For Decades Russia Has Been Forced to Respond to NATO Expansion
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), established in 1949 on the pretext of “containing Soviet influence”, has almost doubled in size within the past two decades alone. In 1998, NATO comprised 16 member states, but with repeated expansions up to Russia’s very borders, it now contains almost 30 countries [...]
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), established in 1949 on the pretext of “containing Soviet influence”, has almost doubled in size within the past two decades alone. In 1998, NATO comprised 16 member states, but with repeated expansions up to Russia’s very borders, it now contains almost 30 countries.
Though seldom mentioned in mainstream discourse, NATO is a US-dominated organization, whose orders are issued from Washington and customarily obeyed. The US is by far the largest contributor to the alliance, spending more than all other member nations put together.
One of the critical reasons behind NATO’s formation almost 70 years ago, was to prevent Europe pursuing a path independent of America (a policy carefully concealed from the public). Among the first NATO signatories, were the former European imperial powers of France, Britain, Portugal, Belgium and the Netherlands. Now subservient to US domination, they would pose no threat to the great superpower, however unlikely the prospect may have been.
In the decades since, the European powers have meekly followed their master’s lead. Whether it be with regard the timid and servile attitude toward an increasingly expansionist Israel – or the provocative American-led policies directed at Russia, a country repeatedly invaded in the past, most recently by Hitler’s Germany.
As the euphoria of victory in World War II dissipated, the USSR quickly replaced the Third Reich as the West’s public enemy number one. Previously, during the war years, the American and British leaders Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill had affably called Joseph Stalin, their Soviet counterpart, “Uncle Joe”. This despite the fact, just a few years before, Stalin had overseen a not inconsiderable level of bloodletting during the Great Purge.
Betraying a classic hallmark of Western hypocrisy, gone were any reservations relating to Stalin personally, or Russia, once they were undertaking a task of benefit to them. That is, Russia shouldering the vast majority of burden in defeating the most destructive regime in world history, Nazi Germany.
In war time, Roosevelt and Churchill willingly saw Stalin on more than one occasion, during world famous meetings that were mostly cordial. However, once his service to the West was performed, Stalin was no longer uncle but dictator – a pattern repeated later when the US and Britain heavily supported despots like the Shah, Suharto, Somoza, Pinochet, etc., before later often distancing themselves from them.
Upon Stalin’s death in March 1953, there was nothing to be heard from Churchill regarding the departed “Uncle Joe”. Churchill sent no condolences, made no comments, did not even post a sympathy card, despite having previously said that “Stalin never broke his word to me”.
The relationship between America and Britain toward the Soviet Union hardened during the presidency of Roosevelt’s successor, Harry Truman (1945-1953). As early as 1941 Truman, then a US senator, had said:
“If we see that Germany is winning [the war], we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning, we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible. Although I don’t want to see Hitler victorious under any circumstances”.
As a result of such hawkish views, it seems hardly surprising that NATO was formed during Truman’s presidency. He described NATO’s arrival as “a shield against aggression” whose aim it was “to promote and preserve peace throughout the world”.
In January 1949, following his successful re-election, Truman launched a tirade against Communism, asserting that the ideology “subjects the individual to arrest without lawful cause, punishment without trial”.
Truman’s criticisms were clearly directed at the USSR. Such pronouncements add weight to the later opinions of America’s political scientist, Samuel Huntington, who wrote in 1981 that the US has been conjuring the “misimpression that it is the Soviet Union you are fighting… ever since the Truman doctrine”.
Continuing his re-election speech, Truman assured that the US was going to “restore peace, stability, and freedom to the world”. Just months later, America suffered the immeasurable “loss of China” after forces loyal to Mao Zedong in mainland China routed the Kuomintang, US-backed forces.
Enraged at China’s exit from US control, Truman quickly denounced Zedong’s Communist Party as being “a cut throat organization” that will “never be recognized by us as the government of China”. It mattered little to Truman that Zedong enjoyed mass popular support, that had been building for years prior to his October 1949 takeover. Truman derogatorily labeled the revolutionary leader as “Mousie Dung”, keeping in line with his early disregard for the “Chinaman”.
Critics in the US described the Chinese revolution as “an avoidable catastrophe” – while hundreds of thousands of US sympathizers fled to Taiwan, an island about 400 miles east of Hong Kong. Truman’s belief that the US would be a force for “peace, stability and freedom” has, in the unfolding seven decades, proved dramatically misguided. Indeed, some of the most severe crimes occurred during Truman’s presidency.
Two years after his address, in 1951, the US Air Force was virtually leveling Korea in the east, while also releasing thousands of tons of napalm upon the country, a lethal incendiary fluid. The Koreans suffered an appalling loss of life during the war against their country, with the use of napalm upon civilian areas being banned as late as 1980.
Elsewhere, led by the US, the original signatories of NATO agreed that,
“An armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all”.
Policies like this increased the risk of conflict.
Discounted were views like those of US Senator Robert A. Taft, the eldest son of former president William Howard Taft (in office, 1909-1913). Senator Taft insisted that NATO was “not a peace program”, but in reality represented “a war program”.
In July 1949, Senator Taft further criticized the newly formed NATO by saying the military alliance could instigate “a third world war”, which “might easily destroy civilization on this earth”. Senator Taft was not a wild-eyed radical, but a conservative politician, and member of the Republican Party for many years. It is difficult to imagine such comments as his being uttered today from a Republican senator, or indeed a Democrat.
However, Senator Taft’s views hold as much resonance now as they did then. One can assume he would be aghast at NATO enlargement that has continued to Russia’s borders. In the post-Soviet Union era, almost a dozen countries all previously part of the USSR-led Warsaw Pact, are now members of NATO – including Latvia and Estonia along Russia’s frontiers.
The Warsaw Pact was formed in mid-July 1955, primarily to combat the growing threat of NATO, hardly an unreasonable strategy. NATO had been expanding as early as 1952 with the accession of Turkey and Greece. West Germany then joined NATO in early July 1955, just days before the Warsaw Pact’s creation.
As a result, NATO has produced a militarized domino effect throughout Europe, whereby Russia was compelled to react to renewed threats against her. In recent years, Vladimir Putin has intervened in Georgia and the Ukraine, both on Russia’s borders, to prevent those countries also “joining NATO”, as publicly announced at a 2008 NATO summit.
Originally published on 2018-04-13
About the author: Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree. He is interested in writing primarily on foreign affairs, having been inspired by authors like Noam Chomsky.
Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.
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.
After the division of Macedonia in 1913 (according to the Bucharest Peace Treaty) neither Serbia, Bulgaria nor Greece recognized the existence of a Macedonian ethnolinguistic nation and, therefore, an assimilation policy of Macedonia’s Slavs was carried out by the state’s authorities of all those three countries. Greece referred to Aegean Slavo-Macedonians as Slavophone Greeks or Macedoslavs (the region was and is today officially called as “North Greece”), Serbia referred to Vardar Slavo-Macedonians as Serbs from “South Serbia” while for Bulgaria Pirin Slavo-Macedonians were Bulgarians.When the WWI started in 1914, Bulgaria sided with Central Powers and in the fall of 1915 ...
While all eyes have been on the U.S. presidential campaign, such foreign-policy hot spots as Syria, Iran and Pakistan, and the increasingly frosty relations between the United States and China, a simmering problem in the Balkans threatens to come to a boil. The most serious clashes to date involving angry Serb inhabitants of the northern portion of Kosovo and international Kosovo Force (KFOR) peacekeeping personnel erupted on November 28. Thirty German and Austrian soldiers were injured, some by small-arms fire and Molotov cocktails, when KFOR troops tried to remove roadblocks that Serb residents had erected. Those barricades have been the most ...
In early June of 1967, at the onset of the Six Day War, the Pentagon sent the USS Liberty from Spain into international waters off the coast of Gaza to monitor the progress of Israel’s attack on the Arab states. The Liberty was a lightly armed surveillance ship.Only hours after the Liberty arrived it was spotted by the Israeli military. The IDF sent out reconnaissance planes to identify the ship. They made eight trips over a period of three hours. The Liberty was flying a large US flag and was easily recognizable as an American vessel.Soon more planes came. These ...
Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection & Pinterest.Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!Donate to Support UsWe 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.
We, the undersigned, are Russians living and working in the USA. We have been watching with increasing anxiety as the current US and NATO policies have set us on an extremely dangerous collision course with the Russian Federation, as well as with China. Many respected, patriotic Americans, such as Paul Craig Roberts, Stephen Cohen, Philip Giraldi, Ray McGovern and many others have been issuing warnings of a looming a Third World War. But their voices have been all but lost among the din of a mass media that is full of deceptive and inaccurate stories that characterize the Russian economy ...
The Nation published an outstanding article on March 9th, by James Carden, which described the remarkable extent to which the Obama government (and virtually all of the Washington Establishment) are supporting (financially and otherwise) fascists who want to destroy Russia. One such example was a recent event in Washington. According to Carden:It featured the deputy speaker of Ukraine’s Parliament, Andriy Parubiy. According to the program bio, Parubiy served as the “commandant” of the Euromaidan (why did an ostensibly peaceful protest require a “commandant” anyway?) and, later, as secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council. The bio provided to attendees might fairly be described as selective. ...
According to news reports and to this appeal by Kristoferis Voishka, the pro-American government installed in Lithuania is persecuting Lithuanians who dissent from the anti-Russian propaganda that is driving Washington’s NATO puppets to war with Russia. Unlike their puppet government, Lithuanians understand that war with Russia means that Lithuania on the front line will be utterly destroyed, a result that would not bother Washington in the least, just as Washington is undisturbed when its forces obliterate weddings, funerals, and children’s soccer games.What is Lithuania? To Washington it is a nothing.Kristoferis Voiska runs an alternative Internet news site in LIthuania. Not ...
On April 7, two U.S. Navy battle ships USS Porter (DDG-78) and USS Ross launched 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at al-Shayrat military airfield in Syria’s Homs province from the Eastern Mediterranean. The U.S. strikes particularly targeted the main landing strip, aircraft, radio locators, air defense system and fuel stations.The strike was approved by U.S. President Donald Trump, who said that the Syrian Air Force used affiliated al-Shayrat air base to prepare chemical attack on the city of Khan Shaykhun in Idlib. “It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and ...
What a fine race it has become! Both Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump are competing in it as a who is the ‘tougher guy/gal’ in what could be easily described as a 21st Century Tarantino-style (or Scorsese-style) political pulp fiction gore.What they both utter, may often sound like some staged bluff: “Are you talking to me? Hey, there’s nobody else here… Are you talking to me?”But just think for a moment what would really happen if one of them sticks to his or her ‘promises’ and ‘principles’, after getting elected! (The bullets would be flying, the nukes exploding, and millions ...
Paul Atwood, a Senior Lecturer in American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston, provides a concise summary of the history that informs North Korea’s “relations with the United States” and “drives its determination never to submit to any American diktat”.Excerpts from Atwood’s summary are here used as a framework, with other sources where indicated.Atwood notes it is an American “myth” that the “North Korean Army suddenly attacked without warning, overwhelming surprised ROK defenders.” In fact, the North/South border “had been progressively militarized and there had been numerous cross border incursions by both sides going back to 1949.”Part of what ...
Twelve years ago, March 24th, 1999, marks the commencement of NATO’s aerial bombardment of Yugoslavia. The bombings which lasted for almost three months, were followed by the military invasion (under a bogus UN mandate) and illegal occupation of the province of Kosovo.In the course of the last week, the so-called international community, backed by the UN Security Council has called for the bombing of Libya, a sovereign country, allegedly to protect the lives of civilians under the logo of “Responsibility to Protect”.The covert operations, the military strategies applied in Libya not to mention the process of media disinformation bears a canny ...
Churchill once said that in war the truth is so precious it has to be surrounded with a bodyguard of lies. In Germany over the last two months one clearly saw the fabrication of such a bodyguard.Even as air attacks proceeded against civilian targets—destroying factories, electricity works, refineries, bridges, streets, railway lines and apartment blocks— German government representatives spoke of a ” humanitarian action ” . Despite the fact that the NATO attacks unleashed the massive wave of refugees and reduced towns and villages in Kosovo to ruins , it has been maintained to the very end that the aim ...
War with Russia appears increasingly likely as the US and its NATO satraps continue their military provocations of Moscow.As dangers mount, our foolish politicians should all be forced to read, and then re-read, Prof. Christopher Clark’s magisterial book, ‘The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914.’ What is past increasingly appears prologue.Prof. Clark carefully details how small cabals of anti-German senior officials in France, Britain and Russia engineered World War I, a dire conflict that was unnecessary, idiotic, and illogical. Germany and Austria-Hungary of course share some the blame, but to a much lesser degree than the bellicose French, ...
June 5 marks the 50th anniversary of Israel’s Six-Day War of conquest. Any objective examination of that war, and the events leading to and following it, make clear that the dominant narrative in the United States is reality turned upside down. It is “fake news” that is perpetrated on the public by the corporate media continually, right up to the present day.The Six Day War began on June 5, 1967. Israel launched the war against Egypt, Syria and Jordan with what could correctly called a “sneak attack,” although it is never referred to that way here. In the vocabulary of ...
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 ...
The Israeli historian Benny Morris has been very vocal of late in denying that Palestine was ethnically cleansed of Arabs in order for the “Jewish state” of Israel to be established. In a series of articles in the Israeli daily Haaretz, Morris has debated the question with several of his critics who contend that ethnic cleansing is precisely what occurred. Not so, argues Morris. So who’s right?It’s worth noting at the outset that, while such a debate exists in the Israeli media, the US media remains, as ever, absolutely silent on the matter. Americans who get their information about the ...
Unlike Hollywood movies where Americans have the lead in saving the world, the crisis of the coronavirus pandemic has shown the opposite. The first major test showed that the American health care system was inferior to the Russian one, created during the Cold War. And while the Kremlin has managed to provide real assistance to a number of European countries, certainly using it for propaganda purposes, Washington's actions can be characterized as a sign of weakness. In the race for a quality vaccine, Moscow has shown that it is ahead of its competitors, and despite the rigorous blockade, more and ...
The Russian army carried out a precise attack on the mercenary base in Kharkiv, the building was completely destroyed, the Ministry of Defense of Russia announced."On the evening of January 16, the Armed Forces of Russia carried out a high-precision strike on the point of temporary deployment of foreign fighters in the city of Kharkiv, the core of which was made up of French mercenaries," the Russian defense ministry announced.The result of the attack was the elimination of more than 60 mercenaries, while more than 20 were taken to medical facilities.The building they were in was completely destroyed.A day earlier, ...
Louis XVI needed a revolution, Napoleon needed two historic military defeats, the Spanish Empire in the New World needed multiple revolutions, the Russian Czar needed a communist revolution, the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires needed World War I, Nazi Germany needed World War II, Imperial Japan needed two atomic bombs, the Portuguese Empire in Africa needed a military coup at home, the Soviet Empire needed Mikhail Gorbachev … What will the American Empire need?I don’t believe anyone will consciously launch World War III. The situation now is more like the eve of World War I, when great powers were armed and ...
Albanian terror in Kosovo against the Serbs from June 1999 up to the end of 2000The current problems in Libya and Ivory Coast are complex and clearly the opposition has different aspirations. After all, both sides are involved in a bloody conflict and the use of violence is being used by each faction in these divided nations. Therefore, it appears that the “new democratic warriors” of peace and freedom carry guns and kill their enemies, just like their enemies would kill them.This article is not about defending the leaders of either nations and clearly the leader of Libya is known ...
Though seldom mentioned in mainstream discourse, NATO is a US-dominated organization, whose orders are issued from Washington and customarily obeyed. The US is by far the largest contributor to the alliance, spending more than all other member nations put together.
