The European Union and NATO accession require unanimity to expand these international alliances. In theory, these laws exist to ensure that no country’s sovereignty is violated, which is a valid goal. In practice, however, what tends to happen is the majority of countries support the accession of a country to these alliances even when the vast majority of governments and people agree that a country should join. Rogue members block the accession for unclear reasons and uphold critical decisions regarding our collective security.
No one is talking about the accession of a country like Russia or Syria to these alliances. Members are blocking Ukraine’s application to join both, and Sweden’s application to join NATO. Erdogan and Orban are trying to extract concessions from other member states to their benefit, actively harming not just the alliance but also their own countries.
We need a different path. What we have is not working when one demagogue can hold the entire alliance up because of some personal beef with an ally. Here is my proposal:
First of all, we need to lower the bar for accession to NATO and the European Union. Instead of unanimity, we have a few options:
- 50% of member states representing 2/3 of the population
- 2/3 of member states representing 50% of the population
I have no real preference between these two options. But we must end the filibuster of our organizations.
Now let’s say a country is really angry that they need to follow the rules which have been agreed to in parliament (which they are represented) or they are upset a country was allowed in and blackmail did not work and they choose to leave one of these alliances. They need to have this right to unilaterally withdraw. If a country withdraws, all obligations and privileges of its citizens are terminated immediately following their leaving. Visa-free travel, right of abode, and military defense will be lost along with every other right and privilege that came with membership. They will be a third party with the baseline level of treatment and WTO rules apply. If they choose to leave NATO in protest of the loss of veto privileges, then if they are invaded they will not be defended by NATO. Leaving NATO or the European Union must be allowed to protect sovereignty, but it will come at a horrible cost.
I believe citizens of the United Kingdom should have lost visa-free travel to the European Union when they left. After leaving they should have been forced to renegotiate everything after Brexit.
Also, if a country is consistently violating the rules of the EU or NATO we need to use our right to suspend their membership after they come back in line with the alliance. Suspension from both blocs will mean that if they are invaded no one will come to their aid.
This is of course not applicable to Ukraine and Georgia because their membership was blocked by Germany in 2008. Since they were never members NATO still has the right to send them military aid in response to the invasions of their territory by Russia.
But if Turkey were to leave and then be invaded by Russia we would simply let Istanbul burn. It is cruel, but it is the least bad outcome because it would show how important it is for member states to cooperate and disincentivize further dissolution of the alliance. It would show a clear message and seriously weaken Euroskeptic assholes not just in Europe but the United States. The foolish country would pay the price, but every other member would be strengthened, as I believe Brexit has shown with the UK leaving the European Union.
The reality of the world is that sometimes we don’t get everything we want. If a human rights violation being proposed, it is critical, reasonable, and proper to use the power of words and negotiations to reduce the power of arguments and the voting on bad decisions. Constitutional changes should take more than a simple majority, and laws which violate fundamental human rights should be able to be overturned by a court. This is the right way to do it. But with that being said, allowing demagogues to block the accession of new member states to these two international organizations for unclear and undefined reasons increases the risk of every citizen of NATO by weakening the alliance.
This why veto power needs to be abolished and we need a way to suspend an uncooperative member when they are putting the rest of us in danger.