Saturday 9 July 2016
NATO - NO!
Having Canada devote more money - the USA wants all member states to devote 2% of the GDP to armaments - who stands to gain by that? - to NATO seems to be done merely on the basis of a kiss-and-hug friendship between Obama and Trudeau. How much? Billions, army personnel and more.
Joseph Gerson of AFSC attended the Counter-NATO Summit in Warsaw and posted these points of interest: (Ruthlessly edited)
• There is growing concern about NATO, led by the U.S., dangerously
ratcheting up military tensions in Europe and not respecting the very
real limits of Russian/Putin ambitions. (See my Common Dreams
article’s section on Ukraine
* NATO must be retired as soon as possible.
• Beginning with the Lisbon Treaty of 2009, the E.U. has been
developing its own military. It is deeply integrated with NATO and
provides the E.U. with the options of fighting as part of and in
coordination with NATO or operating independently. As Britain exits
from the E.U., Germany will be the dominant military power. In NATO
Germany is “just a junior partner,” while in the E.U. it is dominant.
There is often a division of labor with NATO doing its coercive thing,
while the E.U. takes care of the civilian dimensions of an intervention
or nation building.
• While U.S. and E.U. interests and policies are closely aligned, at
points they diverge. For example, Germany has deep economic interests
with Russia, while the U.S. has few, leading to less aggressive Germany
policies toward Russia. Also, the U.S. and Russia are reportedly
supporting the Kurds in Syria (they declared the regional autonomy of
their part of Syria yesterday), while Germany is backing Turkey as it
tolerates Turkey’s assault on Kurds in Turkey and Syria (largely owing
to the deal to keep Syrian refugees from coming to Europe.) While the
U.S. and E.U. collaborated in the Ukrainian Maidan coup, they backed
different oligarchs, with the U.S. winning out and restructuring
Ukrainian intelligence and its military along U.S. lines and to serve
U.S. interests.
• Ilya Budraiskis of the Russian Socialist Movement is a sharp and
courageous critic of Putin’s government. He is also clear that NATO
and Russian militarism are dangerous and need to be opposed. The
sanctions (both the U.S./E.U. sanction and Putin’s sanctions on food
imports from Europe) have hurt the Russian people, with the former
leading more people to support Putin. Sanctions should be targeted
only against the persons of Putin & his cronies.
• North America has little awareness of the dangers of increasing the
U.S-led militarism in Europe.
• The slogan on the banner lead the NATO protest today says (in Polish)
“We’ve suffered Russia and We Don’t Want Washington. No to
NATO.” Poland is now the front line in this new Cold War. A poll
released yesterday indicated that 20% of Poles oppose NATO, a
number larger than expected.
• Militarism in Europe is choking democratic culture and institutions,
with Poland being a prime but not unique example. NATO and the E.U.
military make decisions in secret and are not accountable to any
democratic processes.
• U.S. demands that all members of NATO devote at least 2% of their
GDP to their militaries is oppressive, especially in the context of the
austerity budgets which have slashed essential social services and
people’s incomes. SIPRI reports that U.S. military spending is 34%
of the world’s total. Adding NATO gets to more than half. Russia’s
spending is 4% of the world’s total, which says something about
relative (not nuclear) power.
• The military-industrial complex and elites require enemies to prosper.
Putin, while hardly loved by people here, is being demonized for this
purpose.
• Some Eastern European and Baltic states joined NATO only because
they thought it necessary to do so in order to gain E.U. membership.
• The German Left Party (De Linke) forced a debate in the German
Parliament recently over whether NATO should be dissolved. It was
apparently quite a passionate debate on all sides. The European Left is
developing a resolution calling for the dissolution of NATO to be
introduced into the parliaments of many European nations for debate
in November. They don’t expect to win these debates but to open up
the public discourse.
• The British Chilcot report, which is holding Tony Blair’s government
accountable for lying and committing to the war in Iraq before all
peaceful alternatives were exhausted is inspiring to people from across
Europe. Jeremy Corbyn has been shown to have been correct in his
opposition to the war and his criticism of Blair and his cronies.
• German Foreign Minister Steinmeyer referred to the massive
Anaconda military exercise in Central Europe and the Baltics as
“warmongering.” (Reference was made to anaconda snakes strangling
their prey – i.e. Russia.)
• A video of Rep. Barbara Lee was inspiring. She was the one member
of the USA Congress with the wisdom and courage to vote against the
authorization of the disaterous Afghanistan War. Her remarks focused
on the urgent need to prevent nuclear war and to move for the complete
elimination of nuclear weapons.
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