By Gary Lefley

On the 4th April this year Finland joined NATO, becoming its 31st member state, with Sweden also set to join soon. With Finland’s accession, NATO doubled the length of its border with Russia. Finland will now welcome US and NATO military bases onto its soil, including the capacity to station US nuclear missiles within 5 minutes striking distance of St Petersburg and 7 minutes from Moscow.

In military language, this will provide the US with nuclear primacy, that is, a nuclear first-strike capability. Investigative historian Eric Zuesse explains that US nuclear missiles, “will be within just a 7-minute blitz striking distance away from instantaneously annihilating Russia’s central command: so fast that for Russia to be able to recognize the missile had indeed been launched, and then to unleash Russia’s [nuclear arsenal] in response, would be impossible. Until today, no NATO member nation was even nearly so close to the Kremlin. Finland’s joining it gives to America’s central command the ‘Nuclear Primacy’ - the ability to ‘win’ a nuclear war against Russia, not merely to prevent one…” (1) Zuesse goes onto say, “The Nuclear Primacy nuclear-war-meta-strategy includes acceptance that at least a few million Americans would die in a US-Russia war even under the best of circumstances but considers that to be well worth America’s then emerging after WW III as the unchallengeable master of the entire planet.”

The rhetoric that Finland joining NATO somehow makes the world - or even Finland - safer, is cold-war madness.

NATO ADVANCES 

In February 1990, George H. W. Bush’s secretary of state, James Baker, gave his Soviet counterpart, Eduard Shevardnadze, “iron-clad guarantees that NATO’s jurisdiction or forces would not move eastward”. On the same day in Moscow, he famously told the Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev that the alliance would not move “one inch to the east”. (2) Since then, 15 nation states east of Berlin have joined NATO, 4 of which directly border on Russia: Norway, Estonia, Latvia and now Finland – Sweden will be a fifth. Ukraine, which shares a 1,426 mile border with Russia, if not the final piece in the jigsaw (that would be Belarus and Georgia) would be the jewel in NATO’s offensive crown.

NATO’s eastward expansion has nothing to do with defence. Defence against what? Russia’s military budget - $61.7bn - is minuscule compared with that of the USA: $778bn. It is comparable to that of Britain: $59.2bn, a budget Britain’s government is committed to doubling over the next 7 years. And it is marginally less than each of France: $52.7bn; Germany: $52.8bn; and Japan: $49.1bn, 3 nations that have also recently committed to massive militarisation. (3) In addition to military expenditure, overseas military bases are a useful indices of offensive capability and intent. Russia has around 35. Britain has 145. The U.S. has approximately 750! (China has 5). 

NATO - WAR NOT DEFENCE 

When 12 states formed NATO in 1949 the excuse was to ‘defend western values and way of life from Soviet socialism.’ Bearing in mind that the Soviet Union had just lost 28 million citizens in defeating Nazi Germany and liberating two thirds of Europe, in a war that the US had kept out of for 5 years; and a war in which Britain had for 4 years opted to squabble with Germany in north Africa over colonies rather than open a western front against the might of the Wehrmacht; we may want to question just what those ‘western values’ amounted to, other than naked imperial interest. 

Decades later the Cold War narrative persisted that NATO was formed to defend the west from the Warsaw Pact. In fact, the Warsaw Pact was not formed until 1955, after 6 years of NATO warmongering. Predictably, when the Warsaw Pact was wound up in 1991, NATO was not dissolved. On the contrary, it doubled its membership. Over 30 years later it continues in its mission to martial the rest of the world in accordance with the interests of exported western capital while subordinating its members to US hegemony. 

Since its inception in 1949 NATO countries, primarily the US, have been involved in multiple wars of invasion and conquest, under the guise of ‘peacekeeping’ and ‘conflict resolution’. According to one study, the US engaged in 64 covert and 6 overt attempts at regime change during the Cold War. (4) Since the defeat of the Soviet Union in 1990, the ‘War on Terror’ (in truth, an imperial war OF terror) has inflicted devastation with millions of fatalities, creating 30 million displaced persons of whom the British government is seeking to wash its hands. Britain and NATO have either participated in these wars, explicitly backed the US, or covertly supported it, including in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Afghanistan and Syria.

US CONTROL 

Ukraine is the latest case of US military interference. NATO powers and western media have worked overtime to re-write history and present the Ukraine war as a Russian provocation. The reality is that the US organised the coup in 2014 that overthrew the elected government and facilitated Kiev’s 8-year war on the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk. Sceptics should read the 2019 Rand Report, “Overextending and Unbalancing Russia” (5) which spells out the US covert plans to drag Russia into a war in Ukraine.

After the investigative report by Seymour Hersch there is little doubt that the US blew up the Nord Stream pipeline that brought Russian gas to Germany. (6) This was an act of state terrorism against Russia, but it was equally a devastating attack on Germany. The outcome is that the German people will have to pay 40% more for their gas, which will now be bought from US Liquefied Natural Gas monopolies. It was a violent lesson in US power and coercion: NATO members will not be allowed to build international economic relations which conflict with the interests of US monopoly capital. NATO is a military alliance for imperial collaboration in exploiting, threatening and, where required, brutalising states that wish to assert their independence. But it is also a tool of US hegemony for asserting control over its members. Rather than being an alliance for ‘mutual security’, NATO is a surreptitious threat to the independence of all its members - except the US of course.

NATO members join the alliance, partly at least, to share in the imperial booty. But they are also banking on the alliance to uphold the interests of domestic capitalism against the exigencies of an enduring economic crash and social unrest. In that respect NATO is the military expression of the IMF and World Bank. Given no other choice, the ruling elites of other major capitalist states would rather be beholden to US capital and NATO than to the revolutionary potential of their own working class.

DE-DOLLARISATION 

The rejection of the dollar as the compulsory currency for international trade is indicative of the increasing strains on the US world order, and the beginnings of new opportunities for non-alignment. The response of the US establishment to states abandoning the dollar is illuminating - and alarming. US Senator Marco Rubio recently let the cat out of the bag in an astonishing outburst, “Just today, Brazil, the largest country in the Western Hemisphere, cut a trade deal with China. They're going to, from now on, do trade in their own currencies, get right around the dollar. They’re creating a secondary economy in the world totally independent of the United States. We won't have to talk about sanctions in five years, because there'll be so many countries transacting in currencies other than the dollar that we won't have the ability to sanction them."

Rubio’s view was endorsed by Fareed Zakaria writing in The Washington Post, "The dollar is America’s superpower. It gives Washington unrivalled economic and political muscle. The United States can slap sanctions on countries unilaterally, freezing them out of large parts of the world economy. And when Washington spends freely, it can be certain that its debt will be bought up by the rest of the world." Pentagon insider Elbridge Colby endorsed the view that the US might, “not be able to finance a war with China if the US dollar loses its status as the world's reserve currency.” (7)

States with significant economic leverage, such as India, China, Brazil, Russia and Saudi Arabia, are negotiating deals based on their own currencies. These developments are not devoid of problematic repercussions. They are the wedge of a new multipolar world order that in the short term is destabilising and carries the threat of new US-led conflicts. But they also carry the hope of a domino effect in world trade that opens up important opportunities for poorer, non-aligned states to trade more freely, without the destructive threat of sanctions and the imposition of debt that can never be paid off.

NON-ALIGNED MOVEMENT 

The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) had its origins in the Bandung Conference of April 1945 in Indonesia, inspired by three world leaders: Nehru of India, Tito of Yugoslavia and Nasser of Egypt. It was formally launched in 1961. It draws together 120 nations representing nearly two-thirds of the United Nations' members and 55% of the world population. It is independent of military blocs - today that effectively means, not in NATO. 

NAM has based its work on the 10 Bandung principles, including:

• Respect for the sovereignty, equality and territorial integrity of all states 
• Rejection of any unconstitutional change of government, as well as external attempts to change the regime of government
• The preservation of the inalienable right that each state is free, without interference from outside, to determine its political, social, economic and cultural system; rejection of aggression and direct or indirect use of force; 
• Rejection of any unilateral economic, political or military measures.

For the first 30 years of its existence the NAM played a crucial role in decolonisation and the formation of new independent states. In the post-1990 US unipolar world order the NAM has aspired to occupy a global political niche that seeks to oppose the West’s unilateral actions on the world stage.

NATO does not defend Britain. It ties us to the coattails of US foreign policy and embroils us in military threats to the independence and very existence of other states. In so doing, it makes the UK a prime target for retaliation. And so long as Britain retains its nuclear arsenal and insists on flexing its imperial muscle - like sending an attack fleet to the South China Sea as it did last year - our NATO membership represents a self-inflicted existential threat.

The case for Britain withdrawing from NATO and joining the Non-Aligned Movement grows stronger as the US unipolar world order begins to crack, and the US response is increasingly to wage war, and to whip its ‘allies’ into line. A non-aligned Britain would be free to participate in the international economic and trade alliances that are emerging, such as BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) and to forge long term peaceful, cooperative relationships independently of the dollar. The outcome will be a more prosperous Britain, and a safer world. 

(1) America’s Secret Planned Conquest of Russia, Eric Zuesse 2016

(2) How Gorbachev Was Misled Over Assurances Against NATO Expansion, NATO Watch 2/1/2018

(3) World Military Spending Rises to Almost $2 Trillion In 2020, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute 26/4/21

(4) The Strategic Logic of Covert Regime Change: US-Backed Regime Change Campaigns during the Cold War. Security Studies 29: 92–127, Lindsey O'Rourke 29/11/2019

(5) Overextending and Unbalancing Russia - Assessing the impact of cost imposing options, Rand Corporation 2019

(6) How America Took Out the Nord Stream Pipeline, Seymour Hersch. 8/2/23

(7) Marco Rubio Accidentally Makes a Great Argument Against US Dollar Hegemony, Caitlin Johnstone 3/4/23

The most recent summit of the Non Aligned Movement was held in Baku, Azerbaijan photo by Press and Information Office Azerbaijan