NATO meets, peace movements respond

From END Info 25 | July/August 2021 | download pdf

Recently, in reporting on the diversion of the Belorussian aircraft, an ITV News (UK) commentator said that NATO was ‘seen as the world’s policeman’. So let us unpick that phrase. Firstly, ‘the world’s’ and therefore global.

From the time at the end of the Cold War when NATO began to expand its membership to include the former Soviet states up to the Russian border, to in more recent years making agreements with countries around the Pacific and even venturing into Latin America, NATO has been expanding. And any shred of the concept of the North Atlantic area has been lost. But it isn’t really global in the sense it doesn’t include Russia or China. Those two countries are now considered ‘enemies’. And one might as well translate ‘global’ as US, as it has always dominated NATO’s policies.

Then there is the word, ‘policeman’. There are in the world some vicious police forces working on behalf of oppressive governments, but I don’t know of one which is nuclear armed, with a policy of using those weapons first. NATO is a military alliance not a police force, armed with nuclear weapons, including the so-called UK (in reality, the USA’s) nuclear armed Trident submarines which are ‘integrated’ into NATO.

In the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty, which the UK signed, nuclear armed states were committed to reducing their nuclear arsenal, in ‘good faith’. In defiance of the treaty and international law, Boris Johnson has stated that his government would raise the cap on the warheads on the missiles on the Trident submarines, to increase from 180 to 260. In effect re-arming not disarming and thus it is with NATO.

You don’t need to be an apologist for the regimes in Russia or China to see how provocative NATO’s actions are. As recently as 1st June, the French Mouvement de la Paix, reported seeing four US B-52 bombers flying over Paris escorted by two French Dassault Rafale aircraft, as part of a NATO show of force.

Defender 21 is one of the largest NATO led military exercises in Europe in decades across 30 training areas. In response Russia deployed troops to its western border. Also, this year will see a reinforcement of the Very High Readiness Joint Task Force in Portugal, Romania, Steadfast Defender 21 Bulgaria and Hungary.

Stopp NATO, from Norway, warns of increased tensions in the high north and nuclear threats in the Arctic. Coming to the UK in September will be Dynamic Marine 21 which will test NATO’s Response Force Maritime component and Joint Warrior 21, preparing participants to operate as a joint task force. And these are only a few of the military exercises taking place this year.

But Stop NATO 2021 declared that there is no place for NATO in the world of peace and social justice we want to build and invited us all to discuss the alternatives at a counter summit.

A series of virtual meetings took place starting on Sunday 13th June. These meetings covered a wide array of issues and attracted participants from across the world. In addition to the virtual aspect of the conference, there were gatherings and demonstrations on the streets of Brussels itself, maintaining a tradition of protest at these events. See https://www.no-to-nato.org/