In the past dozen years, the armed forces of NATO countries, whether operating under the NATO banner or in related ad-hoc coalitions, have killed many hundreds of thousands of people. Of those hundreds of thousands of people, only a few hundred at most ever had any connection to any attack on a NATO country.
Whatever modern NATO has become, a defensive alliance it is not; that fact is beyond rational dispute.
It is also the case that the situation in countries where NATO has been most active in killing people, including Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and Pakistan, has deteriorated. It has deteriorated politically, economically, militarily and socially. The notion that NATO member states could bomb the world into good was only ever believed by crazed and fanatical people like Tony Blair and Jim Murphy of the Henry Jackson Society. It really should not have needed empirical investigation to prove it was wrong, but it has been tried, and has been proved wrong.
The NATO states as a group have also embarked on remarkably similar reductions in the civil liberties of their own populations during this period. NATO to me is symbolised by the fact that its Secretary General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, as Danish Prime Minister blatantly lied to the Danish parliament about Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction. When Major Frank Grevil released material that proved Rasmussen was lying, it was Grevil who was jailed for three years. In the United States, no CIA operative has been prosecuted for their widespread campaign of torture, but John Kiriakou is in jail for revealing it.
NATO’s attempt to be global arbiter and enforcer has been disastrous at all levels. Its plan to redeem itself by bombing the Caliphate in Iraq and Syria is a further sign of madness. Except of course that it will guarantee some blowback against Western targets, and that will “justify” further bombings, and yet more profit for the arms manufacturers. On that level, it is very clever and cynical. NATO provides power to the elite and money to the wealthy.
But what of Putin’s Russia, I hear you say? I am no fan of Putin – I think he is a nasty, dangerous little dictator. But little is the operative word.
Russia is not a great power. Its GDP is 10% of the GDP of the EU. Its economy is the same size as Italy’s. The capabilities of Russia’s armed forces are massively exaggerated by the security industry, including the security services, and by arms manufacturers. The entire area of Eastern Ukraine which Russia is disputing has a GDP smaller than the city of Dundee.
Russia is only any kind of “military threat” because of its nuclear arsenal. The way forward to peace is active international nuclear disarmament – and the existence of NATO is the greatest obstacle to that. The idea that almost the entire developed world needs to encircle and contain Russia with massive military threat, is as sensible as the idea that it needs to encircle the UK or France – both of which have substantially larger and more diversified economies than Russia and much larger and more technologically advanced arms industries.
NATO is by far the largest danger to world peace. It should be dissolved as a matter of urgency.
In a significant escalation of European sanctions on Moscow, France has announced that it will be suspending the controversial delivery of a state-of-the-art €600m warship to the Russian navy.
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After an emergency meeting of the national defence council, President François Hollande said that “conditions do not today exist” for the delivery of the first of two Mistral helicopter carriers this autumn. He described the latest developments in eastern Ukraine as “grave”.
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Russia has paid for the ship and Russian sailors are already training aboard the vessel in St Nazaire on the French Atlantic coast. Until tonight, France had stoutly resisted pressure from the United States and its EU partners to suspend its delivery. Mr Hollande had previously insisted that the handover would go ahead next month, but that the delivery of a second ship next year would depend on Moscow’s behaviour in the Ukraine crisis.
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The recent evidence of escalating Russian military intervention in eastern Ukraine has forced Mr Hollande’s hand. In return, France will expect other EU countries, including Britain, to drop their objection to sanctions on Russia which might hurt their own domestic economies.
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Russia has paid for the ships, but now France and Hollande has kowtowed to the USA, along with the UK and other EU countries, the US has to much power in NATO and the EU. A radical change is required in both.
“Personally, I’d be very cautious about abandoning the NATO concept without some alternative and viable means of putting out European brushfires and deterring Moscow from leaking through vulnerable borders; this would require far more coordination and agreement among the European states than they have shown lately.”
Well Ba’al, herin lies the quandrary. A EU peace and defence force should have been set up immediately the warsaw pact disbanded, instead it was argued that NATO can do both, police peace and fight in wars. By its actions it has shown this to be wrong. It has followed a bastard neocon agenda and lied to the world, as you rightly pointed out.
Could one trust to put the OSCE in charge of developing a European peace and defence charter?
13 US Activists Arrested for Protesting US Senators’ Unquestioning Support of Israel
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Two New Jersey senators were the subject of a protest, last Tuesday, which called for an end to what they termed “a blank check for Israel’s crimes”. 13 of the dozens of protesters who participated in the action were arrested for an act of civil disobedience by staging a sit-in at the office.
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New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez, the co-author of a July Resolution (Senate Resolution 498) that offered full and complete support for Israel’s actions in Gaza, was one of the targets of the protest.
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The other was New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, the top recipient of campaign and other contributions from the Zionist lobbying group known as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
Booker also faced protests when he traveled to Oregon last week to speak at a fundraising dinner for Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley, also an unquestioning supporter of Israeli policies.
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Steven Shalom, who writes for the Mondoweiss blog, said about Tuesday’s protest: “The U.S. Senate has played a shameful role during the recent Israeli assault on Gaza, twice voting 100-0 to give its full support to Israel, saying nothing about its violations of international humanitarian law (indeed, condemning the United Nations’ Human Rights Council for deigning to investigate war crimes), nothing about the blockade of Gaza, and nothing about the occupation, while promising Israel still more weapons.
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It seems not all Americans, are oblivious to Washington’s blatant support of Israels genocide in Gaza, more needs to be done to halt the atrocities.
And you don’t think that the involvement of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan or Russia in Chechenya had any impact on Islamic fundamentalism. (He didn’t say that. I think your mentor would have used a question mark there, ESLO. Slap wrist)
The Soviets were doing moderately well against a fairly incoherent Afghan resistance, until the US armed it and encouraged fundamentalist outfits to take the lead. Had the Russians succeeded, Afghanistan would have remained a Muslim country, like other Muslim FSU states, with various degrees of enthusiasm, but at least not prey to the decadent West. They’d have eventually returned to fighting each other and growing poppies. The Taleban weren’t bothering anyone else when USUK invaded – on the very shaky pretext that AQ had been given sanctuary there – the invasion not only gave them a reason to exist, but some seriously hot propaganda to sell the rest of the Muslim world.
I actually agreed with our intervention if Afghanistan. The selling point for me was the prospect, dangled by Tony Blair in front of the Commons, of severely damaging the heroin trade.
Didn’t happen. More revenue for the fundies…
Republic of Scotland
I certainly would not agree Putin’s “peace plan”. To withdraw the Ukrainian army and allow access to Russian “repair brigades”. I think a three year old would see through that one.
Nevermind I think you are going a very dangerous route if you start accepting Putin’s view that the existence of Russian-speaking minorities are legitimate grounds for annexation.
I think a stepping up of the OSCE would be very good move.
Sorry, Nevermind, I can’t separate defending peace from fighting wars in my head. When push comes to shove they are the extremes of a spectrum – all of which needs to be covered as flexibly as possible. Think Ribbentrop – Molotov. One minute Molotov’s heaving a sigh of relief – peace preserved – the next, half the Wehrmacht is following most of the Luftwaffe into Mother Russia.
Ba’al Zevul
I am not arguing about the involvement of the US in funding the Afghan mujahedeen – but if you think that without that the Soviets would have succeeded in Afghanistan you are out of line with history and also what contemporary observers such as Robert Fisk say. There are a lot of factors contributing to the rise of the Islamists – the kneejerk response here of blaming it all on the US/UK/Israel is I’m afraid naïve in the extreme.
And yes I agree there should have been a questionmark.
Who do you propose an independent Scotland should enter into defence alliances with if not England & Wales / UK and / or NATO?
When I was in Estonia in the Soviet era (1980) it was in advance of its Russian neighbours and there were lots of big houses and money. It was where many of the Politburo had dachas. I doubt anything really changed when it was granted independence from Russia. I doubt that Russia wants it back as it never belonged in the first place. However Estonia does not need to have NATO bases on its soil. And it is down to its elected government to tell the US (NATO), should it choose, to get off its soil. I doubt the present government will.
However there are examples where this has been done. President Rafael Correa told the Yanks they could have a base in Ecuador if Ecuador could have one in Miami which he mentioned in an interview with Julian Assange. And however much Karimov is despised, and quite rightly so, he instructed the Yanks to remove their military base in Uzbekistan. So it only needs governments to do the right thing and make the world a safer place. Removing NATO bases should be on the manifesto of every party until they are gone.
I certainly would not agree Putin’s “peace plan”. To withdraw the Ukrainian army and allow access to Russian “repair brigades”. I think a three year old would see through that one.
Nevermind I think you are going a very dangerous route if you start accepting Putin’s view that the existence of Russian-speaking minorities are legitimate grounds for annexation.
I think a stepping up of the OSCE would be very good move.
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Craig.
Do you agree with the first six points of the plan, secondly I don’t see NATO offering a counter proposal, as for the seventh point, I take your point, but if Ukraine does experience severe winter this year, and many old folk or children die due to it, who in your opinion will be to blame?.
” if you had studied the history of when Kabul called in the Soviet Union”
Just like when their puppets called them in to Hungary and Czechoslovakia – please stop re writing history – the puppets were not popular with the local population as you know all too well.
Mr Goss
Do you think Robert Fisk who was in Afghanistan at the time was lying about what he saw?
ESLO gets it wrong on Afghanistan: the US was arming the extremists, before Russia became militarily involved, US supplied portable anti-aircraft weaponry played a huge role. On Chechnya too the extremism was very a much a western and Saudi created problem, there had been little or no oppression of the predominantly Muslim republics or that religion’s followers under the Soviet regime, or its successors. As others have pointed out in both these cases; you’re wilfully wrong or misinformed too, on Kuwait I’m afraid, Kuwait had itself invaded Iraq during the Iraq-Iran war, moving its border into Iraq by more than 900 miles and stealing oil from Iraq’s Rumalia oil field. Surprised to see ESLO takes the word of western puppet Osama BL, to support his reasoning, but maybe not so unlikely bedfellows. Western puppets, both. He’s like Rip van Winkle wakening up, unaware the world has changed whilst he dozed over long, and mainstream media narratives such as he once and still does swallow whole, are met, deservedly, by the rest of the world with contempt and derision.
Wakey Wakey ESLO, it’s 2014. What cave have you been hiding in… Tora-Bora?
“I doubt anything really changed when it was granted independence from Russia.”
I went there in 1992 and last year – believe me an awful lot has changed, and nearly entirely for the better.
Hi Craig,
Regarding the Ukraine situation, whatever the “evils” of Putin may be, there is a concerted MSM effort to demonize him well above what the proven intervention of Russia in Ukraine warrants. The MSM is rife with distorsions, exagerations and outright lies, together with a very unhealthy anti Putin histeria that to me shows that they have been taking the cue from above.
Do not forget that all this situation has a lot to do with NATO eastwards expansion and, in my view, the fact that Putin has demonstrated he is an “unreliable” ally. Unrealiable as in not taking his orders from the white house when it matters: Georgia, Syria and now Ukraine.
And do not understimate the Russio-filia of russian speakers not only in the Ukraine, but also in the baltic republics.
I said *if* the Soviets had succeeded. If they hadn’t, the Afghans would probably have returned to their extremely harsh but occasionally fun traditions. The Soviets might have imported some Russians, assuming they could find any willing to go, had they succeeded, and it is not inconceivable that improvements could have been made to the economy that did not involve addiction. They might have translocated some Afghans, who would have probably been rather surprised to find that Soviet life was an improvement on Afghan conditions. This seems to have worked for the USSR in the ‘Stans.
Chechnya was more like Northern Ireland in concept. The religious radicalism was not an inseparable feature from the rebellion, but an adjunct. I agree, bombing Grozny flat was probably not a lasting answer to the problem, but it didn’t half quieten it down. And was then a handy atrocity to cite when recruiting in the mosques.
…And was then a handy atrocity to cite when recruiting in the mosques….
As has been practically every intervention by US-led coalitions in the ME and Maghreb ever since…back to the beginning.
Tony M
Could we have your history stories in respect of Stalin’s terror, the Holodomor, Hungary in 1956, the Prague Spring, Solidarity – I’m sure that we are keen to have the full set of fairy tales. As for Afghanistan and Chechenya I think I will rely in Fisk and Politovskaya, and my Russian relatives for the moment – ever been to a Russian cemetery at Easter and talked to the relatives of those who died in those wars, I thought not.
“I went there in 1992 and last year – believe me an awful lot has changed, and nearly entirely for the better.”
Mandy Rice Davies made the Oxford Dictionary of Qquotations when she responded to a similar statement.
“I think I will rely in Fisk and Politovskaya, and my Russian relatives for the moment”
Would they be related to Resident Dissident’s Russian relatives by any chance?
Just a teeny bit of background reading – the Wikileaks Cablegate archive on “NATO expansion”, 2,811 cables:
http://search.wikileaks.org/advanced?q=NATO+expansion&exclude_words=&words_title_only=&words_content_only=&publication_type%5B%5D=2&sort=0#results
and on Anders Fogh Rasmussen, 111 cables (including the one revealing the corruption behind his getting the job):
http://search.wikileaks.org/advanced?q=Anders+Fogh+Rasmussen&exclude_words=&words_title_only=&words_content_only=&publication_type%5B%5D=2&sort=0#results
Would they be related to Resident Dissident’s Russian relatives by any chance?
Yes – taken you rather a long time to work that out hasn’t it – but then you were never that smart.
jjboulas
You are wrong on the Russophilia of Russian speakers outside Russia. A very large number of Russian speaking Balts have taken advantage of the tremendous opportunity to move and work around the EU, not least the UK. You are very very wrong if you think they would prefer a Russian standard of living. While in Ukraine a large majority of native Russian speakers regard themselves as ethnically Ukrainian not ethnically Russian.
“Would they be related to Resident Dissident’s Russian relatives by any chance?
Yes – taken you rather a long time to work that out hasn’t it – but then you were never that smart.”
You forget it was me who outed you, and it seems you never forgave me. Pretty smart eh? So now are you not ashamed of all that self-congratulatory nonsense and praise between Resident Dissident and ESLO? Who could trust such a split-personality to say anything verging on the truth? By the way, does your boss know you’re posting comments here?
So now that we have NATO out of the closet, where is the phantom-like evidence there is Russian troops fighting in Ukraine? Obama says he has evidence, just like that of MH17, but where oh where, is it? Is it possible the heavy US hand of NATO has been prevaricating so much they don’t recognize the truth anymore? ‘Natch.
Ben
There really is no doubt there have been Russian troops fighting in Ukraine. Quite a few of them have been captured.
“Nevermind I think you are going a very dangerous route if you start accepting Putin’s view that the existence of Russian-speaking minorities are legitimate grounds for annexation.”
Far from accepting such notion, I merely pointed out facts, that this is used everywhere in many occaisions and has been for considerable time.
Grenadas rescuemission springs to mind. Israel’s zionist zeal also will intervene abroad on their own behalf, lawfull or not, come what may.
Any rescue mission, for whatever reason, and without regard to the existing civilian populus, to get your own out, Vietnam, Lebanon, but also Afghanistan.
Estonias minority languages are as much German, some swedish, as they are Russian and Estonian comprises of a considerable low saxon vocabulary, that does not give us westerners the right to site military hardware in defence of our language, does it, so the argument falls, agreed. But the facts are stark, we all will do it to a certain extend.
Putin is popular, we have to face it, shrewd,scrupelous, informed and biased towards oligarchs, that way he can get away with his own nestegging, but does that mean we have to fight him over Ukraine’s resources?
Russia is doing what Isis is doing on our behalf, tearing the fabric of borders to pieces. Russias 1950’s agreements on borders with Ukraine were never ratified by both parliaments and the pickyour nose lines in the sand are equally fraud/ght.
I’m for protecting minorities rights in a mutually inclusive just society, and for people’s right to Independence, should they so decide. Swinging both ways just doesn’t work, there is no moral high ground, not here and not in Russia.
Craig; Yes, nine soldiers captured. You may laugh when Putin says they wandered in error, but pictures and video of a massive invasion are missing. I hope you’re not suggesting the hype hasn’t been driving the news of imminent russian invasion these past months.
‘There really is no doubt there have been Russian troops fighting in Ukraine. Quite a few of them have been captured.’
Quite- and those who were captured were later exchanged for a larger number of Ukrainian soldiers who, in the Beeb’s immortal words ‘strayed’ into Russian territory in order to ‘avoid’ the conflict, ie deserted. Funny how the Beeb couldn’t apply the correct word to the Ukrainian soldiers actions, as to do so would have told the truth about the state of morale in Kiev’s army, a large cohort of whom have no interest in blasting their slavic brothers in the Donbass to kingdom come.
Does the US pay Britain to have its bases here? If so, how much.
Thirty years ago, they did pay. The amount was one of the two biggest contributions to British invisible exports, the other being insurance. The amount was published in official statistics. If it wasn’t for a positive balance in invisible exports, the British trade balance would have been heavily in the red.
So – do they pay now? Even professional campaigners against the US military presence in Britain don’t know the answer, nowadays.