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Title: What Planet Is NATO Living On?
Source: [None]
URL Source: https://www.mintpressnews.com/what-planet-is-nato-living-on/275598/
Published: Feb 28, 2021
Author: Medea Benjamin and Nicolas Davies
Post Date: 2021-02-28 14:37:28 by Ada
Keywords: None
Views: 271
Comments: 10

Despite its recent failures in Afghanistan and Libya, NATO is turning its military madness toward two more formidable, nuclear-armed enemies: Russia and China.

The February meeting of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) Defense Ministers, the first since President Biden took power, revealed an antiquated, 75-year-old alliance that, despite its military failures in Afghanistan and Libya, is now turning its military madness toward two more formidable, nuclear-armed enemies: Russia and China.

This theme was emphasized by U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in a Washington Post op-ed in advance of the NATO meeting, insisting that “aggressive and coercive behaviors from emboldened strategic competitors such as China and Russia reinforce our belief in collective security.”

Using Russia and China to justify more Western military build-up is a key element in the alliance’s new “Strategic Concept,” called NATO 2030: United For a New Era, which is intended to define its role in the world for the next ten years.

NATO was founded in 1949 by the United States and 11 other Western nations to confront the Soviet Union and the rise of communism in Europe. Since the end of the Cold War, it has grown to 30 countries, expanding to incorporate most of Eastern Europe, and it now has a long and persistent history of illegal war-making, bombing civilians and other war crimes.

In 1999, NATO launched a war without UN approval to separate Kosovo from Serbia. Its illegal airstrikes during the Kosovo War killed hundreds of civilians, and its close ally, Kosovo President Hashim Thaci, is now on trial for shocking war crimes committed under cover of the NATO bombing campaign.

Far from the North Atlantic, NATO has fought alongside the United States in Afghanistan since 2001, and attacked Libya in 2011, leaving behind a failed state and triggering a massive refugee crisis.

The first phase of NATO’s new Strategic Concept review is called the NATO 2030 Reflection Group report. That sounds encouraging, since NATO obviously and urgently needs to reflect on its bloody history. Why does an organization nominally dedicated to deterring war and preserving peace keep starting wars, killing thousands of people and leaving countries around the world mired in violence, chaos and poverty?

But unfortunately, this kind of introspection is not what NATO means by “reflection.” The Reflection Group instead applauds NATO as “history’s most successful military alliance,” and seems to have taken a leaf from the Obama playbook by only “looking forward,” as it charges into a new decade of military confrontation with its blinders firmly in place.

NATO’s role in the “new” Cold War is really a reversion to its old role in the original Cold War. This is instructive, as it unearths the ugly reasons why the United States decided to create NATO in the first place, and exposes them for a new generation of Americans and Europeans to examine in the context of today’s world.

Any U.S. war with the Soviet Union or Russia was always going to put Europeans directly on the front lines as both combatants and mass- casualty victims. The primary function of NATO is to ensure that the people of Europe continue to play these assigned roles in America’s war plans.

As Michael Klare explains in a NATO Watch report on NATO 2030, every step the U.S. is taking with NATO is “intended to integrate it into U.S. plans to fight and defeat China and Russia in all-out warfare.”

The U.S. Army’s plan for an invasion of Russia, which is euphemistically called “The U.S. Army in Multi-Domain Operations,” begins with missile and artillery bombardments of Russian command centers and defensive forces, followed by an invasion by armored forces to occupy key areas and sites until Russia surrenders.

Unsurprisingly, Russia’s defense strategy in the face of such an existential threat would not be to surrender, but to retaliate against the United States and its allies with nuclear weapons.

U.S. war plans for an assault on China are similar, involving missiles fired from ships and bases in the Pacific. China has not been as public about its defense plans, but if its existence and independence were threatened, it too would probably use nuclear weapons, as indeed the United States would if the positions were reversed. But they’re not— since no other country has the offensive war machine it would need to invade the United States.

Michael Klare concludes that NATO 2030 “commits all alliance members to a costly, all-consuming military competition with Russia and China that will expose them to an ever-increasing risk of nuclear war.”

So how do the European people feel about their role in America’s war plans? The European Council on Foreign Relations recently conducted an in-depth poll of 15,000 people in ten NATO countries and Sweden, and published the results in a report titled “The Crisis of American Power: How Europeans See Biden’s America.”

The report reveals that a large majority of Europeans want no part in a U.S. war with Russia or China and want to remain neutral. Only 22% would support taking the U.S. side in a war with China, 23% in a war with Russia. So European public opinion is squarely at odds with NATO’s role in America’s war plans.

On transatlantic relations in general, majorities in most European countries see the U.S. political system as broken and their own countries’ politics as in healthier shape. Fifty-nine percent of Europeans believe that China will be more powerful than the United States within a decade, and most see Germany as a more important partner and international leader than the United States.

Only 17% of Europeans want closer economic ties with the United States, while even fewer, 10% of French and Germans, think their countries need America’s help with their national defense.

Biden’s election has not changed Europeans’ views very much from a previous survey in 2019, because they see Trumpism as a symptom of more deeply rooted and long-standing problems in American society. As the writers conclude, “A majority of Europeans doubt that Biden can put Humpty Dumpty back together again.”

There is also pushback among Europeans to NATO’s demand that members should spend 2 percent of their gross domestic products on defense, an arbitrary goal that only 10 of the 30 members have met. Ironically, some states will reach the NATO target without raising their military spending because COVID has shrunk their GDPs, but NATO members struggling economically are unlikely to prioritize military spending.

The schism between NATO’s hostility and Europe’s economic interests runs deeper than just military spending. While the United States and NATO see Russia and China primarily as threats, European businesses view them as key partners. In 2020, China supplanted the U.S. as the European Union’s number one trading partner and at the close of 2020, the EU concluded a comprehensive investment agreement with China, despite U.S. concerns.

European countries also have their own economic relations with Russia. Germany remains committed to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, a 746-mile natural gas artery that runs from northern Russia to Germany—even as the Biden administration calls it a “bad deal” and claims that it makes Europe vulnerable to Russian “treachery.”

NATO seems oblivious to the changing dynamics of today’s world, as if it’s living on a different planet. Its one-sided Reflection Group report cites Russia’s violation of international law in Crimea as a principal cause of deteriorating relations with the West, and insists that Russia must “return to full compliance with international law.” But it ignores the U.S. and NATO’s far more numerous violations of international law and leading role in the tensions fueling the renewed Cold War:

illegal invasions of Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq; the broken agreement over NATO expansion into Eastern Europe; U.S. withdrawals from important arms control treaties; more than 300,000 bombs and missiles dropped on other countries by the United States and its allies since 2001; U.S. proxy wars in Libya and Syria, which plunged both countries into chaos, revived Al Qaeda and spawned the Islamic State; U.S. management of the 2014 coup in Ukraine, which led to economic collapse, Russian annexation of Crimea and civil war in Eastern Ukraine; and the stark reality of the United States’ record as a serial aggressor whose offensive war machine dwarfs Russia’s defense spending by 11 to 1 and China’s by 2.8 to 1, even without counting other NATO countries’ military spending. NATO’s failure to seriously examine its own role in what it euphemistically calls “uncertain times” should therefore be more alarming to Americans and Europeans than its one-sided criticisms of Russia and China, whose contributions to the uncertainty of our times pale by comparison.

The short-sighted preservation and expansion of NATO for a whole generation after the dissolution of the U.S.S.R and the end of the Cold War has tragically set the stage for the renewal of those hostilities – or maybe even made their revival inevitable.

NATO’s Reflection Group justifies and promotes the United States’ and NATO’s renewed Cold War by filling its report with dangerously one-sided threat analysis. A more honest and balanced review of the dangers facing the world and NATO’s role in them would lead to a much simpler plan for NATO’s future: that it should be dissolved and dismantled as quickly as possible.

Feature Photo | NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg speaks during a media conference, after a meeting of NATO defense ministers in video format, at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Feb. 18, 2021. Virginia Mayo | AP

Medea Benjamin is cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher with CODEPINK and the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.

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#1. To: Ada (#0)

NATO seems oblivious to the changing dynamics of today’s world, as if it’s living on a different planet.

Horseshit...with a large dash of ignorance.

Cynicom  posted on  2021-02-28   14:46:36 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#2. To: Cynicom (#1)

It's funny when ignorant people speak down about others who aren't.

Do you think a nuclear war can be "won"?


"After tomorrow those SOB's will never embarrass me again. That’s not a threat. That’s a promise.” – LBJ to his mistress Madeleine Brown on the eve of JFK assassination

FormerLurker  posted on  2021-02-28   20:55:56 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#3. To: Ada (#0)

A more honest and balanced review of the dangers facing the world and NATO’s role in them would lead to a much simpler plan for NATO’s future: that it should be dissolved and dismantled as quickly as possible.

Should have been done decades, and gazillions of $$$, ago.

“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.” ~ H. L. Mencken

Lod  posted on  2021-02-28   22:06:49 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#4. To: Lod (#3)

that it should be dissolved and dismantled as quickly as possible.

Should have been done decades, and gazillions of $$$, ago.

That is exactly word for word what our enemies want us to believe and espouse.

"""Enemies""" Ask Trump, they are within and without.

Cynicom  posted on  2021-03-01   4:39:29 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#5. To: Lod (#3)

NATO is simply the fig leaf for US aggression.

Ada  posted on  2021-03-01   9:10:58 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#6. To: Ada, Lod (#5)

NATO is simply the fig leaf for US aggression.

Sad, but proof that if one is told a lie endlessly,over and over, it becomes the truth and reality.

Any student of history and geo/politics would NEVER repeat a propaganda line such as that word for word.

Sake of discussion, what country does not want the US to depart Europe and or Asia????? And why???

Cynicom  posted on  2021-03-01   9:26:01 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#7. To: Cynicom, 4um (#6)

Sake of discussion, what country does not want the US to depart Europe and or Asia????? And why???

It's not exactly my bailiwick anymore, but I'd say Russia because of China's ambitions.

Esso the Slav.

The light that burns twice as bright, burns half as long. - Dr. Eldon Tyrell

Godfrey Smith: Mike, I wouldn't worry. Prosperity is just around the corner.
Mike Flaherty: Yeah, it's been there a long time. I wish I knew which corner.
My Man Godfrey (1936)

Esso  posted on  2021-03-01   9:40:18 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#8. To: Esso (#7)

I'd say Russia because of China's ambitions.

Russia indeed.

Asia has about 5 billion people and increasing. Russia is worlds largest country with few people and untapped natural resources. Geo/politics describes the imbalance in food to eat and oil to use.

Question for Americans...If China crossed the border with full scale invasion of Russia should NATO move East to Russias aid or retreat westward????

Such questions HAVE TO BE ANSWERED AND RECKONED WITH.

Cynicom  posted on  2021-03-01   10:32:48 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#9. To: Cynicom (#8)

Russia is worlds largest country with few people and untapped natural resources.

If China wants Russian natural resources, it will buy them just like it does with other countries.

Ada  posted on  2021-03-01   16:00:55 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#10. To: AdaLod, Esso (#9) (Edited)

If China wants Russian natural resources, it will buy them just like it does with other countries.

That defies history, logic and common sense.

In recent history, did Japan BUY their oil from Dutch East Indies or did they take it by force?? Food wise their goal was Australia by force even tho they could pay for it. After millions died in horrible war, Japan buys their food and oil. Australia had few people, lots of land. We know the result.

Germany likewise, small country, few resources took both from others.

China has a billion and a half people and multiplying by the minute. Millions of Chinese now live illegally in Russia.

Currently this year China population growth is 49,135 live births average per day (2,047.29 in an hour) 27,653 deaths average per day (1,152.22 in an hour).

That means China has 23,000 more mouths to feed every day of the year AND THEY ARE IMPORTING FOOD EVERY DAY TO SURVIVE.

They are not growing any more arable land, but Russia next door has excess land and few people.

Cynicom  posted on  2021-03-01   17:07:36 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


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