On Model NATO and Decolonizing Spaces of Education

What does it mean when one believes that the master’s tools can dismantle the master’s house? In the words of Audre Lorde, “It means that only the most narrow perimeters of change are possible and allowable.”

Over the past few months, members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) walked in and out of GU-Q, launching the first model NATO on campus in the spirit of “creating international leaders.” 

This was done against the backdrop of a student body painted as failing to be open-minded when it comes to Western organizations, owing to seemingly unjustified discontent with colonial history. Such a reductive reading and mischaracterization could not be further detached from reality— or history, for that matter. 

Let's dispense with the niceties. NATO isn't some relic of colonial history—it is the Empire in action today, merely dressed in more palatable clothing (or rather uniform). The colonial powers may have furled their flags and withdrawn their viceroys, but their fundamental desire to control, extract, and dominate remains alive and well in NATO's operations across the globe. What we're witnessing isn't a historical echo but a direct continuation: neo-colonialism that has simply found more sophisticated expression. Gone are the blunt declarations of territorial conquest, replaced by the silken language of "security operations" and "humanitarian intervention." But strip away the rhetoric, and what remains? The same Western powers, imposing their will on the same regions they've sought to control for centuries. One must only turn to NATO’s record of atrocities in Libya and Kosovo for evidence.  

This hegemonic mindset persists in NATO's very structure, the assumption that Western powers have both the right and the obligation to determine security arrangements globally. It manifests in the casual disregard for the sovereignty of nations that fall outside the alliance's protection, in the readiness to designate entire regions as security problems requiring Western solutions, and in the unshakeable conviction that Western military power is an appropriate tool for reshaping societies. 

The assumption that those of us who protest and challenge the actions of organizations such as NATO are uninformed until we are lectured to by the same security professionals complicit in the decimation of our land and people is a deeply flawed and condescending one. We are told that we lack insight into the intricate planning and plotting of the security regime, whose greatest activity in this moment can be pinpointed as the safeguarding of the commission of genocide. At best, the insight that I, for example, have come to gain and will enthusiastically share so we may all be collectively educated concerns the multiple contributions and collaborations between NATO and the settler colony “Israel”:

• A staggering 28 out of the 32 NATO members were reported to be selling weapons to Israel as of April 2024, months after the International Court of Justice’s initial set of provisional measures against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

• Over 2,600 military flights conducted by Western states, a majority of which are NATO members,  following October 7, 2023, including arms transfers and reconnaissance flights. 

• The provision of a permanent Israeli office in NATO Headquarters, welcomed by Benjamin Netanyahu.

So, what is at stake when we normalize and champion the presence of organizations like NATO on our campus in the spirit of fostering “initiative”? We risk our space turning into—if it is not already—the master's house in which we learn only how to use the master's tools. What is at stake when we assign educational and professional value to simulations where we play the part of the master? We risk giving ourselves to the illusion that we are learning how to achieve genuine change when, at best, any potential for change is carved down to dust, concession by concession.

There is also much to be said about the justification of positions subservient to neo-colonial institutions as being integral to the fight for a free Palestine: Appealing to the U.S. political establishment for Palestinian liberation, for example, is an exercise in hypocrisy at best. The call “Free Palestine” emerges as a hollow slogan when cried by those perching themselves on the backs and graves of the indigenous people of Turtle Island. For what liberation from an annihilatory settler colonial project can honestly be sought by pleading within the system that sustains it on indigenous land, which itself is occupied and on which injustice ensues? The irony of petitioning a settler-colonial power—one that continues to deny justice to indigenous populations—to intervene against another settler-colonial project it actively funds, arms, and unequivocally shields appears disturbingly lost.  

The U.S. system is not broken or misdirected in its approach to Palestine, it is functioning precisely as designed. A settler-colonial state built on indigenous dispossession and maintained through racialized exploitation will never be the vanguard of decolonization abroad. The military-industrial complex that enriches itself through endless war will never deliver peace. The political system that continues to deny justice to its own indigenous populations cannot, by definition, pursue justice elsewhere. 

For those of us who are not born into a world where we carry passports of ‘member’ states, perhaps we are the truly privileged ones for early on we are forced to reckon with the fact that because we do not have access to certain spaces, we grow aware that the world is not confined to them; not to the parameters of U.S. Congress’ halls nor a military base in Brussels.

Genuine change requires not working within these structures but working against them. It demands not appealing to colonial power but actively undermining it. It means doing our homework by showing up to the lectures of scholars and activists, not admirals and commanders. It rests on examining the physical and privileged positions from which we speak and write, and at whose expense such comfort is sourced, whether it is service providers on our very own campus or indigenous tribes whose extinction cemented the bricks of the governmental buildings you strive to serve in.

We must abandon the illusion that colonial institutions can deliver decolonial outcomes. Whether we are concerned with resisting deportation or simply putting up posters, we must oppose the policing voices in positions of authority, from Presidents to Deans, that demand subservience in exchange for rights. We must not surrender to the delusion that power lies solely in their hands and flows only where their fingers point.

“For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those who still define the master’s house as their only source of support.” - Audre Lorde