By Pat Turnbull

The former President of Bolivia, Evo Morales is organising an international campaign to dissolve NATO (Telesur 10/3/22). ‘NATO is a danger to world peace, to security, so we are in the task of reaching agreements with social movements, not only in Latin America, but in all continents, to eliminate it. If nothing is done against NATO, it will be a permanent threat to humanity,’ he said.  Morales also pointed a finger at the United States, the prime mover and beneficiary of NATO, saying, ‘The US always provokes wars to sell its weapons, interventions, military bases, to take over natural resources.’ [1]

AGGRESSIVE ALLIANCE

There is plenty of evidence that NATO is an aggressive alliance, and not the defensive body it always claims to be.

Since promising Gorbachev not to move any further east than the German border, NATO has expanded steadily eastwards to include 14 more states in central and eastern Europe, including the three former Baltic Soviet republics of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, so that its forces now stand on Russia’s borders. This expansion was at a time when Russia was either weakened by the chaos following the dissolution of the USSR, or suing for peaceful cooperation, even membership, of NATO.  So using the Russian military intervention in Ukraine as an excuse for further co-opting Finland and Sweden cuts no ice.

NATO broke the post-World War II peace in Europe.  On March 24, 1999, US-led NATO forces bypassed the United Nations Security Council and began the 78-day bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.  In 12,000 strikes, over 10,000 tonnes of explosives were dropped and more than 3,000 missiles fired, targeting everything from medical facilities to residential buildings and schools.  At least 2,500 civilians were killed.  During the bombing, NATO used depleted uranium bombs prohibited by international conventions.

China is one of NATO’s main targets. Three Chinese journalists were killed in the bombing of Yugoslavia, when NATO bombs struck the Chinese embassy. In the words of Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Wang Wenbin: ‘Born out of the Cold War, NATO serves no other purpose than war.  It has never contributed to peace and security of our world and will never do so. All those who truly love peace and are committed to advancing peace will resolutely reject NATO’s continued expansion.’ [2]

Russia is another chief target of NATO. On 19 March, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recalled further NATO aggression: ‘NATO also acted in Iraq without a United Nations Security Council resolution. In Libya, it did have a resolution, but it only covered establishing a no-fly zone…NATO bombed all the army positions from the air, which the UN Security Council did not warrant, and brutally killed Muammar Gaddafi without trial or investigation…Now Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has declared that NATO must bear global responsibility…So, NATO is ready to ‘defend itself’ in the South China Sea…A really unusual type of defence.’ [3]

NUCLEAR ALLIANCE

NATO is a nuclear alliance, and an instrument for the enforcement of United States hegemony in an increasingly multipolar world.  It puts Europe on the front line mainly in the interests of the United States.

In November 2021 NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg spoke at the Nuclear Policy Symposium.   Blaming the Russians and Chinese he said: ‘As long as [nuclear weapons] exist, NATO will remain a nuclear alliance…We are working to enhance the resilience, responsiveness, and effectiveness of our nuclear forces. The strategic forces of the Alliance form the foundation of NATO’s nuclear deterrence. Particularly those of the United States.  They are the supreme guarantee of Allied security. The United States’ nuclear weapons forward-deployed in Europe are the most tangible demonstration of this. The independent strategic nuclear forces of the United Kingdom and France have a deterrent role of their own, and contribute significantly to the overall security of the alliance. Other Allies also provide important capabilities and infrastructure, like dual-capable aircraft, in support of NATO’s nuclear sharing arrangements…. they have helped prevent further nuclear proliferation in Europe’. [4]

Steadfast Noon, NATO’s so-called ‘annual deterrence exercise’ began on 18 October 2021, and involved dozens of planes and 14 NATO countries. This year the bases used for the drills were Aviano AB and Ghedi, in Italy. [5] These airbases house an estimated 15 and 20 United States B61-3/-4 gravity bombs respectively. More bombs are deployed in Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and Turkey. The US is developing the more accurate B61-12, which will replace all existing gravity bombs and was scheduled to have the first production unit completed in late 2021. ‘Belgium, Italy and the Netherlands are in the process of acquiring the new F-35A fighter jet, which conducted in September its final flight test to complete the nuclear design certification process and ensure compatibility with the B61-12…The aircraft do not carry live bombs during the exercise flights.’ [6]

It is stretching the claim of preventing nuclear proliferation pretty far to include five European countries in storing US atomic bombs, and include 14 European countries in drills to deliver them. Europe is on the front line of the risk of nuclear conflict. The USA, which controls the use of the nuclear weapons, is far in the rear.

It may be argued that no one would be so insane as to genuinely consider deploying nuclear weapons. But the United States has considered it. Walter Pincus reports that the US has roughly 150 nuclear bombs stored in the five European countries. Referring to Presidential Oral Histories, a collection of interviews with former US government ministers, he says: ‘The issue of possibly using US tactical nuclear weapons came up in late 1990 as the US was preparing Operation Desert Storm to push Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi troops out of Kuwait.

‘As [Dick] Cheney [then Secretary of Defence] put it when questioned at the Miller Centre in March 2000, “If he [Saddam] uses biological or chemical agents against our troops, all bets are off and we reserve the right to use any means at our disposal to respond…The threat clearly was that we’d use, or threaten to use, nuclear weapons.”  Cheney went on, “I said, I want to know how many tactical nuclear weapons will it take to destroy a division of the Iraqi Republican Guard…I found out it takes 17 weapons”.

US Secretary of State James Baker also used the threat of use of nuclear weapons in a conversation with Tariq Aziz, Saddam Hussein’s closest adviser, in January 1991. ‘Baker said, “Based on the real-time example of how such a threat really worked to protect our troops, the Obama 2010 Nuclear Posture Review made a mistake when it said it would only use conventional weapons against a non-nuclear state that employed chemical or biological weapons.”’ [7]

Threats have also been issued in relation to the current conflict in Ukraine. On 24 February Reuters reported the words of French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian on French television TF1: ‘I think that Vladimir Putin must also understand that the Atlantic alliance is a nuclear alliance,’ words most likely to have prompted the Russian decision to put their forces on nuclear alert. [8]

EUROPE - THE FRONTLINE

NATO has always been a threat to peace in the image of its creator, the United States. The United States is the only country to have dropped nuclear bombs, on the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. In November 1945 US plan 329 envisaged a nuclear strike against 20 targets in the Soviet Union, its recent ally in the battle against Nazi Germany. In December 1945 plan 432/D provided for hitting the USSR with 196 atomic bombs. In 1949, under the Dropshot plan the United States was to use 300 nuclear bombs against the Soviet Union.

Europe has always been the US’s front line. In March 1948 the Western European Union (WEU) was set up, a closed and exclusive military bloc made up of Great Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxemburg. A supreme allied command was established under British Field Marshall Montgomery. The WEU had full US support. This was the first post war military bloc, set up in the teeth of repeated Soviet efforts to maintain a peaceful united Europe.

Early in 1949 the Soviet Union proposed a joint declaration renouncing war against each other as a means of resolving international disputes, to conclude a Peace Pact, and begin gradual disarmament. The western response was that on 4 April 1949, in Washington, twelve countries – the US, Canada, Great Britain, France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxemburg, Denmark, Norway, Iceland and Portugal - signed the North Atlantic Treaty.  On 5 April The Wall Street Journal named it ‘the triumph of jungle law over international cooperation on a world scale.’ The Soviet government sent a memo on 31 March to some of the governments that would be party to the treaty: ‘This is a clearly aggressive treaty aimed against the USSR, a fact even officials of the parties to the Treaty admit in their public statements.’ The US got down to setting up 429 large and 3,400 smaller military bases worldwide, most of them round the Soviet Union, including tactical nuclear weapons and the bases from which they could be used.

After the Federal Republic of Germany had been made a NATO member, on 11-14 May 1955, the USSR, Poland, Bulgaria, the German Democratic Republic, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary and Albania held a conference in Warsaw and signed a defensive treaty – the Warsaw Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance. It was dissolved in July 1991 – but NATO continues.

PEACEFUL COOPERATION

The high point of peaceful cooperation in post-war Europe was the 1970s, eventually scuppered by the US and NATO.  The 24^th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, held in March and April 1971, advanced a comprehensive peace programme.  Treaties between the USSR and other socialist countries were signed with the Federal Republic of Germany, and the German Democratic Republic was internationally recognised as a sovereign state. Years of hard work in the teeth of opposition from the warmongers in NATO finally achieved a summit conference of 33 European countries plus the United States and Canada in Helsinki. The final act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe was signed in Helsinki on 1 August 1975. It included ten important principles such as sovereign equality, refraining from the threat or use of force, territorial integrity of states, and peaceful settlement of disputes. Cooperation among states should improve the well-being of peoples and aid in the narrowing of differences in the levels of economic development. Steps were to be taken towards the ultimate achievement of general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.

However, powerful forces in the United States and other NATO countries saw that an end to the arms race would deprive them of their super profits and launched a campaign against détente, and against the Helsinki accords. In March 1978 US President Carter, no doubt advised by Zbigniew Brzezinski, his assistant for national security affairs, announced a reappraisal of the US military strategy, shifting the emphasis once more to threats and build-up of tensions. In August 1980 he issued his Directive 59, essentially proclaiming ‘limited nuclear war’ as a means of attaining the US’s imperial goals and stipulating a first strike against targets in the Soviet Union and other socialist countries. This flew in the face of the 1972 adoption, by an overwhelming majority of the 27^th United Nations General Assembly, of the Soviet-sponsored ‘Resolution on the Non-Use of Force in International Relations and Perpetual Prohibition of the Use of Nuclear Weapons’.

The December 1975 session of the North Atlantic Council concentrated mainly on arms production, specifically on standardisation. The May 1977 North Atlantic Council summit agreed on 140 steps to enhance western preparedness for war. A North Atlantic Council session held in Washington in May 1978 approved a special comprehensive rearmament programme worth 80 billion dollars and scheduled to last 15 to 20 years. The aim for military superiority to dictate to independent states was completely at variance with the Helsinki Final Act.

At its December 1979 session the meeting of foreign and defence ministers of the NATO countries, clearly under pressure from Washington, approved plans to produce and deploy in Western Europe new US medium-range missiles targeted on the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact countries.  The missiles were deployed in the Federal Republic of Germany, Great Britain, and Italy, and subsequently in Belgium and the Netherlands. On the same day as these plans were approved, President Carter announced a broad programme of further US military build-up, including the creation of NATO’s Quick Reaction Alert Force for operations beyond the NATO region. In 1980 the US began the manufacture of cruise missiles, and the Trident system of nuclear submarines.

In May 1980 the Warsaw Treaty Political Consultative Committee declared: ‘If the decision [to produce and deploy new US medium-range missiles in Western Europe] is carried out the situation on the European continent will sharply worsen, since a growth of destructive potential in Europe will inevitably affect the political climate and the vital interests of the peoples of the continent, [and] will entail new huge expenditures which will lay a still heavier burden on the peoples.’ [10]

This is as true today as it was then. The governments of Europe need to start to consider the real needs of their populations and not the warlike demands of NATO.  People the world over should rally to Evo Morales’s call: ‘Dissolve NATO!’

 

(1) Evo Morales: NATO is a threat to the world; must be dissolved, Telesur, 10/3/21

(2) Wang Wenbin: NATO serves no other purpose than war, Friends of Socialist China

(3) Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov: Leaders of Russia Management Competition, Moscow, March 19, 2022

(4) Speech by Jens Stoltenberg at the Nuclear Policy Symposium, NATO web site, 2/11/21

(5) Steadfast Noon 2021, Airshow Stuff, 21/10/21

(6) NATO concludes annual nuclear exercise, Arms Control Association, December 2021

(7) Why NATO is practising Nuclear Strike Missions, Walter Pincus, The Cipher Brief, 29.10.21.

(8) France says Putin needs to understand NATO has nuclear weapons, Swissinfo, 24.2.22.

(9) US outlines the step that may cost Putin an ‘astronomical’ price, RT, 22.4.22.

(10) Danger: NATO, Anatoly Grishchenko, Vladimir Semenov, Leonid Teplinsky, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1985.

Former President of Bolivia Evo Morales - photo by EneasMx

TIMELINE OF NATO AGGRESSION

 

1990 - reunification of Germany. Gorbachev is assured that NATO will expand no further east

1991 - the end of the Soviet Union

1991 - Slovenia and Croatia declare formal independence from Yugoslavia, and recognise each other

1992 - 15 January. The 12 members of the European Community, prompted by Germany, recognise Slovenia and Croatia. The break-up of Yugoslavia is underway

1999 - NATO launches its bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which lasts 78 days. At least 2,500 civilians die

1999 - the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary join NATO

2000 - Yugoslav 'colour revolution' ousts President Milosevic

2001 - NATO for the first time invokes its collective defence clause. The war on Afghanistan begins. 176,000 will die (Costs of War Project)

2003 - US/UK war on Iraq begins. Roughly a million will die (Opinion Research Business poll)

2004 - Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania join NATO. The last three are former Soviet republics directly on Russia's border

 

2004 - 'colour revolution' in Ukraine

2008 - war in Georgia.  Georgia has a 556 mile border with Russia

2008 - NATO agrees that Georgia and Ukraine will become members

2009 - Albania and Croatia join NATO

2011 - NATO war on Libya. In 2020 a UN envoy will describe the continuing effects on civilians as 'incalculable'

2011 - war on Syria begins. This involves NATO members, particularly the USA. At least 350,000 will die (UN figures). Russia will intervene in support of Syria

2013 - Croatia joins the European Union bringing its total membership to 27

2014 - 'colour revolution' in Ukraine. Donetsk and Lugansk declare independence. Up to 14,000 civilians will die there in military attacks in the coming years

 
2014 - Crimea secedes from Ukraine to Russia after an overwhelming referendum decision

2014 - Minsk agreement signed - never implemented by Ukraine

2017 - Montenegro joins NATO

2019 - Ukraine includes membership of NATO in its constitution

2020 - North Macedonia joins NATO

2020 - attempted 'colour revolution' in Belarus. Belarus has a border of 770 miles with Russia

2020 - Defender 2020 NATO military exercises in Europe, focused on Germany, Poland and the Baltic

2021 - Defender 2021 NATO military exercises in Europe, focused on the Black Sea and the Balkans. 'One of the largest US Army led military exercises in decades' (Army Times, 15/3/21). Ukraine and Georgia are participants

2021 – December. Russia presents a proposal for a Ukraine which will never join NATO and will recognise the independence of Donetsk and Lugansk

2022 – January. Collective Security Treaty Organisation responds to request for support from Kazakhstan to combat a terrorist threat. Kazakhstan has a border of 4,750 miles with Russia, the longest continuous international border in the world

2022 - February 24. Russia launches military campaign for 'demilitarisation' and 'denazification' of Ukraine. Ukraine has a border of 1,426 miles with Russia

2022 - Defender Europe 2022. It is announced in May 2021 that Ukraine will participate.

 

Cruise missile being launched from USS Philippine Sea 31/3/99 aimed at a target in Federal Republic of Yugoslavia – photo by Richard Rosser