{"id":52931,"date":"2021-02-25T08:57:21","date_gmt":"2021-02-25T08:57:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/?p=133441"},"modified":"2021-02-25T08:57:21","modified_gmt":"2021-02-25T08:57:21","slug":"what-planet-is-nato-living-on-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/02\/25\/what-planet-is-nato-living-on-5\/","title":{"rendered":"What Planet Is NATO Living On?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A

NATO headquarters in Brussels (Photo: NATO)<\/p><\/div>\n

The February meeting<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

This theme was emphasized by U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in a Washington Post op-ed <\/a>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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Using Russia and China to justify more Western military build-up is a key element in the alliance\u2019s new \u201cStrategic Concept<\/a>,\u201d called NATO 2030: United For a New Era<\/em>, which is intended to define its role in the world for the next ten years.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> committed under cover of the NATO bombing campaign.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> and triggering a massive refugee crisis.<\/p>\n

The first phase of NATO\u2019s new Strategic Concept review is called the NATO 2030 Reflection Group<\/a> 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?<\/p>\n

But unfortunately, this kind of introspection is not what NATO means by \u201creflection.\u201d The Reflection Group instead applauds NATO as \u201chistory\u2019s most successful military alliance,\u201d and seems to have taken a leaf from the Obama playbook by only \u201clooking forward,\u201d as it charges into a new decade of military confrontation with its blinders firmly in place.<\/p>\n

NATO\u2019s role in the \u201cnew\u201d 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\u2019s world.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s war plans.<\/p>\n

As Michael Klare explains in a NATO Watch report<\/a> on NATO 2030, every step the U.S. is taking with NATO is \u201cintended to integrate it into U.S. plans to fight and defeat China and Russia in all-out warfare.\u201d<\/p>\n

The U.S. Army\u2019s plan for an invasion of Russia, which is euphemistically called \u201cThe U.S. Army in Multi-Domain Operations,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly, Russia\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019re not\u2014since no other country has the offensive war machine it would need to invade the United States.<\/p>\n

Michael Klare concludes that NATO 2030 \u201ccommits 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

So how do the European people feel about their role in America\u2019s 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<\/a> in a report titled \u201cThe Crisis of American Power: How Europeans See Biden\u2019s America.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019s role in America\u2019s war plans.<\/p>\n

On transatlantic relations in general, majorities in most European countries see the U.S. political system as broken and their own countries\u2019 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s help with their national defense.<\/p>\n

Biden\u2019s election has not changed Europeans\u2019 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>, \u201cA majority of Europeans doubt that Biden can put Humpty Dumpty back together again.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is also pushback<\/a> among Europeans to NATO\u2019s demand that members should spend 2 percent of their gross domestic products on defense, an arbitrary goal that only 10 of the 30<\/a> members have met. Ironically, some states will reach the NATO target <\/a>without raising their military spending because COVID has shrunk their GDPs, but NATO members struggling economically are unlikely to prioritize military spending.<\/p>\n

The schism between NATO\u2019s hostility and Europe\u2019s 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\u2019s number one trading partner<\/a> and at the close of 2020, the EU concluded a comprehensive investment agreement <\/a>with China, despite U.S. concerns.<\/p>\n

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\u2014even as the Biden administration calls<\/a> it a \u201cbad deal\u201d and claims that it makes Europe vulnerable to Russian \u201ctreachery.\u201d<\/p>\n

NATO seems oblivious to the changing dynamics of today\u2019s world, as if it\u2019s living on a different planet. Its one-sided Reflection Group<\/a> report cites Russia\u2019s violation of international law in Crimea as a principal cause of deteriorating relations with the West, and insists that Russia must \u201creturn to full compliance with international law.\u201d But it ignores the U.S. and NATO\u2019s far more numerous violations of international law and leading role in the tensions fueling the renewed Cold War:<\/p>\n

– illegal invasions<\/a> of Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq;<\/p>\n

– the broken agreement<\/a> over NATO expansion into Eastern Europe;<\/p>\n

– U.S. withdrawals<\/a> from important arms control treaties;<\/p>\n

– more than 300,000<\/a> bombs and missiles dropped on other countries by the United States and its allies since 2001;<\/p>\n

– U.S. proxy wars in Libya<\/a> and Syria<\/a>, which plunged both countries into chaos, revived Al Qaeda and spawned the Islamic State;<\/p>\n

– U.S. management<\/a> of the 2014 coup in Ukraine, which led to economic collapse<\/a>, Russian annexation of Crimea and civil war in Eastern Ukraine; and<\/p>\n

– the stark reality of the United States\u2019 record as a serial aggressor whose offensive war machine<\/a> dwarfs Russia\u2019s defense spending by 11 to 1 and China\u2019s by 2.8 to 1, even without counting other NATO countries\u2019 military spending.<\/p>\n

NATO\u2019s failure to seriously examine its own role in what it euphemistically calls \u201cuncertain times\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

NATO\u2019s Reflection Group<\/a> justifies and promotes the United States\u2019 and NATO\u2019s 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\u2019s role in them would lead to a much simpler plan for NATO\u2019s future: that it should be dissolved and dismantled as quickly as possible.<\/p>\n

The post What Planet Is NATO Living On?<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 More<\/a><\/p>\n

The post What Planet Is NATO Living On?<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":176,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52931"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/176"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52931"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52932,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52931\/revisions\/52932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}