Top 10 Reasons Not to Love NATO
Top 10 Reasons Not to Love NATO
Written by David Swanson Tuesday January 15, 2019
The New York Times loves NATO, but should you?
Judging by comments in social media and the real world, millions of
people in the United States have gone from having little or no opinion
on NATO, or from opposing NATO as the world’s biggest military force
responsible for disastrous wars in places like Afghanistan (for
Democrats) or Libya (for Republicans), to believing NATO to be a
tremendous force for good in the world.
I believe this notion to be propped up by a series of misconceptions that stand in dire need of correction.
1. NATO is not a war-legalizing body, quite the opposite. NATO, like the United Nations, is an international institution that has
something or other to do with war, but transferring the UN’s claimed
authority to legalize a war to NATO has no support whatsoever in
reality. The crime of attacking another nation maintains an absolutely
unaltered legal status whether or not NATO is involved. Yet NATO is used
within the US and by other NATO members as cover to wage wars under the
pretense that they are somehow more legal or acceptable. This
misconception is not the only way in which NATO works against the rule
of law. Placing a primarily-US war under the banner of NATO also helps
to prevent Congressional oversight of that war. Placing nuclear weapons
in “non-nuclear” nations, in violation of the Nonproliferation Treaty,
is also excused with the claim that the nations are NATO members (so
what?). And NATO, of course, assigns nations the responsibility to go to
war if other nations go to war — a responsibility that requires them to
be prepared for war, with all the damage such preparation does.
2. NATO is not a defensive institution. According to the New York Times, NATO has “deterred Soviet and Russian
aggression for 70 years.” This is an article of faith, based on the
unsubstantiated belief that Soviet and Russian aggression toward NATO
members has existed for 70 years and that NATO has deterred it rather
than provoked it. In violation of a promise made, NATO has expanded eastward, right up to the border of Russia, and
installed missiles there. Russia has not done the reverse. The Soviet
Union has, of course, ended. NATO has waged aggressive wars far from the
North Atlantic, bombing Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Serbia,
Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Libya. NATO has added a partnership with
Colombia, abandoning all pretense of its purpose being in the North
Atlantic. No NATO member has been attacked or credibly threatened with
attack, apart from small-scale non-state blowback from NATO’s wars of
aggression.
3. Trump is not trying to destroy NATO. Donald Trump, as a candidate and as US President, has wondered aloud
and even promised all kinds of things and, in many cases, the exact
opposite as well. When it comes to actions, Trump has not taken any
actions to limit or end or withdraw from NATO. He has demanded that NATO
members buy more weapons, which is of course a horrible idea. Even in
the realm of rhetoric, when European officials have discussed creating a
European military, independent of the United States, Trump has replied
by demanding that they instead support NATO.
4. If Trump were trying to destroy NATO, that would tell us nothing about NATO. Trump has claimed to want to destroy lots of things, good and bad.
Should I support NAFTA or corporate media or the Cold War or the F35 or
anything at all, simply because some negative comment about it escapes
Trump’s mouth? Should I cheer for every abuse ever committed by the CIA
or the FBI because they investigate Trump? Should I long for hostility
between nuclear-armed governments because Democrats claim Trump is a
Russian agent? When Trump defies Russia to expand NATO, or to withdraw
from a disarmament treaty or from an agreement with Iran, or to ship
weapons to Ukraine, or to try to block Russian energy deals in Europe,
or to oppose Russian initiatives on banning cyber-war or weapons in
space, should I cheer for such consistent defiance of Trump’s Russian
master, and do so simply because Russia is, so implausibly, his so-inept
master? Or should I form my own opinion of things, including of NATO?
5. Trump is not working for, and was not elected by, Russia. According to the New York Times, “Russia’s meddling in American
elections and its efforts to prevent former satellite states from
joining the alliance have aimed to weaken what it views as an enemy next
door, the American officials said.” But are anonymous “American
officials” really needed to acquire Russia’s openly expressed opinion
that NATO is a threatening military alliance that has moved weapons and
troops to states on Russia’s border? And has anyone produced the
slightest documentation of the Russian government’s aims in an activity
it has never admitted to, namely “meddling in American elections,” — an
activity the United States has of course openly admitted to in regard to
Russian elections? We have yet to see any evidence that Russia stole or
otherwise acquired any of the Democratic Party emails that documented
that party’s rigging of its primary elections in favor of Clinton over
Sanders, or even any claim that the tiny amount of weird Facebook ads
purchased by Russians could possibly have influenced the outcome of
anything. Supposedly Trump is even serving Russia by demanding that
Turkey not attack Kurds. But is using non-military means to discourage
Turkish war-making necessarily the worst thing? Would it be if your
favorite party or politician did it? If Trump encouraged a Turkish war,
would that also be a bad thing because Trump did it, or would it be a
bad thing for substantive reasons?
6. If Trump were elected by and working for Russia, that would tell us nothing about NATO. Imagine if Boris Yeltsin were indebted to the United States and ended
the Soviet Union. Would that tell us whether ending the Soviet Union was
a good thing, or whether the Soviet Union was obsolete for serious
reasons? If Trump were a Russian pawn and began reversing all of his
policies on Russia to match that status, including restoring his support
for the INF Treaty and engaging in major disarmament negotiations, and
we ended up with a world of dramatically reduced military spending and
nuclear armaments, with the possibility of all dying in a nuclear
apocalypse significantly lowered, would that too simply be a bad thing
because Trump?
7. Russia is not a military threat to the world. That Russia would cheer NATO’s demise tells us nothing about whether we
should cheer too. Numerous individuals and entities who indisputably
helped to put Trump in the White House would dramatically oppose and
others support NATO’s demise. We can’t go by their opinions either,
since they don’t all agree. We really are obliged to think for
ourselves. Russia is a heavily armed militarized nation that commits the
crime of war not infrequently. Russia is a top weapons supplier to the
world. All of that should be denounced for what it is, not because of
who Russia is or who Trump is. But Russia spends a tiny fraction of what
the United States does on militarism. Russia has been reducing its
military spending each year, while the United States has been increasing
its military spending. US annual increases have sometimes exceeded
Russia’s entire military budget. The United States has bombed nine
nations in the past year, Russia one. The United States has troops in
175 nations, Russia in 3. Gallup and Pew find populations around the world viewing the United States, not Russia, as
the top threat to peace in the world. Russia has asked to join NATO and
the EU and been rejected, NATO members placing more value on Russia as an enemy. Anonymous US military officials describe the current cold war as driven by weapons profits. Those profits are
massive, and NATO now accounts for about three-quarters of military
spending and weapons dealing on the globe.
8. Crimea has not been seized. According to the New York Times, “American national security officials
believe that Russia has largely focused on undermining solidarity
between the United States and Europe after it annexed Crimea in 2014.
Its goal was to upend NATO, which Moscow views as a threat.” Again we
have an anonymous claim as to a goal of a government in committing an
action that never occurred. We can be fairly certain such things are
simply made up. The vote by the people of Crimea to re-join Russia is
commonly called the Seizure of Crimea. This infamous seizure is hard to
grasp. It involved a grand total of zero casualties. The vote itself has
never been re-done. In fact, to my knowledge, not a single believer in
the Seizure of Crimea has ever advocated for re-doing the vote.
Coincidentally, polling has repeatedly found the people of Crimea to be
happy with their vote. I’ve not seen any written or oral statement from
Russia threatening war or violence in Crimea. If the threat was
implicit, there remains the problem of being unable to find Crimeans who
say they felt threatened. (Although I have seen reports of
discrimination against Tartars during the past 4 years.) If the vote was
influenced by the implicit threat, there remains the problem that polls
consistently get the same result. Of course, a US-backed coup had just
occurred in Kiev, meaning that Crimea — just like a Honduran immigrant —
was voting to secede from a coup government, by no means an action consistently frowned upon by the United States.
9. NATO is not an engaged alternative to isolationism. The notion that supporting NATO is a way to cooperate with the world ignores superior non-deadly ways to cooperate with the world.
A nonviolent, cooperative, treaty-joining, law-enforcing alternative to
the imperialism-or-isolationism trap is no more difficult to think of
or to act on than treating drug addiction or crime or poverty as reason
to help people rather than to punish them. The opposite of bombing
people is not ignoring them. The opposite of bombing people is embracing
them. By the standards of the US communications corporations
Switzerland must be the most isolationist land because it doesn’t join
in bombing anyone. The fact that it supports the rule of law and global
cooperation, and hosts gatherings of nations seeking to work together is
simply not relevant.
10. April 4 belongs to Martin Luther King, Jr., not militarism. War is a leading contributor to the growing global refugee and climate
crises, the basis for the militarization of the police, a top cause of
the erosion of civil liberties, and a catalyst for racism and bigotry. A
growing coalition is calling for the abolition of NATO, the promotion
of peace, the redirection of resources to human and environmental needs,
and the demilitarization of our cultures. Instead of celebrating NATO’s
70thanniversary, we’re celebrating peace on April 4,
in commemoration of Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech against war on
April 4, 1967, as well as his assassination on April 4, 1968.
Reprinted with permission from DavidSwanson.org.
Utah Standard News depends on the support of readers like you.
Good Journalism requires time, expertise, passion and money. We know you appreciate the coverage here. Please help us to continue as an alternative news website by becoming a subscriber or making a donation. To learn more about our subscription options or make a donation, click here.
To Advertise on UtahStandardNews.com, please contact us at: ed@utahstandardnews.com.
Comments - No Responses to “Top 10 Reasons Not to Love NATO”
Sure is empty down here...