Germany’s migrant population is surging, with new data from the Federal Statistical Office revealing that more than one in four people has a migration background, reaching a record 21.2 million. Among people aged 20 to 39, more than one in three (34 per cent) had a migration background in 2024. Germany’s migrant population is growing rapidly.
Open borders and mass migration, largely from the Middle East, has dramatically reshaped the population. Most of the arrivals are Muslim and are not assimilating, intermarrying, and integrating fully in German society.
So, as in Britain and France, the populist right gains adherents, frightening the established parties. Germany’s major right-wing opposition party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), which has been surging in the polls, was officially labeled an “extremist” group by the country’s domestic intelligence agency, the BfV. The AfD also looks at NATO with a critical eye, as its perceived enemies are internal, not Putin’s Russia. One thing is certain: this is unlikely to dent its support.
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