NATO – A Dangerous Alliance

Posted on 2017-05-27 by Policraticus

When the Warsaw Pact ended, after the collapse of communism, some optimists might have expected Nato to be broken up too.

After all, the Labour Party in Britain had been opposed to Nato in the mid-1980s. But that was not to be. The US, which had always dominated Nato, quickly began to reinvent Nato and furthermore to expand it.

Following the end of the Warsaw Pact many central and east European governments wanted to join Nato.

This of course was music to the ears of the US military manufacturers. Indeed, the chair of the expand Nato committee, Bruce Jackson, was technical director of Lockheed Martin, the largest military manufacturer in the world. So, for the new Nato members because of the policy on “interoperability,” that is Nato personnel being able to use the same military equipment, it was out with the old Soviet military hardware and in with sales of, for example, Lockheed’s military aircraft costing millions of dollars.

This continues to this day in countries which can ill afford it with struggling economies. The latter includes Greece. Think of the situation in Greece today.

Expanding Nato up to the borders with Russia was a provocative policy. The dangers were pointed out but the military industrial complex and the “hawks” in the West took no notice.

To this day this helps President Vladimir Putin: more and more of the Russian people believe that “the West” is against them.

Decades later, we read: “British troops have arrived in Estonia as part of a major Nato mission in the Baltic states to deter Russian aggression.”

From the beginning, Nato has always held a nuclear armed policy. It continues to claim that nuclear weapons “preserve peace.” Manifestly nuclear weapons do not deter conflict.

Governments, including Britain’s, now analyse the main threats to security as cyber warfare and terrorism. Remember September 11 2001 when New York was attacked by terrorists in planes brandishing knives?

The US then had and still has 13 nuclear armed Trident submarines, of which several will be roaming the seas fully operational. Britain has four, with one constantly on alert at sea.

Were these any use in the madman’s attack on Westminster or in any terrorist attacks?

Trident is “integrated” into Nato. Even worse, Nato still has a policy of “first use of nuclear weapons.”

When the then minister of defence, Geoff Hoon, was asked in Parliament why Britain has a policy of “first use,” he replied: “Because of our obligations to Nato.”

Under the direction of the US administration with its policy of global domination, Nato has established a string of nuclear-armed bases across Europe in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey at Incirlik.

The latter is now causing deep problems as relations between President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the US become more and more fractious.

There is now a real problem for Nato as Erdogan is a repressive dictator — how can Turkey remain in Nato?

Nato states are supposed to uphold principles of human rights and democracy, notably lacking in Turkey today.

The nuclear-armed bases come under Nato’s “nuclear sharing policy” — in effect a violation of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Nato continues to expand. The policy of not acting “out of area” was dropped long ago. “North Atlantic” simply means domination of policies by the US.

Nato claims in its “strategic concept” that “the promotion of Euro-Atlantic security is best assured through a wide network of partner relationships with countries and organisations around the globe.”

In 1994 Nato established the Partnerships for Peace across Europe, extending as far as Uzbekistan. Nato surrounds Russia from the west and east. These Partnerships for Peace (note the language again) now include 22 states, including “neutral” Ireland.

Then there is the Mediterranean Dialogue with arrangements with countries in the Middle East. Few people realise that Nato carries out military exercises with Israel. Nato has also established bilateral relations — named individual partnerships — with Afghanistan, Australia, Iraq, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Mongolia, New Zealand and Pakistan.

In this part of the globe, where Nato carried out a military exercise in 2014 with Japan named Ocean Shield, they are surrounding and menacing China as the enemy.

Then there was the statement by Nato that “co-operation between Nato and the United Nations continues to make a substantial contribution to security in operations round the world.

“The alliance aims to deepen political dialogue and practical co-operation with the UN, as set out in the Nato/UN declaration signed in 2008.”

This seems like Nato bidding to be the military arm of the UN. This hardly accords with the UN Charter. It was the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which was set up under Chapter VIII of the UN Charter to prevent and resolve conflict by non-military means and to promote co-operation in humanitarian and other fields.

The 54 member states stretch from Iceland to Kyrgyzstan and include Russia. Alas, how many times do you read of their work in the press compared with the times you hear about Nato?

Nato is sold to us as a peace-making body. After all, the US is home to the finest PR companies in the world.

Do not be misled by Donald Trump’s condemnation of Nato. It is not the policies he is condemning. He himself wants more nuclear weapons in the world, though one wonders if he can comprehend the horror of what happened when the US dropped nuclear bombs.

And to her shame, Theresa May has also said she would press the nuclear button and so has shadow defence secretary Nia Griffith.

Trump just wants more money for war as we saw when he announced a $54 billion increase to the military budget — while thousands in the US live below the poverty line.

To summarise, Nato is pursuing yet more militarism and war:

– All Nato states are required to increase their military budgets to 2 per cent of GDP. That means stealing more money from social needs. Readers of the Morning Star know those all too well: the NHS, education, adult social services; the list is endless.

– Nato member states will have to spend 20 per cent of defence budgets on military equipment: warships, war planes, drones, bombs. By fuelling the arms race, Nato makes a mockery of moves for conflict resolution.

– Nato and its member states multiply interventions outside their territory and increase their presence through worldwide partnerships and “coalitions of the willing.”

– Nato extends its nuclear policies as a supreme “guarantee for the allies’ security,” notwithstanding that the majority of countries in the world are negotiating a treaty to ban nuclear weapons. In the meantime, nuclear weapons in Europe — under the guise of Nato — and elsewhere are being modernised at a cost of many tens of billions of dollars and pounds. Think of Trident at a cost of £205 billion.

The Nato summit will be held tomorrow in Brussels and activists will be holding a “counter-summit” beginning today with protesters organising workshops and a demonstration. CND activists will be there from Britain, but we also need people to raise the issues with their MPs, write letters to the press and raise awareness on social media. Let’s put pressure on the government to invest in social welfare, not Nato, not war.

2017-05-24

Source: Morning Star

READ MORE!

Will Russia Surrender?

The Russian government’s sincere and diligent effort to prevent chaos in Syria and additional massive refugee flow into Europe, all the while avoiding conflict with Washington and its vassals, has been brought to an end by Washington’s intentional attack on a known Syrian army position, thus wrecking the cease fire agreement that Russia sacrificed so much to achieve. The response to this fact by the Obama regime’s ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, reveals that Washington will lie to the hilt in order to achieve its agenda of reducing Syria to the same chaos as Washington has reduced Iraq and Libya. ...

Lawyers Serve Indictment on NATO Leaders for War Crimes

“This is an historic opportunity to demonstrate the even-handedness of international justice” – Michael Mandel, law professor, York University, Toronto, Canada, 1999 NATO leaders found guilty of war crimes in Yugoslavia “NATO leaders acted in open violation of the Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12th August 1949, and the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I), 8th June 1977 . . .” Dr Will Podmore, The Lancet (June 26th 1999) In the District Court of Belgrade on September 22, 2000, the President of the court, Veroljub Raketic, handed down guilty verdicts against government leaders of NATO countries for ...

NATO — Private Club оf War Criminals

What has happened is that NATO provides cover for these transgressions of the United States government’s policy. In other words, it absolutely legitimizes what effectively is NATO aggression. Moreover, what one needs to bear in mind and what one needs to be mindful about is the fact that in Western Europe you no longer have rulers with the independence of Charles de Gaulle. It seems that Washington, and we can use Washington, America and NATO interchangeably because NATO is dominated by the United States. It is a command structure, which ultimately is based on American military power and American military precedence. ...

Proxy Wars: Kosovo and South Ossetia

Yada…yada…yada. The discussion on the unprovoked and planned aggression by Georgia on South Ossetia is futile and moot because Russian President Dmitry Medvedev announced last week that the Russian Government would recognize the independence and freedom of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. On August 25, 2008, both houses of the Russian Parliament or Duma voted unanimously to recognize the independence of both South Ossetia and Abkhazia. On August 26, 2008, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev announced that the government of the Russian Federation officially recognized the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Save your rhetoric. Georgia has lost those areas permanently. Ossetians and ...

Je Sius La Serbie 1999!

Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement! Donate to Support Us We would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations. Save Save

The Refugee Crisis and the New Holocaust

The world has suddenly realised that there is a “refugee crisis”. There are more refugees now than at any time since World War II. The number has grown three-fold since the end of 2001. The problem is treated as if it arose just recently, but it has been a long time coming. The pressure has been building and building until it has burst the dams of wilful ignorance. Death and despair has migrated to the doorsteps of Europe. But tens of millions of people do not simply abandon home and native land for an insecure dangerous future of desperate struggle. The ...

Israel Amps Up Ethnic Cleansing in Order to Further Judaize Jerusalem: The Nakba Continues

Israel will soon bar all access to a Palestinian village whose farmers have continued a tradition stretching back thousands of years of tending stone terraces to grow crops in the fertile uplands outside Jerusalem. These farmers are among the latest victims of Israeli efforts to put in place the final pieces of a Greater Jewish Jerusalem that will require “ethnically cleansing” tens of thousands of Palestinians from a city their families have lived and worked in for generations, human rights groups have warned. The villagers of Walaja, many of them holding Israeli papers as “residents” of Jerusalem, were warned in November that they ...

Kosovo Under Nazi Germany: Nazi-Created Albanian Security Forces in Kosovo During the World War II

Greater Albania under Nazi Germany During World War II, 35,000 to 40,000 Kosovo Albanians were recruited by Nazi Germany as part of the German occupation forces and security formations in Greater Albania, a state created by Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini that included Kosovo-Metohija, western Macedonia, and territory from Serbia and Montenegro. In Albania, there were 30,000 Albanians who were in the German occupation forces. In 1941, the German occupation forces created a Kosovo Albanian Gendarmerie with headquarters in Kosovska Mitrovica. In 1944, these forces were incorporated into the Skanderbeg Nazi SS Division. In 1942, Balli Kombetar organization battalions were established ...

Ukraine’s NATO Referendum is a Vote for War

The massive artillery bombardment of the peoples of the Donbass, that has been raining down shells and fire on them since Christmas, is a war crime of horrific proportions designed to terrorise the people and bring their refusal to be subject to the NATO-installed regime in Kiev to an end. It is also becoming clear that it has a political purpose, which is to increase anti-Russian, pro-NATO propaganda among the Ukrainian people to influence them to vote to join NATO in a referendum, the consequences of which will be dramatic because a vote for NATO will be a vote for ...

The Ultimate War Crime: America’s “Global War on Terrorism”

The Islamic State is not only protected by the US and its allies, it is trained and financed by US-NATO, with the support of Israel and Washington’s Persian Gulf allies. Al Qaeda Affiliated Entities are “Intelligence Assets. Instruments of US Intelligence. The Global War on Terrorism is a fabrication used to justify a war of conquest. The Jihadist terrorists are “Made in America”. They are instruments of US intelligence, yet they are presented to public opinion as “enemies of America”. Introduction The Obama administration has embarked upon the ultimate war crime, a Worldwide military adventure, “a long war”, which threatens the future of humanity. The Pentagon’s global military design is ...

Americans are no Different than Germans were (and are)

Daniel Goldhagen blamed the Holocaust on «the Germans» (by which he meant the German people), and said that they perpetrated the Holocaust because they positively enjoyed murdering «the Jews». But, as has long been well understood by historians (except when they fail to point to it as being a disproof of Goldhagen’s bigoted and indefensible anti-German thesis), Hitler had to work long and hard in order to bring about a consensus, first amongst his own leadership group, and then in the population as a whole, favoring the extermination-option. Hitler, Der Fuehrer, «The Leader», clearly was the catalyst turning the chemical ...

A New Age of Global Security: The ‚Ukrainian Question‘ and ‚Kosovo Precedent‘

Article by Vladislav B. Sotirović: „A New Age of Global Security: The ‚Ukrainian Question‘ and ‚Kosovo Precedent‘“, Vojno delo (Military affairs), Interdisciplinary Scientific Theoretical Journal, International edition, Vol. 69, Issue 4, 2017 (May-June 2017), ISSN 0042-8426, Ministry of Defence of the Republic of Serbia, Belgrade, Serbia, pp. 176−211. Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement! Donate to Support Us We would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.

Mass Grave of History: Vatican’s WWII Identity Crisis

The controversy over the canonization of Pope Pius XII concerns whether he spoke out enough against the slaughter of Jews during World War II. But that question is a red herring when trying to grasp the big picture of the Vatican's role during the war. The real question is whether the Vatican supported the world order, or at least aspects of it, that the Third Reich promised to bring, a world order in which dead Jews were collateral damage - which Pius indeed regretted. The answer can be found in a region of Europe that is generally ignored despite being ...

Donald Franciszek Tusk: “Blood Is Thicker Than Water”?!

Donald Franciszek Tusk, (born 22 April 1957) is a Polish politician and historian. He has been President of the European Council since 1 December 2014. Previously he was Prime Minister of Poland (2007–2014) and a co-founder and chairman of the Civic Platform (Platforma Obywatelska) party. Tusk began his public career as an activist in his home town of Gdańsk, supporting Solidarity and organizing his fellow university students. With the exception of one four-year stretch, Tusk has served in the Third Republic Sejm (parliament) continuously since its first elections in 1991. He was Vice Marshal (deputy speaker) of the Senate from 1997 ...

Why is NATO in Yugoslavia?

Editor’s Note This paper was presented by the late Sean Gervasi at the Conference on the Enlargement of NATO in Eastern Europe and the Mediterrenean, Prague, 13-14 January 1996. It was published on Global Research when the Global Research website was launched on September 9, 2001. The late Sean Gervasi had tremendous foresight. He understood the process of NATO enlargement several years before it actually unfolded into a formidable military force. He had also predicted the breakup of Yugoslavia as part of a US-NATO project. See also Sean Gervasi’s 1993 video interview Introduction The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has recently sent a large task force into ...

Lithuania goes to War with Russia

A NATO defense ministers meeting that took place in Brussels on November, 8-9 resulted in the new and very important decisions for the future of Europe. Speaking at a meeting, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said it is vital that European roads, ports, bridges and rail networks are able to carry tanks and heavy military equipment. Stoltenberg also added that NATO countries have agreed to cooperate to improve civil infrastructure objects to make them usable for military needs. What does it mean in practice for Europe in general and for the Baltic States in particular? Lithuanian authorities, for example, will for sure try ...

The Myth of Hiroshima

With rare exception, the question of whether the atomic bombs were necessary to end World War Two is debated only deep within the safety of academic circles. Could a land invasion have been otherwise avoided? Would more diplomacy have achieved the same ends without the destruction of two cities? Could an atomic test on a deserted island have convinced the Japanese? Was the surrender instead driven primarily by the entry of the Soviets into the Pacific War, which, by historical accident, took place two days after Hiroshima—and the day before Nagasaki was immolated? But it is not only the history of the ...

Vladimir Putin is the Only Leader the West has

A Reuters news report under the names of presstitutes Robin Emmott and Sabine Siebold shows how devoid the West is of honest, intelligent and responsible journalists and government officials. http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-nato-summit-idUKKCN0ZN2NN First we will examine the dishonesty or incompetence of the reporters and then that of Western government officials. Emmott and Siebold describe NATO as a “Western defense alliance.” Since the Clinton regime NATO has been an alliance for waging offensive war, a war crime under the Nuremberg rules established by the United States. Under the NATO banner a number of countries have been bombed, invaded, and had their governments overthrown by ...

Neoliberalism and The Globalization of War. America’s Hegemonic Project

The world is at a dangerous crossroads. The United States and its allies have launched a military adventure which threatens the future of humanity. Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The US-NATO military agenda combines both major theater operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states. America’s hegemonic project is to destabilize and destroy countries through acts of war, covert operations in support of terrorist organizations, regime change and economic warfare. The latter includes the imposition of deadly macro-economic reforms ...

Donald Trump is an International Law Breaker

Donald Trump‘s decision to launch cruise missile strikes on a Syrian Air Force Base was based on a lie. In the coming days the American people will learn that the Intelligence Community knew that Syria did not drop a military chemical weapon on innocent civilians in Idlib. Here is what happened: The Russians briefed the United States on the proposed target. This is a process that started more than two months ago. [prior to the Chemical Weapons attack] There is a dedicated phone line that is being used to coordinate and deconflict (i.e., prevent US and Russian air assets from shooting at ...