{"id":76120,"date":"2016-07-11T12:00:13","date_gmt":"2016-07-11T11:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=76120"},"modified":"2016-07-07T13:00:51","modified_gmt":"2016-07-07T12:00:51","slug":"imperial-nato-before-and-after-brexit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/07\/imperial-nato-before-and-after-brexit\/","title":{"rendered":"Imperial NATO: Before and After Brexit"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"joseph_gerson\"<\/a>Our interests and survival depend on Common Security diplomacy rather than the repeated and deadly failures of militarism.<\/em><\/p>\n

5 Jul 2016 – <\/em>In his first public response to the Brexit vote that has shaken Europe and much of the world, President Obama sought to reassure Americans and others. He urged us not to give into hysteria and stressed that NATO did not disappear with Brexit. The Trans-Atlantic alliance, he reminded the world, endures.1<\/sup> In the face of what may be the slow motion breakup of the European Union under pressure from Euro skeptics, look for U.S. and allied European elites to increase their commitments to the sixty-seven year NATO alliance. The hysteria that was manufactured in the wake of Russia\u2019s seizure of Crimea and intervention in eastern Ukraine and fears of the fallout from the continuing wars and catastrophes in the Middle East will serve as NATO\u2019s selling points.<\/p>\n

As we face the future, either\/or thinking and NATO need to be left behind.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But, as we face the future, either\/or thinking and NATO need to be left behind. As even President Carter\u2019s National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski taught, since its inception NATO has been an imperial project.2<\/sup> Rather than creating a new, full-blown and extremely dangerous Cold War, our interests and survival depend on Common Security diplomacy3<\/sup> rather than the repeated and deadly failures of militarism.<\/p>\n

\"nato\"<\/a>

“In the face of what may be the slow motion breakup of the European Union under pressure from Euro skeptics, look for U.S. and allied European elites to increase their commitments to the sixty-seven year NATO alliance.” (Photo: suviih\/flickr\/cc)<\/p><\/div>\n

This does not mean turning blind eyes to Putin\u2019s assault on free speech and democracy, or to Moscow\u2019s nuclear saber rattling and cyberattacks.4<\/sup>\u00a0 But it does mean that we should be mindful that Common Security diplomacy ended the Cold War, \u00a0that repressive and brutal though Putin may be, he arrested Russia\u2019s calamitous Yeltsin-era freefall, and he played critical roles in the elimination of Syria\u2019s chemical weapons and the P-5+1 nuclear deal with Iran. \u00a0We also need to acknowledge that with two million people in U.S. prisons, including Guantanamo, the embrace of the Poland\u2019s autocratic government and Saudi monarchy, and the militarized \u201cPivot to Asia\u201d the U.S. leads a not-so-free world.<\/p>\n

Zero-sum thinking is not in anyone\u2019s interest. There are Common Security alternatives to today\u2019s increasing and dangerous military tensions.<\/p>\n

We oppose NATO because of its neo-colonial domination of most of Europe, its roles in imperial wars and domination, the existential nuclear threat it poses to human survival, and because it diverts funds from essential social services, truncating lives in the U.S. and other nations.<\/p>\n

William Faulkner wrote that \u201cthe past isn\u2019t dead, that it isn\u2019t even past,\u201d a truth that reverberates with the Brexit vote. Our approach to the present and to the future must thus be informed by the tragedies of history. Central and Eastern European nations including Poland have been conquered, ruled and oppressed by Lithuanians, Swedes, Germans, Tatars, Ottomans and Russians \u2013as well as by home grown despots. And Poland was once the imperial power in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Given this history and other considerations, it\u2019s madness to risk nuclear annihilation to enforce the borders at any given moment. And as we learned from the Common Security resolution of the Cold War, our survival depends on challenging traditional security thinking. Spiraling tensions that come with military alliances, arms races, military-industrial complexes and chauvinistic nationalism can be overcome with commitments to mutual respect.<\/p>\n

1913?<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is an era with similarities to the years preceding the First World War. \u00a0The world is marked by rising and declining powers anxious to retain or expand their privilege and power. We have arms races with new technologies; resurgent nationalism, territorial disputes, resource competition, complex alliance arrangements, economic integration and competition, and wild card actors including a U.S. Secretary of Defense who prepares for the NATO summit by imitating gangster movies by saying \u201cYou try anything, you\u2019re going to be sorry\u201d,5<\/sup>\u00a0 as well as right-wing forces across the U.S. and Europe, and murderous religious fanatics.<\/p>\n

Remembering the consequences of the bullets fired by an assassin\u2019s gun in Sarajevo a century ago, we have reason to worry about what might happen if a frightened or overly aggressive U.S., Russian or Polish soldier, pushed beyond their limits, in anger or by accident, fires the anti-aircraft missile that brings down a U.S., NATO or another Russian warplane.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Competing NATO and Russian military exercises are ratcheting up military tensions to the point that former U.S. Secretary of Defense Perry warns that nuclear war is now more likely than during the cold war.6<\/sup>\u00a0 Carl Conetta was right when he wrote \u201cNATO\u2019s militaristic response\u201d to Russia in Ukraine \u201cis a perfect example of reflective action-reaction cycles.\u201d Moscow, he explains, lacks \u201cthe will to suicide\u2026it has no intention of attacking NATO.\u201d7<\/sup>\u00a0 Last month\u2019s Anaconda-2016, involving 31,000 NATO troops \u2013 14,000 of them here in Poland – and troops from 24 countries was the largest war game in Eastern Europe since the Cold War.8<\/sup>\u00a0 Imagine Washington\u2019s response if Russia or China conducted similar war games on the Mexican border.<\/p>\n

Given NATO\u2019s expansions to its borders; its new tactical headquarters in Poland and Romania; its increased military deployments and provocative military exercises across Eastern Europe, the Baltic states, Scandinavia and the Black Sea, as well as by the U.S. quadrupling its military spending for Europe, we shouldn\u2019t be surprised that Russia is attempting to \u201ccounterbalance\u201d NATO\u2019s buildup. \u00a0And, with Washington\u2019s first-strike related missile defenses in Romania and Poland and its superiority in conventional, high-tech and space weapons, we should be alarmed but not surprised by Moscow\u2019s increased reliance on nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n

Remembering the consequences of the bullets fired by an assassin\u2019s gun in Sarajevo a century ago, we have reason to worry about what might happen if a frightened or overly aggressive U.S., Russian or Polish soldier, pushed beyond their limits, in anger or by accident, fires the anti-aircraft missile that brings down a U.S., NATO or another Russian warplane. As the trilateral European-Russian-U.S. Deep Cuts Commission concluded \u201cIn the atmosphere of deep mutual mistrust, the increased intensity of potentially hostile military activities in close proximity – and particularly air force and naval activities in the Baltic and the Black Sea areas \u2013 may result in further dangerous military incidents which\u2026. may lead to miscalculation and\/or accidents and spin off in unintended ways.\u201d9<\/sup> People are human. Accidents happen. Systems are built to respond \u2013 sometimes automatically.<\/p>\n

An Imperial Alliance<\/strong><\/p>\n

NATO is an imperial alliance. Beyond the ostensible goal of containing the USSR, NATO has made it possible to integrate European governments, economies, militaries, technologies and societies into U.S. dominated systems. NATO has ensured U.S. access to military bases for interventions across the Greater Middle East and Africa. And, as Michael T. Glennon wrote, with the 1999 war against Serbia, the U.S. and NATO “with little discussion and less fanfare … effectively abandoned the old U.N. Charter rules that strictly limit international intervention in local conflicts\u2026in favor of a vague new system that is much more tolerant of military intervention but has few hard and fast rules.” It is thus understandable that Putin adopted the slogan \u201cNew rules or no rules, with his commitment to the former.10<\/sup><\/p>\n

Sometimes the U.S. \u201cnational security\u201d elite tell the truth.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Since the war on Serbia, contrary to the U.N. Charter, the U.S. and NATO invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, destroyed Libya, and eight NATO nations are now at war in Syria. But we have the irony of NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg saying that there can be no business as usual until Russia respects international law.11<\/sup><\/p>\n

Recall that NATO\u2019s first secretary general, Lord Ismay explained that the alliance was designed \u201cto keep the Germans down, the Russians out and the Americans in\u201d, which is not the way to build a common European home. \u00a0It was created before the Warsaw Pact, when Russia was still reeling from the Nazi devastation. Unfair though it was, the Yalta agreement which divided Europe into U.S. and Soviet spheres, was seen by U.S. policy makers as the price to be paid for Moscow having driven Hitler\u2019s forces across eastern and central Europe. With the history of Napoleon, the Kaiser and Hitler, the U.S. establishment understood that Stalin had reason to fear future invasions from the West. The U.S. was thus complicit in Moscow\u2019s repressive colonization of Eastern European and Baltic nations.<\/p>\n

Sometimes the U.S. \u201cnational security\u201d elite tell the truth. \u00a0Zbigniew Brzezinski, formerly President Carter\u2019s National Security Advisor, published a primer describing how what he termed the U.S. “imperial project”12<\/sup> works. Geostrategically, he explained, dominance over the Eurasian heartland is essential to being the world\u2019s dominant power. \u00a0To project coercive power into the Eurasian heartland, as an “island power” not located in Eurasia, the U.S. requires toeholds on Eurasia\u2019s western, southern and eastern peripheries. What Brzezinski termed \u201cvassal state\u201d NATO allies, make possible \u2018entrench[ment of] American political influence and military power on the Eurasian mainland.” In the wake of the Brexit vote, U.S. and European\u00a0elites will rely even more heavily on NATO in their effort to hold Europe together and to reinforce U.S. influence.<\/p>\n

There is more than integrating European territory, resources and technologies into the U.S. dominated systems. \u00a0As former Secretary of War Rumsfeld put it, in the tradition of divide and conquer, by playing New (Eastern and Central) Europe against Old Europe in the West, Washington won French, German and the Dutch support for the war to depose Saddam Hussein.<\/p>\n

And with what even the New York Times describes as \u201cright-wing, nationalist assault on the country\u2019s media and judiciary\u201d and the \u201cretreat from the fundamental values of liberal democracy\u201d by the Kacynski government, the U.S. has had no hesitation in making Poland the eastern hub of NATO.13<\/sup>\u00a0 Washington\u2019s rhetoric about its commitments to democracy is belied by its long history of supporting dictators and repressive regimes in Europe, monarchies like the Saudis, as well as by its wars of conquest from the Philippines and Vietnam to Iraq and Libya.<\/p>\n

Washington\u2019s European toehold has also reinforced its hold on Southern Eurasia\u2019s resource rich periphery. NATO\u2019s wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East follow in the tradition of European colonialism. Before the Ukraine crisis, the Pentagon\u2019s strategic guidance14<\/sup> tasked NATO with ensuring control of mineral resources and trade while reinforcing the encirclement of China as well as Russia.15<\/sup>\u00a0 Thus NATO adopted its “out of area operations” doctrine, making what Secretary Kerry termed \u201cexpedition missions\u201d in Africa, the Middle East, and beyond the alliance\u2019s primary purpose.16<\/sup><\/p>\n

Essential to \u201cout of area\u201d operations has been U.S. drone warfare including the Obama kill lists and U.S. and NATO extra-judicial drone assassinations, many of which have claimed civilian lives. This, in turn, has metastasized rather than eliminated extremist resistance and terrorism. Fifteen NATO nations participate in the Alliance Ground Surveillance (AGS) drone system operated from a NATO base in Italy, with NATO\u2019s Global Hawk killer drones operated from the Ramstein Air Base in Germany.17<\/sup><\/p>\n

Ukraine and NATO’s Expansion<\/strong><\/p>\n

An increasing number of U.S. strategic analysts, including former Commander in Chief of the U.S. Strategic Command General Lee Butler have said that U.S. post-Cold War \u201ctriumphalism,\u201d treating Russia like a \u201cdismissed serf,\u201d and NATO\u2019s expansion to Russia\u2019s boarders despite the Bush I-Gorbachev agreement precipitated today\u2019s spiraling military tensions with Russia.18<\/sup> Russia did not precipitate the Ukraine crisis. NATO\u2019s expansion to Russia\u2019s borders, Ukraine\u2019s designation as a NATO \u201caspirant\u201d country, and the Kosovo and Iraq War precedents each played their roles.<\/p>\n

What have the coup and civil war brought us? \u00a0One set of corrupt oligarchs replacing another. Death and suffering. Fascist forces once allied with Hitler now part of Ukraine\u2019s ruling elite, and hardliners in Washington, Moscow, and across Europe reinforced.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

This is not to say that Putin is innocent as he revitalizes his corrupt neo-Tsarist state and campaigns to reassert Russian political influence in its \u201cnear abroad\u201d and Europe itself, and as he hitches Russia\u2019s economy and military to China. But, on our side, we have Secretary Kerry\u2019s Orwellian doublespeak. He decried Moscow\u2019s \u201cincredible act of aggression\u201d in Ukraine, saying \u201cyou just don\u2019t in the 21st century behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on [a] completely trumped up pretext.\u201d19<\/sup>\u00a0 Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Libya disappeared down his memory hole!<\/p>\n

Great powers have long intervened in Ukraine, and this was the case with the Maidan coup. Leading up to the coup, Washington and the E.U. poured billions of dollars into developing and nurturing Ukrainian allies to turn the former Soviet republic away from Moscow and toward the West. Many forget the E. U.\u2019s ultimatum to the corrupt Yanukovych government: Ukraine could take the next steps toward E.U. membership only by burning its bridges to Moscow, to which eastern Ukraine had been economically tied for decades. \u00a0As tensions built in Kiev, CIA Director Brennan, Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland \u2013famous for her \u201cfuck the E.U.\u201d disrespect of Washington\u2019s vassals \u2013 and Senator McCain journeyed to Maidan to encourage revolution. And, once the shooting began, the U.S. and the E.U. failed to hold their Ukrainian allies to the April Geneva power sharing agreement.<\/p>\n

The truth is that both the Western political interventions and Russia\u2019s annexation of Crimea violated the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, which committed the powers to \u201crespect the independence, sovereignty and existing borders of Ukraine,\u201d20<\/sup> and to \u201crefrain from the threat of use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine.” What was it that Hitler said about treaties being just scraps of paper?<\/p>\n

What have the coup and civil war brought us? \u00a0One set of corrupt oligarchs replacing another.21<\/sup> Death and suffering. Fascist forces once allied with Hitler now part of Ukraine\u2019s ruling elite, and hardliners in Washington, Moscow, and across Europe reinforced.<\/p>\n

From early on, the realistic alternative was creation of a neutral Ukraine, tied economically to both the E.U. and Russia.<\/p>\n

NATO: A Nuclear Alliance<\/strong><\/p>\n

In addition to the Ukraine crisis, we now have Washington\u2019s and NATO\u2019s campaign to topple the Assad dictatorship and Russia\u2019s military intervention in Syria to reinforce its Middle East military and political toehold. Russia won\u2019t abandon Assad, and enforcing the \u201cno-fly\u201d zone that Hillary Clinton advocates would require destruction of Russian anti-aircraft missile, risking military escalation.<\/p>\n

Friends, we are told that U.S. nuclear weapons are deployed only to deter possible nuclear attacks. But, as Bush the Lesser\u2019s Pentagon informed the world, their primary purpose is to prevent other nations from taking actions that are inimical to U.S. interests.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Ukraine and Syria remind us that NATO is a nuclear alliance, and that the dangers of a catastrophic nuclear exchange did not disappear with the end of the Cold War. Once again we hear the madness that \u201cNATO will not be able to leave things at conventional armament\u201d and that a \u201cCredible deterrent will involve nuclear weapons\u2026\u201d22<\/sup><\/p>\n

How serious is the nuclear danger? Putin tells us that he considered the possible use of nuclear weapons to reinforce Russian control of Crimea. And, Daniel Ellsberg reported that U.S. and Russian nuclear forces were on high alert in the early stages of the Ukraine crisis.23<\/sup><\/p>\n

Friends, we are told that U.S. nuclear weapons are deployed only to deter possible nuclear attacks. But, as Bush the Lesser\u2019s Pentagon informed the world, their primary purpose is to prevent other nations from taking actions that are inimical to U.S. interests.24<\/sup> Since they were first deployed, these weapons have been used for more than classical deterrence.<\/p>\n

Former Secretary of War Harold Brown testified that they serve another purpose. With nuclear weapons, he testified, U.S. conventional forces became “meaningful instruments of military and political power.” Noam Chomsky explains that this means “we have succeeded in sufficiently intimidating anyone who might help protect people who we are determined to attack.”25<\/sup><\/p>\n

Beginning with the Iran crisis of 1946 \u2013 before the Soviet Union was a nuclear power \u2013 through the Bush-Obama \u201call options are on the table\u201d threats against Iran, nuclear weapons in Europe have served as the ultimate enforcers of US Middle East hegemony. U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe were placed on alert during Nixon\u2019s \u201cmadman\u201d nuclear mobilization to intimidate Vietnam, Russia and China, and they were likely placed on alert during other Asian wars and crises.26<\/sup><\/p>\n

NATO\u2019s nuclear weapons serve yet another purpose: preventing the “decoupling” from the United States. During the 2010 Lisbon Summit, in order to limit NATO member states\u2019 options, \u201cwidely shared responsibility for deployment and operational support\u201d for nuclear war preparations was reaffirmed. \u00a0More, it was proclaimed that \u201cAny change in this policy, including the geographic distribution of NATO nuclear deployments in Europe, should be made \u2026 by the Alliance as a whole\u2026Broad participation of the non-nuclear Allies is an essential sign of transatlantic solidarity and risk sharing.”27<\/sup>\u00a0 And now, on the eve of the NATO summit and the deployment of new B-61-12 nuclear warheads in Europe, General Breedlove, until recently NATO\u2019s Supreme Commander, has insisted that the U.S. must enhance its nuclear exercises with its NATO allies to demonstrate their \u201cresolve and capability.\u201d28<\/sup><\/p>\n

Common Security Alternative to NATO<\/strong><\/p>\n

Friends, history is moved and governmental policies are changed by popular force from below. That\u2019s how we won greater civil rights in the U.S., led Congress to cut off funding for the Vietnam war, and together we forced Reagan to begin the disarmament negotiations with Gorbachev. It\u2019s how the Berlin Wall was breached and Soviet colonialism was relegated to history\u2019s dustbin.<\/p>\n

The challenge we face is to respond to NATO\u2019s imperialism and to the increasing dangers of great power war with the imagination and urgency required by our times.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The challenge we face is to respond to NATO\u2019s imperialism and to the increasing dangers of great power war with the imagination and urgency required by our times. Neither Poland and Russia nor Washington and Moscow will be living in harmony any time soon, but Common Security provides a path to such a future.<\/p>\n

Common Security embraces the ancient truth that a person or a nation cannot be secure if their actions lead their neighbor or rival to be more fearful and insecure. \u00a0At the height of the Cold War, when the 30,000 nuclear weapons threatened apocalypse, Swedish Prime Minister Palme brought together leading U.S., European and Soviet figures to explore ways to step back from the brink.29<\/sup> Common Security was their answer. It led to the negotiation of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, which functionally ended the Cold War in 1987.<\/p>\n

In essence, each side names what the other is doing that causes it fear and insecurity. The second party does the same. Then, in difficult negotiations diplomats discern actions each side can take steps to reduce the other\u2019s fear without undermining their country\u2019s security. As Reiner Braun explained, it requires that \u201cthe interests of others are seen as legitimate and have to be taken into account in [one\u2019s] decision making process\u2026Common security means negotiation, dialogue and cooperation; it implies peaceful resolution of conflicts. Security can be achieved only by a joint effort or not at all.\u201d30<\/sup><\/p>\n

What might a Common Security order look like? \u00a0Negotiations to create a neutral Ukraine with regional autonomy for its provinces and economic ties to both Russia and the West would end that war and create a more secure foundation for improved relations between Europe and Russia and between the great powers. \u00a0The Deep Cuts Commission recommends that enhancing the role of the OSCE is \u201cthe single multilateral platform on which dialogue on relevant security concerns can and should be resumed without delay.\u201d31<\/sup>\u00a0 In time it should replace NATO. \u00a0Other Deep Cuts Commission recommendations include:<\/p>\n