By Michael Welch, Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya and Andre Vitchek – Global Research April 7, 2019
NATO summit Warsaw. Click to enlarge
“Today, our Alliance is the strongest in history, guaranteeing the freedom of our almost one billion citizens, the security of our territory, and the protection of our values, including democracy, individual liberty, human rights, and the rule of law.” – Statement issued by the NATO Foreign Ministers, Washington D.C., 3rd-4th April 2019
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Formed in the years immediately following World War II, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), then comprised of Canada, the United States, and ten European powers, was presented to the world as a defensive pact, wherein an attack on one member is an attack on all. The Encyclopedia Britannica explains that NATO was established and conceived as “a counterweight to Soviet armies stationed in central and eastern Europe after World War II.”
Today, seventy years after its founding, the Soviet Union is no more. NATO has increased its military involvement in theatres around the world, including the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, the Mediterranean, and Libya. Many of these missions were framed as ‘humanitarian interventions’ or disaster relief as opposed to aggression.
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), NATO powers spent $900 billion USD in 2017 on militarism, accounting for 52 per cent of global military spending. These figures do not, however, account for U.S. spending on actual theatre wars, so-called ‘overseas contingency operations’ in addition to other military related expenditures.
In an article timed with the 70th anniversary commemorations, Professor Michel Chossudovsky’s outlines how, in fact, NATO is the military arm of a hegemonic project to impose an economic restructuring on targeted countries, making them and their resource base rife for exploitation by the Anglo-American capitalist class. He documents the organization’s role in recruiting and financing destabilizing elements in Kosovo, Libya ad Syria among other countries:
“NATO member states are harnessed into endorsing Washington’s imperial design of World conquest under the doctrine of collective security.”
As NATO foreign Ministers gather in Washington D.C. to toast their contributions to the ‘peace and security’ of the world, and draw up their plans for the next 70 years, the Global Research News Hour radio program attempts to probe this much more dissenting perspective on the role of NATO and the Euro-Atlantic powers generally, in global affairs.
In the first half hour, we hear from a man who literally wrote the book on NATO. Mahdi Nazemroaya explains how NATO was conceived to counter left movements in Europe as well as advance its geo-strategic aims on the Eurasian continent. He also explores the U.S.-centric economic imperatives being forged through this bellicose alliance. He also advances an opinion of the recent news that NATO member Turkey will purchase an anti-missile system from Russia rather than purchase the counterpart technology from NATO ally the United States.
In the second half hour, we look at the NATO anniversary in the context of a history of Western European imperialism and plunder. Andre Vltchek addresses how imperialism is advanced through not only guns and bombs, but by exploiting ethnic and religious differences. He also examines the pathological dimensions of empire and the distinctions between Western and Sino-Russian involvement in countries like Syria and Venezuela. He also provides his understanding of why the West commands the admiration of those within countries targeted for imperial domination.
Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya is an award-winning author and geopolitical analyst, author of The Globalization of NATO (Clarity Press) and a forthcoming book The War on Libya and the Re-Colonization of Africa. He is a Sociologist and Research Associate at the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), a contributor to the Strategic Culture Foundation (SCF) and a member of the Scientific Committee of Geopolitica, Italy.
Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. Three of his latest books are his tribute to “The Great October Socialist Revolution” a revolutionary novel “Aurora” and a bestselling work of political non-fiction: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire”. View his other books here. Watch Rwanda Gambit, his ground-breaking documentary about Rwanda and DRCongo and his film/dialogue with Noam Chomsky “On Western Terrorism”. Vltchek presently resides in East Asia and the Middle East, and continues to work around the world. He can be reached through his website and his Twitter.
(Global Research News Hour episode 255)
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NATO: The North Atlantic Terror Organization
NATO stopped acting a as counterweight against the Soviet threat (which in never really was one) back in the early 80’s.
Today NATO is just the muscle for the American government to enact its Mafia policies around the world. To steal resources, destroy competition, and control the economic needs of other countries so they have to buy American. In short, NATO is the corporate MAFIA of the United States economy.
The United States of America, has a terrible and fatal problem. It has outgrown its natural ability to sustain a normal economic diversity for its size and capacity and now requires with each year, to expand its militaristic expansion to ever devour greater resources and markets for its over weight and bloated, top heavy income, economy.
The US economy, can not compete with the rest of the world, so it has to destroy its competitors, and thus force countries to do trade with it. The economies of each country in the world is under threat because the US economy needs to ever expand into other countries. The US economy is fatally dependent upon growth, it can’t sustain a status-quo, that is, an equilibrium. This is fatal for every one.
Consider the natural gas example. Recently, Germany made a deal with the Russians to bring in some LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) but the Americans didn’t want this to happen. Why? Because the US requires more and more wealth to be sucked out of the rest of the world to sustain its economy and especially its handicapped petroleum and gas industry. However, the US can’t compete. For example, see USA can’t compete on world stage for LNG market: it’s 25% more expensive than Russian gas. So the US makes threats against Germany to force it to buy its gas, but it makes no economic sense!
The US is an aging and out of date super power. Economically it was never a great powerhouse, for the rest of the world was taking decades to recover from war. Now with real competition, we see how the US operates; making threats and carrying them out on countries it can bully, and NATO is used as its Mafia muscle.
That’s all NATO is, a US enforcer to bully countries to do business with it and not US competitors, like Russia, and make sure that all members comply with US economic needs.
Its time for NATO to expire, and its time for the USA to start trading with the rest of world honestly and fairly. The only problem is, if the US did do this, it would economically collapse.
Ladies and gentlemen, the United States of America is a propped up zombie economy, that is living off the rest of the world through thieving, bullying and out right murdering its way to supporting its self, and especially its elitist class. The United States of America, is destroying the rest of the world so it can sustain itself.
The greatest threat to world peace is the US economy. As it deteriorates like it has for the last 50 years, the US will become more and more militaristic and enforce more and more of the world into doing trade with it. The USA only sees the rest of the world as its supermarket. As the years pass by, more and more of us in the rest of the world will not be allowed to shop here in our own lands, because more and more resources and goods, and wealth will have to be sent to the US to keep it going. Worse yet, these same goods will then be sold back to the rest of world, through of course, American hands!
This is why you are seeing the US destroy countries like Iraq and Syria and Libya. These are low hanging fruit, these countries are easiest to destroy. Destroy them, and making them dependent upon US goods and services, and thus keep the US economy going.
But what happens when these countries are not enough? What happens when the US is too big or weak that it needs to start destroying larger countries, like a France, Italy or Germany!
This is how the USA does business and keeps its country going. By destroying the rest of the world, it keeps its own economy going. Think off all the goods and services the Americans are going to sell to Iraq, Libya and every other country it has occupied and has made dependent upon it!
So the question I have to ask to all of you! How long are you prepared to wait until the US comes knocking (with missiles) on the door front of your country?