At one time the alliance known as NATO has its place in history….not now for it is nothing more than an extension of the M-IC.
In the beginning, 1949, there was the mission statement….
The Parties to this Treaty reaffirm their faith in the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and their desire to live in peace with all peoples and all governments.
They are determined to safeguard the freedom, common heritage and civilization of their peoples, founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law. They seek to promote stability and well-being in the North Atlantic area.
They are resolved to unite their efforts for collective defense and for the preservation of peace and security. They therefore agree to this North Atlantic Treaty.
There was a time when I can see the necessity for this organization….the whole world after WW2 was running scared that the USSR was on a mission to take all of Western Europe after their annexation of Eastern Europe.
In my opinion when the USSR collapsed and was no longer the Russia bear that all feared it was time to dissolve NATO and let Western Europe come up with their own ‘mutual defense’ scheme.
But sadly I was in a minority in those days.
Fast forward to today, 2023….
The alliance is billed as ….’ for the preservation of peace and security’ and that is a con.
At his speech during the NATO Summit in Lithuania, President Biden called the U.S. and Europe “anchors for global security” when in reality there are no anchors during this increasingly dangerous and polarized time of never-ending war in Europe. Our NATO allies are not, as Biden would suggest, anchors in a turbulent sea of demons but rather catalysts stirring the cauldron of war on behalf of US empire.
The instability of the NATO alliance was evident in the controversy over the key issue of Ukraine membership. Biden and his administration tried to work both sides of the street. On the one hand, Biden insisted that “Ukraine’s future lies at NATO.” But then the US teamed up with Germany to make sure the summit made only a vague statement about Ukraine joining when allies agree and “conditions are met,” incurring the wrath of a fuming President Zelensky. Biden’s national security advisor Jake Sullivan told CNN that everyone “needs to look squarely at the fact” that allowing Ukraine to join NATO at this point “means war with Russia.”
But this does not mean that Biden, or NATO, are ready to endorse peace talks. On the contrary. The NATO Summit came on the heels of Biden’s much-scorned decision to send banned cluster bombs to Ukraine. And at the Summit, France announced plans to send new long-range strike missiles; Germany announced a new round of military aid, including tanks and artillery shells; and 11 NATO countries pledged to train Ukrainian pilots to fly nuclear-capable F-16 fighter jets. In short, Ukraine’s Zelensky walked away from the NATO summit with a declaration of years of military subsidies, a virtual blank check to make Ukraine a forever proxy to maintain US hegemony. As NATO members send Ukraine more and more destructive weapons, the terrifying possibility of a wider war, even a nuclear war, casts a shadow over the entire globe.
NATO Is a Warfare Alliance, Not a Force for Global Peace or Stability
This organization has been a war alliance since the mid-90s when it started expanded beyond the borders of Western Europe.
The Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan and now Ukraine all wars….not a bit of ‘peace and security’ in them all.
Does the US and NATO want all this war or does it want something else?
NATO is taking the place of the UN….at least the UN does attempt at peaceful resolution….not so with NATO it is expansion and intervention on a grand scale.
Time for this alliance to go the way of the do-do….I know not likely to occur for there is way too much cash in war dividends for it to consider anything other than war.
That said could this Ukraine thing derail NATO (finally)….
Both prongs of Biden’s strategy – sanctions and military action by proxy – were, it is now clear, delusional. The first, famously expecting to reduce the ruble to rubble and to push the Russian economy ‘back to the stone age’, had become a manifest failure by the end of 2022 if not earlier. As for the second, despite the billions in military assistance, despite exhausting Western weapons stockpiles, despite discovering the quantitative and qualitative limits to Western weapons production capacities notwithstanding astronomically expensive military industrial complexes, despite ever more deadly weapons now including cluster bombs, despite reliance on neo-Nazi battalions, despite US and Ukrainian willingness to incur macabre levels of Ukrainian and mercenary casualties, it has been clear for some time that Ukraine is losing and has no prospect of winning.
President Biden acknowledged this in his turnaround on offering Ukraine membership of NATO or even giving it a timetable for the same and his new-found insistence that not only should things not be made easy for Ukraine to join, not only should Ukraine demonstrate progress on requisite reforms, but it should conclude a peace treaty with Russia before it can join NATO, a point repeated more than one by Jens Stoltenberg at Vilnius.
(antiwar.com)
And the waste goes on….
After Ukraine where will NATO expand?
It has become this enormous empire…..an empire of war. Will it try to turn to the Far East in the future?
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”
The League of Nations, The United Nations, NATO, SEATO
That dam thing posted itself before I could complete it…..let me try again….The League of Nations, The United Nations, NATO, now defunct SEATO– all good ideas gone astray–The great democratic experiment begun in 1776 called “The United States,” — another good idea gone astray and soon to be replaced by the First Right Wing Reich….and the clock ticks on.
It may tick on but for how much longer? chuq
oops!
The manifestation of the First Right Wing Reich will solve everybody’s problems — No one will survive except for the right wingers.
And that is the plan….at least appears to be chuq
Our Defence Minister here has stated that he is not in favour of any peace talks until Russia returns all the captured territory, including Crimea. He knows that is never going to happen of course.
Best wishes, Pete.
We all kno9w that it will not happen but it makes good news fodder. chuq
John above rather alludes an important point. The general “weakness” of defense, and even trade compacts, is that at time progresses internal situations do change. Governments shift due to changing local politics, there’s shifting cultural and religious influences, and even between nations who share borders, disputes and spats can rise and fall. While at the beginning everyone signs on to a defense or trade treaty during a few years of democratic Kumbaya or a focused purpose (i.e. the old Soviet Union, or a “new” belligerent Russia). In fact, as more new members are added this exasperates the strong possibility of this kind of situation happening between two or more members. This “all for one, and one for all” thing only goes so far when two or more members decide to go at it between themselves… all expecting to be defended by the whole.
There is also the very real concern for including as members countries with relatively strong cultural and/or religious differences that can tend to sway away from democracy, and back again, depending on local politics. Case in point is Turkey… a Christian and Muslim nation, not to mention some other influences mixed in there as well. The further into the Asian continent, Southeast Asia, even Africa… these issues will become more apparent.
Now.. I will be the first to agree that the world is far removed from the traditional thinking that each country can do their own thing… willy-nilly. We are way passed nationalistic individualism (even though some think otherwise) because what happens in country A will affect more than just Country B next door, as it affects all nations to some degree… whether it be regarding trade or military “posturing”. Maintaining a nation’s cultural diversity, religion, and traditions internally is one thing… and a very important thing. But we all inhabit the same planet so we had best start getting along at that level when coexisting internationally. But we are are all human.. so likely that will not happen next week.. if at all. We have to have reasons to kill each other to survive as a species.