Eric Zuesse -- Why It’s Necessary to End NATO

 Why It’s Necessary to End NATO

Eric Zuesse, originally posted at Strategic Culture

On February 24th, Medea Benjamin and Nicolas S.J. Davies headlined “What Planet Is NATO Living On?”, and documented that the U.S. Government and NATO are preparing to invade and conquer both Russia and China, and that this goal is opposed by vast majorities of Europeans, which means that this decision by NATO does not reflect democracy in Europe, but instead it reflects Europe’s being vassal-nations in the U.S. empire:

As Michael Klare explains in a NATO Watch report on NATO 2030, every step the U.S. is taking with NATO is “intended to integrate it into U.S. plans to fight and defeat China and Russia in all-out warfare.”

The U.S. Army’s plan for an invasion of Russia, which is euphemistically called “The U.S. Army in Multi-Domain Operations,” 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.

Unsurprisingly, Russia’s 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.

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’re not—since no other country has the offensive war machine it would need to invade the United States.

Michael Klare concludes that NATO 2030 “commits 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.”

So how do the European people feel about their role in America’s 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 in a report titled “The Crisis of American Power: How Europeans See Biden’s America.”

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’s role in America’s war plans.

Many Europeans now recognize that NATO’s including the United States of America is toxic to their own nation’s security because the U.S. Government is addicted to war and to international conquest that has nothing whatsoever to do with defense but is purely aggressive in its intent and reality. That assessment by the European public is, indeed, realistic: the military alliance with America is toxic to their own nation’s security. The sole way forward for Europeans is to end that alliance, as fast as possible. Here is why:

On 3 May 2017, I had headlined “America’s Top Scientists Confirm: U.S. Goal Now Is to Conquer Russia” and opened:

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists published a study, on 1 March 2017, which opened:

The US nuclear forces modernization program has been portrayed to the public as an effort to ensure the reliability and safety of warheads in the US nuclear arsenal, rather than to enhance their military capabilities. In reality, however, that program has implemented revolutionary new technologies that will vastly increase the targeting capability of the US ballistic missile arsenal. This increase in capability is astonishing — boosting the overall killing power of existing US ballistic missile forces by a factor of roughly three — and it creates exactly what one would expect to see, if a nuclear-armed state were planning to have the capacity to fight and win a nuclear war by disarming enemies with a surprise first strike.

I noted that the U.S. Government had quietly abandoned the meta-strategy called “Mutually Assured Destruction” or “MAD,” which had viewed nuclear weapons as being purely to be used as defensive weapons and only when and if the United States is already under attack from another nuclearly armed nation, so that any such aggressor against the U.S. will be decimated. Victory in any nuclear war will be impossible, because it would result in both sides being effectively eliminated, and thus the name was “Mutually Assured Destruction.” But America’s aristocracy no longer views nuclear weapons that way. Here is how America’s unofficial change to nuclear forces for a blitz first-strike against Russia, so as to prevent retaliation by Russia, came to be established: 

A landmark event in the process of reconceptualizing such a war as being ‘winnable’, was the publication in 2006 of two articles in the two most prestigious journals of international relations, Foreign Affairs, and International Security, both formally introducing the concept of “Nuclear Primacy” or the (alleged) desirability for the U.S. to plan a nuclear conquest of Russia. Until those two articles (both of which were co-authored by the same two authors), any such idea was considered wacky, but since then it has instead been mainstream. As the final link above (the article that’s linked-to immediately before) explains, the source even prior to George W. Bush goes all the way back to 24 February 1990 when his father, then also the U.S. President, secretly initiated the operation ultimately to conquer Russia.

It was a two-step process, between the father and the son, and not only has every American President this century participated in this monstrosity (the adoption of “Nuclear Primacy” replacing “MAD”), but NATO has participated 100% in it — this secret continuation of the Cold War after Russia ended its side of the Cold war in 1991, and heading now for The Kill.

This is the reality. Whereas neither Russia nor China has abandoned the MAD meta-strategy, the U.S. and its NATO alliance definitely did.

A country that’s so extremely aggressive can be expected also to be aggressive against lesser target-countries, and the U.S. is — and this fact is seen routinely.

NATO now is even trying to extend to operations in Iraq and other nations that the U.S. regime already militarily occupies. On February 24th, NATO headlined “NATO Mission in Iraq” and reported based only upon Iraq’s having requested and received in October 2018 additional training so as to defeat ISIS. That NATO report ignored the demand by Iraq’s Government in January 2020 for all U.S. troops to leave Iraq immediately and the millions of Iraqis who subsequently demonstrated against the U.S. and demanded the U.S. to leave immediately. (Trump responded by threatening to destroy Iraq if Iraq’s Government would continue its demand.) On 24 November 2020, NATO headlined “Denmark assumes command of NATO Mission Iraq”. But Iraqis don’t want any alien military force occupying their country.

Here are some articles in the U.S.-and-allied mainstream media that are encouraging U.S. President Joe Biden’s moves to press even farther in the direction of assisting — rather than abandoning — the U.S. regime’s conquests:

“Iraq’s Disappearance From Biden’s Agenda Is a Big Mistake”, Foreign Policy, 21 January 2021

“Attack in Iraq highlights Biden's Saudi problem”, Politico, 16 February 2021 

“Why Biden can’t ignore Iraq and Afghanistan, even if he might want to”    Vox, 16 February 2021

“Joe Biden Gets Tested in Iraq”, Wall Street Journal, editorial, 16 February 2021

“U.S. contractor dies as rocket attacks in Iraq pose fresh challenge to Biden”, Washington Post, 3 March 2021

By contrast, the non-mainstream Voltairenet headlined on 14 February 2020, “NATO to deploy troops in Greater Middle East” and opened by reporting that:

Ultimately, it looks as though NATO will take over in the Arab world after the withdrawal of CentCom (US Central Command in the Middle East). Germany could play a leadership role in the Alliance.

Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg hopes to:

1. deploy the Alliance in Tunisia and make the war in Libya last forever;

2. deploy the Alliance in Iraq and Jordan and make the war in Syria go on forever.

Adherents to the U.S. empire don’t get to see that type of reporting. The same billionaires — U.S. billionaires — who control America’s ‘news’-media and ‘defense’ contractors and politicians, control also America’s vassal nations indirectly; and if such international dictatorship exists, then can a given vassal nation actually be a democracy? Is this what the international corporations are bringing — a global dictatorship?

On March 4th, the non-mainstream progressive media-criticism site, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, headlined “Purging Inconvenient Facts in Coverage of Biden’s ‘First’ Air Attacks” and proved that all of America’s mainstream media were reading from the same script of lies, that Biden’s bombing on February 25th, which killed dozens of Syrians, was his “first” bombing-operation, though actually even the New York Times had, in fact, reported on January 29th — on Biden’s 9th day as President — that “American airstrikes in a joint mission with Iraqi forces have killed the top Islamic State leader in Iraq, an attack aimed at stemming the group’s resurgence and exacting retribution for a deadly double-suicide bombing in Baghdad last week.” So, the February 25th bombing was actually Biden’s second bombing-operation. He was continuing Trump’s invasions which continued Obama’s invasions, which continued Bush’s invasions; and America’s mainstream ‘news’-media were constantly lying about it. The FAIR report also noted: “The pretense that the US defended itself by carrying out last week’s airstrikes also necessitates glossing over the fact that the country Washington actually bombed, Syria, is accused of neither sponsoring nor carrying out the rocket attacks on American bases in Iraq that should not be there in the first place. The articles I’ve examined all acknowledge that the US airstrikes hit Syria, but it’s remarkable how little attention they [these U.S. ‘news’-reports] pay to the country.”

All of the empire’s mainstream media present the pro-empire views and constantly lie, even to disappear events that they themselves had previously reported. If Europeans are going to fight and die for their own aristocracy, that’s bad enough, but to do it for America’s lying aristocracy — the billionaires who control U.S.-based international corporations — is even worse. NATO must end now, not only because it’s a real and present danger of WW III, but because it’s a U.S. mega-corporate and allied scam, which destroys countries, even if it won’t end the world. To accept NATO is to accept evil.

If Russia hadn’t inherited the nuclear weapons that the USSR had produced, then maybe the U.S. regime would already have taken over in Russia.

The Cold War started on 26 July 1945, when U.S. President Harry S. Truman became deceived by his advisors to end his predecessor, FDR’s, intention that the post-WW-II world would put nuclear and all strategic weaponry under the control of a United Nations which would replace all imperialisms in international relations — it would establish instead a global democratic federation of nations, which, alone, would possess ultimate international legal authority and be the source and enforcer of international law. Internal matters within each nation would continue to be determined under the given nation’s existing constitution, but the U.N.’s Charter would be the global constitution and be international law. Tragically, the Charter that ended up being written during 25 April to 26 June 1945 was Truman’s, not FDR’s. It is a watered-down version of FDR’s vision of a democratic federation of the world’s nations. It provided the U.N. with no means to enforce international law. Imperialism, which FDR had planned the U.N. to end, continued unaffected by Truman’s U.N. FDR had died on 12 April 1945, and a ferocious battle took place immediately within the new Truman Administration between Patrick Hurley and other FDR advocates versus James Byrnes and other opponents of FDR’s international plans. On 26 July 1945, Truman decided conclusively to go with Byrnes and blundered massively by terminating FDR’s anti-imperialist international vision and priorities, and Truman proceeded then to establish the Cold War and the U.S. empire. Just before the Soviet Union and its communism and Warsaw Pact all ended in 1991, George Herbert Walker Bush intentionally committed a huge international crime on 24 February 1990 by secretly extending into the future that blunder by Truman, and then each subsequent U.S. President has continued Bush’s mega-crime of seeking a global U.S. empire, instead of to end NATO and to end the U.S. regime’s aspiration to become the world’s first global empire. After the end of the Soviet Union and its communism and Warsaw Pact in 1991, NATO has possessed no valid justification for its continuing existence. NATO is entirely a scam, to further extend the U.S. empire. If the U.N. becomes reformed so as to adopt what had been the FDR plan, then all international military alliances will end, but even if the U.N. continues as it is, which is little more than a global forum where each nation airs its official views, NATO is evil, and has no real justification. It serves no good function. It should have ended in 1991. But, now, its prompt termination has become an urgent necessity, because the U.S. regime has publicly declared that its aim is to conquer both Russia and China. The only way to end America’s aspiration to control the entire world is to end NATO, because NATO was built upon that evil aspiration.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.