Lord Ismay, perhaps unwittingly, let the cat out of the bag in his statement all those years ago. The purpose of NATO was to serve as a means of dividing and ruling over Europe for Washington and its always closely aligned, servile British partner [...]
When the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was created 70 years ago in 1949 it was formed as a blatant military instrument for waging the Cold War, a war that the US, Britain and other European allies had newly embarked on. NATO’s public relations cant about “peace and security” is but Orwellian rhetoric.
The supposed allies of the Soviet Union hastily went from an ostensible joint purpose of defeating Nazi Germany during the Second World War to initiating hostility towards Moscow. Already in 1946, British war-time leader Winston Churchill was fulminating about “an Iron Curtain” descending across Europe, in language adapted from Third Reich propaganda maestro Joseph Goebbels. The ensuing Cold War would last for nearly half a century until the Soviet Union collapsed from its internal political and economic stresses.
NATO’s first secretary general, Britain’s Lord Ismay, was candid in the mission of the military alliance. Its objective, he said, was to, “Keep Russia out, the Americans in, and Germany down”.
Of course, Western propaganda always portrayed the Soviet Union as the “aggressor”, alleging that the so-called Red Menace had designs on conquering all of Europe. Not much has changed when one listens to Western contemporary claims of Russia being an aggressor. As in the past, present innuendo casting Moscow as a demonic force has a decidedly hollow quality, at least for those willing to be critical about Western state and media “information”.
Lord Ismay, perhaps unwittingly, let the cat out of the bag in his statement all those years ago. The purpose of NATO was to serve as a means of dividing and ruling over Europe for Washington and its always closely aligned, servile British partner.
If countering Soviet aggression was the real purpose of NATO, as officially claimed, then one must ask why is this organization still in existence – some 30 years after the alleged “evil communist empire” dissolved?
NATO is a military monster desperately in search of a purpose. The substitution of Russia as an enemy in place of the Soviet Union doesn’t quite hold the same propaganda cachet, but nonetheless that is why Moscow continues to be designated the official “enemy” – in order to justify the existence of NATO. The US-led military bloc needs enemies like a junkie needs a narcotic fix.
NATO’s real function is at least three-fold. First, it gives the US an excuse to justify its enormous military presence in Europe. Instead of appearing as an occupying force, which it is, the Americans claim to be a protector of allies against malign Russia, or formerly the Soviet Union. This allows Washington to exert political control over its so-called European allies, and specifically to prevent any normalized relations with Russia. US vice president Mike Pence this week scolded Germany and fellow NATO member Turkey for daring to continue relations with Moscow, in the form of the Nord Stream 2 gas project and Ankara’s purchase of Russian S-400 air defense system. Pence inferred treasonous conduct on the part of Berlin and Ankara just because these two nominally independent countries have chosen to do business with Russia. Pence was thus demonstrating the classic NATO purpose of dividing Europe from Moscow.
A second function of NATO is to serve as an extension of the US military-industrial complex and, in turn, an important buttress for American corporate capitalism, which is totally dependent on military spending. When President Donald Trump castigates European allies, like Germany, for not spending enough on military and NATO, his real concern is for European nations to buy more American weaponry, such as the vastly over-priced and over-rated F-35 fighter jet. If NATO were to be disbanded – as it should from its obsolete objective purpose – then US capitalism would suffer a major withdrawal of European subsidy in the form of decreased weapons purchases.
The irony here is that Trump has previously denigrated NATO as obsolete. In his irascibility, he is more correct than he seems to realize. But Trump has – despite superficial griping – still continued to boost NATO for the purpose of hiking European military spending. What Trump means by “obsolete” is that the past financial tribute from the Europeans to the US militarized economy must henceforth be significantly increased. The outrageous demands by Trump are inciting tensions within NATO. At a time of massive civilian social needs across Europe being neglected due to “fiscal constraints”, the American ultimatums for more military spending are bound to be seen by the wider European populace as an intolerable dictate.
A third function of NATO for its American leadership is that it gives a pseudo legal cover of “multinationalism” to what would otherwise be seen as blatant US imperialist aggression all over the globe.
NATO forces have assisted US illegal wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, among other interventions. This by an organization that self-declares itself a bastion of security and peace.
It was 20 years ago that US-led forces under the cover of NATO bombed Serbia and its capital Belgrade. That marked a watershed assault on international law, and the unleashing of US global violence with impunity.
Washington could not carry out its aggression without the political and legal cover of NATO. Jens Stoltenberg, the present NATO secretary general, was in Washington this week calling for more aggression towards Russia. The Norwegian figurehead is a shameless warmonger who is violating the UN Charter for the sake of feathering his career as an American puppet.
It is all the more disturbing that this week in Washington, foreign ministers of the 30 member states belonging to NATO deferred to the US calls for naval forces to be deployed to the Black Sea “in defense” of Ukraine and Georgia from “Russian aggression”. These two countries have done everything possible to provoke Russia. They are cat’s paws for their NATO master, and are reckless enough to instigate a full-on war. Washington and its NATO minions have the audacity, or intelligence deficit, to call such an explosive situation as “defense” against Russia.
NATO, or rather the US, is giving itself a green light to mount even more aggression against Russia than it already has done over the past 30 years. In that period, NATO membership has almost doubled with the result that the military bloc is now on Russia’s border – and at the same time claiming with Orwellian double-think that it is defending Europe from Russian aggression. As Russian wit would have it: Russia has had the temerity to move its border towards NATO offensive forces.
Global security and peace is too serious for jokes. The maintenance of NATO, with its original aggressive objective against Moscow still intact, is a grotesque joke. A joke sickeningly played on the people of Europe who could benefit greatly from halting the squandering of billions of dollars each year on military budgets. NATO’s gratuitous belligerence towards Russia – based on trumped-up, ridiculous propaganda – is an obscenity. This organization is a dinosaur that somehow outlived its Cold War environment because those powers who control it from Washington and London want it to live on for their own selfish, ideological, economic reasons.
For the sake of world peace, the citizens of North America and Europe should demand that NATO be liquidated. Thirty years too late.
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.
Many articles in the US press have speculated at length in an attempt to define a new ideology called “Putinism.” The pieces serve as an attempt to fit Putin into an outdated Cold War narrative, as if some new ideology in the Russian Federation is playing the role that Marxism-Leninism once played in the Soviet Union, though the current Russian constitution forbids this.The notable leaders of history are rarely ideologues. History judges people mainly by what they achieve, not what they write or say. As Chinese President Xi Jinping recently put it: “The worth of any plan is in its ...
PrefaceThe “Macedonian Question” is today actual for several reasons of whom two are of the fundamental importance: 1. The Albanian secession in the FYROM; and 2. The Greek dispute with the FYROM authorities over several issues.[1] For the matter of illustration, for instance, Greece is so far blocking Macedonia’s joining NATO and the EU because of an on-going dispute between the FYROM and Greece. The main disputable issue is the title of “Macedonia” used in the country’s Constitution in the form of the official state-name as the Republic of Macedonia.[2] When the ex-Yugoslav Socialist Republic of Macedonia voted for independence ...
The Kosovo Question recently once again became an important issue of global politics and international relations for two reasons: 1) The Albanian “government” of the “Republic of Kosovo” announced to officially proclaim the existence of the Kosovo Army (that is a violation of the 1244 UN Resolution in 1999), and 2) The “president” of the “Republic of Kosovo”, a war criminal Hashim Tachi, participated on November 11th (2018) in Paris to the world leaders’ celebration of a centenary anniversary of the end of the WWI (the signed armistice with Germany) as the official representative of an “independent” Kosovo. He was ...
One of the West’s top points in condemning Vladimir Putin’s “regime” since 2007 has been his alleged suppression of democratic institutions, including an assault on media freedom and imposition of government-directed propaganda. This week, the accusation was repeated in a resolution of the European Parliament calling for stronger counter-measures in defense of European values against “information warfare” from Moscow.The charges — that Russian media are only an instrument of state propaganda directed at the domestic population to keep Russian citizens in line and at foreign audiences to sow dissent among Russia’s neighbors and within the European Union — are taken ...
QASEM SULEJMANI FOUGHT IN BIH AGAINST SERBS?! A Croatian journalist discovers who was killed by the Iranian general! It was important for James Bond the Middle East, turning the WAR on in SYRIA!Hasan Haidar Diab (56) is a prominent Croatian journalist and war reporter. However, his link to the Balkans is in the Eighties of the last century, when from native Beirut to study in the then SFR Yugoslavia, and that is due thanks to the character and part of Josip Broz Tito, or his role in the Non-Aligned MovementOver the years of the war, primarily because of the knowledge ...
As Europe’s longest ruler, it is a surprise that Milo Djukanovic is only 58. He has served as prime minister or president of various iterations of Montenegro since 1991 – spanning the collapse of Yugoslavia and across and beyond independence of the nation in 2006.What is the secret to Mr Djukanovic’s success? The answer is depressingly predictable: clientelism and the buying – or, depending on your perspective, stealing – of power.The beauty of Montenegro hides this ugly truth. Most know it as a tourist idyll with pristine beaches, crystal lakes and picturesque mountains. But holidaymakers rarely realize they enter less ...
Islam in the BalkansIt is the truth that the Balkan Peninsula is a mosaic of different and in some cases antagonistic religious communities with the Christian Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, and Islam as the principal religious denominations followed by different types of Protestants, followers of Judaism, Armenian Christian Orthodox, etc. The small Muslim communities existed at the Balkans even before the Ottoman conquest of the Peninsula which started in the mid-14th century but it was not until the mid-17th century that substantial Muslim population emerged firstly in Albania, Macedonia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Bulgaria.In a course of time, the Balkan Muslims became in ...
I travel frequently to the countries which once made up the now defunct Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, satisfying a passion of mine that stems back to my childhood days. For me, the Balkans’ history, its people and its cultures are both enigmatic and magnetic, as they have been, too, for countless others, of many nationalities, over centuries gone by. Accounting for the enchantment of the Balkans, its captivating allure, is a challenge to put into writing. Because no words can truly embellish what is one of the most absorbing parts of the world. To understand and feel what it is ...
IntroductionSome have tried to debunk the view that the West implicitly or explicitly promised Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not expand east after German reunification and dissolution of the Warsaw Pact). These claims are misleading and obfuscate the historical record of at least a clear understanding, if not promise that there should be no NATO expansion eastward in any way, shape or form. At the very least the West made a implied commitment not to expand NATO east. It is more precise to say, however, that the West gave an explicit verbal, that is, unwritten guarantee not to ...
After the Donald Trump administration’s decision to recognize the disputed city of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and move the US embassy there from Tel Aviv, the national aspirations of the Palestinian people to live in their own state have been severely dashed by Washington’s move. Ever since the formation of the United States, it has been American policy to destroy aspirant nations like the internationally-recognized State of Palestine.The first nation destroyed by the United States was the Cherokee Nation, or Tsalagihi Ayeli, which, beginning in 1794, was slowly decimated by forced removals from territory in Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, Alabama, ...
Uncovering the Western mainstream mass-media lies on Ukraine.Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & 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.[wpedon id="4696" align="left"]
SHARMINI PERIES, EXEC. PRODUCER, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Sharmini Peries, coming to you from Baltimore. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is elating after his right-wing Likud Party secured a firm victory in the Israeli elections on March 17. It was a very close race against the Zionist Union Party, led by Isaac Herzog. Our next guest, Shir Hever, in an interview he did with us last month, predicted that Prime Minister Netanyahu would win in spite of many strikes against him at the time. So, defying election polls leading up to the election, Prime Minister Netanyahu has ...
Hypocrisy may be the only consistent guiding principle of US foreign policy. Here's a prime example of the "do as we say, not as we do" that is the core of how Washington does business overseas: In the same week that the the US Justice Department demanded that the Russian-backed RT America network register as a foreign propaganda entity or face arrest, the US State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DNL) has announced that it is launching a program to massively interfere in NATO-partner Hungary's internal media.So the US Justice Department is cracking down on RT America for what ...
Turkish-US relations have faced many serious stress tests over the past 50 years. The catalyst in overcoming those crises was making strategic considerations, which always underlined the dependence of the two NATO allies on each other, regardless of their differences.These strategic considerations appear to be weakening now, as the regional priorities of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey and the United States no longer overlap, and in many cases conflict with each other.That is certainly the case in Syria, where the two countries are at odds over Washington’s alliance with Syrian Kurdish groups against the Islamic State (IS). Ankara insists these groups are ...
Kosovo is Clinton Country: a 10-foot-high statue of Bill overlooks “Bill Clinton Boulevard” in the capital city of Pristina. Hillary is also memorialized in what has become the crime capital of Europe: right off the street named for her husband is a store named “Hillary,” featuring women’s clothing modeled after the putative Democratic party nominee for President. Pantsuits figure prominently. As Vice puts it: “While former President Bill Clinton has had a boulevard named after him, it’s without a doubt that his wife’s the real star out here.” Why is that?As Gail Sheehy pointed out in her biography of Hillary, ...
“We could become the first country to go fascist through free elections.” — William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third ReichGenerally, we avoid using the word “fascism” in polite company, and until recently, a person pointing out parallels between Nazi Germany and the current United States would invite elevated eyelids along with the outworn charge of sounding like a “conspiracy theorist“. The current electoral cycle seems to be changing that, so I will trust that now is the right time to convey some ideas I’ve been marinating regarding fascism in my US Homeland. The ruling plutocrats are clearly ferrying the ...
SaveSaveOrigins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & 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.[wpedon id="4696" align="left"]
Because this article states so many things that might be likely to contradict what most people in Western countries have been led to believe, readers here are especially strongly encouraged to click onto any allegation which seems at all questionable, in order to get to the sources behind any given questionable allegation. And wherever a clicked-onto source turns out to be another article, one is encouraged similarly to do the same there, so that the reader will be able, in this way, to probe down to the ultimate sources, which are the sources upon which this article is finally based.After ...
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.[wpedon id="4696" align="left"]
Slobodan Milosevic was faced with an extremely serious and deadly situation in the 1990s. Indeed, that applied to all Serbs at that time in the Balkans, and still does to this very day. Mr Milosevic was up against the West, led by America and followed by the European Union. After realising that the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia could not be saved, Milosevic did everything he could to safeguard the newly created Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and protect Serbs living in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo and Metohija. And because of that, the West imposed crippling and merciless sanctions on the ...
