NATO - time to bring the curtain down

Issue No. 231/232 (Nov/Dec 2009)

The justification offered for the establishment of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in 1949 was the threat of Soviet expansionism. Now that the Soviet Union is no more, there is no basis for the continued existence of the military alliance as it constitutes a threat to world peace, says SM Mohamed Idris.

THE transformation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) into a transnational military force with a global span is threatening world peace and security and the independence and sovereignty of smaller nations. NATO is a creature of the Cold War with the aim of containing 'Soviet expansionism' into Europe. In the words of its Secretary General Lord Ismay, NATO was 'to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down'.   

At its genesis in 1949 the alliance consisted of 12 founding members - Belgium, Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Italy, Luxembourg and the United States, of which 10 have coastlines on the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea. Three years later Turkey and Greece joined the alliance.

In 1954 the Soviet Union suggested that it should join NATO to preserve peace in Europe but the NATO countries rejected the proposal. In 1955 West Germany was admitted into this exclusive club and the Soviet response was the creation of the Warsaw Pact consisting of the Soviet Union, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Albania and East Germany.

The die was cast for the wasteful, senseless and dangerous intensification of the Cold War and the arms race. The opportunity that existed at the conclusion of World War 2 for laying the foundations for a world order based on peace, freedom, equality and justice was sacrificed at the altar of the US and Western ambition to dominate and control the world.

NATO's theatre of operation was meant to be the North Atlantic area as the US had military blocs in other parts of the world - CENTO, SEATO, and ANZUS - to secure its imperial interests. Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty provides:

'The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by  Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.

'Any such armed attack and all measures taken as a result thereof shall immediately be reported to the Security Council. Such measures shall be terminated when the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to restore and maintain international peace and security.'

Deviation

In the last 20 years, NATO has deviated from its original aim of collective defence to preserve security in the North Atlantic area to become the global policeman to protect US hegemonic interests.

The glasnost policy of President Gorbachev was meant to end the Cold War, institute democratic reforms in the Soviet Union and usher in an era of peace. It, however, led to the dismantlement of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact.

The US ruling elite regarded the collapse of the Soviet Union as the triumph of Western 'liberal democracy' over Soviet communism. Francis Fukuyama, in his essay, 'The West has Won: Radical Islam Can't Beat Democracy and Capitalism', wrote:

'We remain at the end of history because there is only one system that will continue to dominate world politics, that of the liberal-democratic West.  The clash consists of a series of rearguard actions from societies whose traditional existence is indeed threatened by modernisation. The strength of the backlash reflects the severity of this threat. But time is on the side of modernity, and I see no lack of US will to prevail.' 

Instead of dissolving NATO, since there was no credible threat to the security of Europe and North America, and taking initiatives for global disarmament and strengthening of the United Nations security structure, the US embarked on a programme of expanding its membership and increasing its role and capacity to intervene in any part of the world to promote its imperial goals.

In breach of the promise made by President Bush to President Gorbachev, NATO expanded eastwards to encircle and pose a security threat to Russia. Last year Gorbachev told the Daily Telegraph: 'The Americans promised that NATO wouldn't move beyond the boundaries of Germany after the Cold War but now half of central and eastern Europe are members, so what happened to their promises? It shows they cannot be trusted.'

He blasted the US for its military build-up to contain a resurgent Russia and continued:

'We had 10 years after the Cold War to build a new world order and yet we squandered them. The United States cannot tolerate anyone acting independently. Every US president has to have a war. The problem is not with Russia. Russia does not have enemies and Putin is not going to start a war against the United States or any other country for that matter. Yet we see the United States approving a military budget and the defence secretary pledging to strengthen conventional forces because of the possibility of a war with China or Russia. I sometimes have a feeling that the United States is going to wage a war against the entire world.'

He attributed the US war-mongering to the influence of the 'military-industrial complex' which he insisted is the real government of the US.

Extension of influence

All the former Warsaw Pact nations excluding the former Soviet Union and Albania - Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, the former German Democratic Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia - are currently members of both NATO and the European Union. Three former Soviet republics on the Baltic Sea - Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania - are also in.

The Black Sea region, which connects Europe with Asia, is of great strategic importance and the US is manoeuvring to gain control of it, which would seriously affect Russia's security. It has military bases and troops, and holds military exercises, in Bulgaria and Romania.  Georgia, located on the Black Sea's eastern border, has come under increasing US control. Its armed forces were trained and equipped by the US military for wars abroad and at home. It sent 2,000 troops to Iraq to help the US occupation forces. Its application to join NATO, strongly supported by the US, is under consideration.

The US has signed Strategic Partnership Charters with both Georgia and Ukraine. During the crisis last year in Georgia, NATO deployed a naval strike group in the Black Sea which included three US warships. The NATO warships were only 150 kilometres from Russian counterparts then docked in Abkhazia.

On the NATO encirclement of Russia, an Indian commentator, Premen Addy, commented:

'NATO's noose is drawn ever tighter round the Russian neck. American military and missile bases are already ensconced in Romania and Bulgaria - two states once in harness with Adolf Hitler's Third Reich and the invading Nazi legions into the USSR - in a bid to strangle the possible emergence of a rival centre of power in the Black Sea....' (Daily Pioneer, 16 August 2008)

With the establishment of a string of bases in the former Soviet territories, NATO positioned itself for projecting its power into Asia and Africa. As the US State Department's Matthew Bryza described:

'The East-West Corridor we had been building from Turkey and the Black Sea through Georgia and Azerbaijan and across the Caspian became the strategic air corridor, and the lifeline, into Afghanistan allowing the United States and our coalition partners to conduct Operation Enduring Freedom.' (US Department of State, 24 June 2008)

The war in Afghanistan

Operation Enduring Freedom, launched by the US after the 9/11 attacks, covers Afghanistan, Cuba (Guantanamo Bay Naval Base), Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Jordan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, the Philippines, the Seychelles, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Uzbekistan and Yemen. It has four components:

Operation Enduring Freedom - Afghanistan (OEF-A)

Operation Enduring Freedom - Philippines (OEF-P)

Operation Enduring Freedom - Horn of Africa (OEF-HOA)

Operation Enduring Freedom - Trans Sahara (OEF-TS)

In conjunction with Operation Enduring Freedom, on 4 October 2001 NATO activated for the first time in its then 52-year history the alliance's Article 5 'mutual defence' clause and embarked on the 'international war on terror'.  It carries out naval surveillance and interdiction in the Mediterranean Sea and prosecutes the war in Afghanistan. Hundreds of innocent people have been killed through indiscriminate bombing by US and NATO forces. Pakistan has been destabilised and the blame is put on it for US-NATO failures after nine years of occupation. 

Increasingly it is becoming clear that NATO will lose the war and this would be welcomed by most people.  As Professor Faheem Hussain  wrote on the CounterPunch website on 6 June 2008:

'NATO should never have been in Afghanistan in the first place and it is good to see that many European countries are reluctant to send their troops to die there. What is happening in Afghanistan is tragic with hundreds of innocents dying at the hands of indiscriminate bombing by US and NATO forces and by the retaliatory Taliban and resistance bombings but one thing is clear and that is that NATO will lose the war in Afghanistan. This is good because, I hope, that it will lead NATO to rethink its role in the post-cold war world and perhaps, if we are lucky, it may even be disbanded in the future.

'A NATO victory in Afghanistan will be disastrous for the region and for the world. It will encourage it in its Bush-designated role of a global "expeditionary alliance". At the NATO summit in Bucharest in April Bush said about NATO: "It is now an expeditionary alliance that is sending its forces across the world to help secure a future of freedom and peace for millions." In other words to interfere in and invade other poor countries of the south with the pretext of the new white man's burden: promoting freedom and peace. The people of Iraq and Afghanistan have enough of this so-called freedom and peace. It is therefore necessary that NATO loses in Afghanistan.

'A total withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan followed by a negotiated settlement between Afghan forces is the only way forward there.'

Indian Ocean presence

NATO now comprises not only the 28 full members but also partners from Partnership for Peace, Mediterranean Dialogue, Istanbul Cooperation Initiative and Contact Countries. Contact Country partners include India, Australia, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Korea, Singapore and others. Australia has as many as 1,500 combat troops, including special forces, serving under NATO command.

The US is having close military cooperation with India and trying to bring it into partnership with NATO to contain China. In 2007 the US, India, Australia, Japan and Singapore conducted a naval exercise called the 'Malabar Exercise'. On the five-nation war games, the Calcutta Telegraph reported on 22 August 2007:

'The five-nation Malabar war games are being conducted on rules and procedures compliant with the requirements of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, Indian naval and air force officers disclosed in interviews aboard the aircraft carrier today. The Malabar 07-02 war games, now into the fourth day, have raised concerns in Beijing of an emerging "Asian Nato".'

The informal meeting of the defence ministers of NATO member countries in Budapest, Hungary, on 9-10 October 2008 took the decision to establish a naval presence in the Indian Ocean. It was ostensibly for protecting World Food Programme ships carrying relief for famine-stricken Somalia.

Within a few days of the decision, the NATO ships were on their way to the Indian Ocean. Commenting on this, Ambassador MK Bhadrakumar, a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service, commented:

'Evidently, NATO has been carefully planning its Indian Ocean deployment. The speed with which it dispatched the ships betrays an element of haste, likely anticipating that some among the littoral states in the Indian Ocean region might contest such deployment by a Western military alliance. By acting with lightning speed and without publicity, NATO surely created a fait accompli.'

India also deployed a warship to work in cooperation with the Western navies deployed there. Commenting on this development, Ambassador Bhadrakumar wrote:

'Clearly, the Indian warship will eventually have to work in tandem with the NATO naval force. This will be the first time that the Indian armed forces will be working shoulder-to-shoulder with NATO forces in actual operations in territorial or international waters.

'The operations hold the potential to shift India's ties with NATO to a qualitatively new level. The US has been encouraging India to forge ties with NATO as well as play a bigger role in maritime security affairs. The two countries have a bilateral protocol relating to cooperation in maritime security, which was "Consistent with their global strategic partnership and the new framework for their defence relationship, India and the United States committed themselves to comprehensive cooperation in ensuring a secure maritime domain. In doing so, they pledged to work together, and with other regional partners as necessary."

'The Indian Navy command has been raring to go in the direction of close partnership with the US Navy in undertaking security responsibilities far beyond its territorial waters.'

There was a swift response from Russia to NATO's naval presence in the Indian Ocean. It dispatched a missile frigate 'to fight piracy off Somalia's coast'. The speaker of the Upper House of the Russian Parliament Sergei Mironov revealed that Russia might resume its Soviet-era naval presence in Yemen.

The Russian response reflects the emerging new Cold War and power rivalry among the big powers - the US, Russia and China - in response to US policies to dominate the world.

All US military operations in Africa, previously under the US Central Command,   have been taken over by a new command, Africom. Because of resistance from African countries to locating Africom in the continent, it is now based in Stuttgart, Germany.

On the strategy behind Africom, Bhadrakumar writes:

'US officials are on record that Africom and NATO envisage an institutional linkup in the downstream. The overall US strategy is to incrementally bring NATO into Africa so that its future role in the Indian Ocean (and Middle East) region as the instrument of US global security agenda becomes optimal. For the strategy to succeed in the Indian Ocean, however, NATO will need to align three key littoral states - India, Sri Lanka and Singapore. Singapore is a Cold War ally of the US. It overlooks the chokepoint of the Malacca Strait.'

Militaristic approach

The penetration of NATO into Asia and Africa and deployment of its forces there must be stopped. It is a relic of the Cold War based on Western domination and hegemony of the globe. Its militaristic approach to conflicts, including its willingness to use nuclear weapons, would only promote wars and destruction and make this world an unsafe place to live in. The combined military spending of all NATO constitutes over 70% of the world defence spending. The United States accounts for about half the military spending of the world and the United Kingdom and France account for a further 10%. NATO should be dissolved and its resources used to eliminate global poverty and promote social justice and environmental protection.

At the height of the Cold War, almost 50 years ago, on 25 September 1961, President John F Kennedy presented to the 16th General Assembly of the United Nations a disarmament proposal entitled Freedom from War: the United States Programme for General and Complete Disarmament.

The programme provides for the progressive reduction of the war-making capabilities of nations and the simultaneous strengthening of international institutions to settle disputes and maintain the peace. It sets forth a series of comprehensive measures which can and should be taken in order to bring about a world in which there will be freedom from war and security for all states.

The US should revisit this proposal, give up its policy of world domination and hegemony, and work for general disarmament and peace.                                                       

SM Mohamed Idris is Chairman of the Third World Network. He is also Chairman of Citizens International. The above is the text of a paper presented, in his capacity as Citizens International chair, at a conference on NATO and Its Policies in Asia, held in Kuala Lumpur in May 2009.

Sources

1.         Wikipedia: NATO

2.         Rick Rozoff: 'NATO's Drive Into Asia': Global Research - Jan 26, 2009

3.         Faheem Hussain: 'What is Nato Doing in Afghanistan?': CounterPunch - June 6, 2008

4.         MK Bhadrakumar: 'NATO reaches into the Indian Ocean': Asia Times Online - Oct 21,2008

5.         US Department of State: The United States Program for General and Complete Disarmament in a Peaceful World: Freedom From War

6.         Rick Rozoff: 'NATO's lake': March 3, 2009

*Third World Resurgence No. 231/232, November-December 2009, pp 44-47