The three big myths of NATO
A bloody trail and three great myths run through the history of NATO from its founding to the present. With its expansive geopolitics, NATO is pushing the world closer to the brink of a third world war than ever before. It's time for a reckoning.
By Sevim Dagdelen
By Sevim Dagdelen
NATO will celebrate its 75th birthday in 2024 and appears to be at the peak of its power. More than ever before, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is focusing on expansion. In Ukraine, NATO is waging a proxy war against Russia in response to its war of aggression, which violates international law: The military pact is involved in training Ukrainian soldiers in NATO weapons, with massive arms deliveries, intelligence information and the provision of target data as well as its own soldiers on site. There is discussion about the delivery of cruise missiles, such as the German Taurus type, to Ukraine, which can reach Moscow or Saint Petersburg with a range of 500 kilometers, as well as the deployment of NATO's own troops on a large scale. The signs point to a storm. NATO is expanding its presence in Asia: by integrating new partner states such as Japan and South Korea, it is advancing into the Indo-Pacific region and seeking confrontation with China. Military spending by the USA and other NATO member states is skyrocketing. While the weapons suppliers are popping champagne corks, the gigantic costs of armament are being passed on to the population. Overextension, social upheaval and the risk of escalation are the downside of this expansive power politics. They are challenging the alliance in an unprecedented way. NATO is all the more dependent on legends today. Three major myths run from the founding of the military pact through its bloody history to the present.
Myth defense and international law
NATO is a defense alliance. This is the story repeated over and over again. But a look at the history of the military pact shows that mutual defense was neither the main focus when NATO was founded, nor can NATO's appearance in the past decades be said to have a defensive orientation. Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty is often cited as evidence of NATO's character as a defensive alliance. In their founding agreement, the twelve contracting states USA and Canada as well as the European states Belgium, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway and Portugal agreed in 1949 that "an armed attack against several of them in Europe or North America will be seen as an attack on everyone." NATO members undertake to assist each other in defending themselves against such an attack.
Since the end of the Cold War, NATO has increasingly seen itself in the role of world policeman. The military pact waged its first war in 1999 with the attack on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which at that time still consisted of Serbia and Montenegro. A clear breach of international law, as the then German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder himself admitted 15 years later: "We sent our planes (...) to Serbia, and together with NATO they bombed a sovereign state - without there being a Security Council decision "After this original sin, NATO is evolving into a warfare pact willing to break international law. A clear contradiction to its own charter, in which the NATO states undertake, according to Article 1, "to refrain from any threat or use of force in their international relations that is incompatible with the objectives of the United Nations." The defense of the alliance's territory now becomes only part of the claim to act as a global power of order.
In 2003, NATO members USA and Great Britain invaded Iraq in a war of aggression that violated international law. For this purpose, they put together a "coalition of the willing", which also includes numerous other NATO members such as Italy, Poland, the Netherlands, Denmark, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Portugal and Slovakia, as well as the later NATO members Romania, Bulgaria, Latvia and Lithuania. Washington and its accomplices are thereby blatantly violating international law and the NATO states involved are violating the fundamental provisions of their own charter. The Iraq war is also accompanied by the NATO AWACS operation in Turkey, which can be interpreted as war support. Even if the war against Iraq is not a NATO war, there are serious arguments for attributing the attack to the military pact.
The war of aggression against Iraq by some NATO members, which violated international law, was not even discussed in the NATO Council, nor was the use of NATO infrastructure. Their violation of the North Atlantic Treaty has no impact on the NATO membership of the USA or Great Britain. That was foreseeable. The war policy of the most important member of the alliance must therefore be attributed to the NATO military pact as a whole if NATO's self-image is taken seriously. With its wars that violate international law, the USA stands as pars pro toto, as a part of the whole. In Afghanistan, NATO has been waging a disastrous war for 20 years that has cost the lives of over 200,000 civilians. For the first and only time, the alliance is invoking Chapter 5 of the NATO Treaty in this military operation following the attacks of September 11, 2001. The international public is to be led to believe that the freedom and security of the West are being defended in the Hindu Kush. Twenty years later, in August 2021, the Taliban will move back into Kabul. The military operation turns out to be a complete disaster.
In addition to Belgrade, Baghdad and Kabul, NATO's blood trail also leads to Libya. In 2011, NATO bombed the country in violation of international law and abuse of a UN Security Council resolution. Thousands are killed. Hundreds of thousands have to flee. A delegation from the African Union that wanted to mediate in the conflict was even prevented from landing. What remains is a devastated country in which Islamist militias rule in parts. As a result, the entire Sahel region is destabilized by Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (IS). The individual members must take responsibility for this catastrophe caused by NATO. Totum pro parte, the whole stands here for the part. This also applies to the member states that do not directly participate in the attacks.
Myth of democracy and the rule of law
NATO members are determined to "ensure the freedom, common heritage and civilization of their peoples, based on the principles of democracy, freedom of the person and the rule of law," says the founding charter's legitimizing legend. But that was already a blatant lie in 1949. It's not just in Latin America that the USA has made pacts with dictatorships and fascist regimes from the very beginning; it's not just democracies that are on board among the NATO allies in Europe. The only decisive factor is the willingness to join a front against the Soviet Union. The USA concludes bilateral security agreements with the fascist dictator of Spain, Francisco Franco, and the fascist dictatorship of Portugal is a founding member of NATO. While the secret police of the dictator António de Oliveira Salazar tortured opposition members to death and set up concentration camps in the Portuguese colonies, the USA included Portugal in the community of democrats.
Or let's take Turkey. Thousands of political prisoners are tortured after the 1980 military coup. On the occasion of the tenth anniversary on September 12, 1990, the newspaper Cumhuriyet speaks of 650,000 political arrests, 7,000 requested, 571 imposed and 50 executed death sentences and proven death by torture in 171 cases. Turkey remains in NATO. Even after the military coup, it received extensive military aid from the USA and its allies. The rule of generals is not detrimental to membership. Likewise in Greece. The military coup of 1967, concentration camps and murders of opposition members, the arrest of thousands or expulsion into exile - none of this is a reason to end membership. Even NATO member Turkey's invasion of Cyprus in 1974 as a result of the Greek colonels' coup apparently conformed to the democratic founding consensus of the military alliance.
Now one could dismiss this and point to the "tempi passati", the past times. But even in 2024, Erdogan's autocracy's support of Islamist terror does not contradict NATO membership. NATO is not about democracy and the rule of law, but only about geopolitical allegiance to the USA. Like an empire built on lies, NATO lives by this myth. In schools and universities, these lies are part of the NATO education program.
Myth of community of values and human rights
"Our common values - individual freedom, human rights, democracy and the rule of law - unite us." This is how NATO presents itself as a community of values in its Strategic Concept 2022. Four and a half million people have died as a result of the wars waged by the USA and its allies in the last 20 years alone died, however, according to the renowned Brown University in Rhode Island, USA.
This cannot be reconciled with NATO's self-image, which is widely reported. NATO is not a community that protects human rights. On the contrary: NATO is the protective shield for the human rights violations of its members. And by no means only with regard to the violation of social human rights under the dictatorship of massive rearmament. Rather, NATO pursues a policy of complete impunity for war crimes committed by its member states. Anyone who, like the Australian journalist Julian Assange, dares to make these war crimes public will be tortured and threatened with 175 years in prison in the USA. There are no serious interventions by other NATO governments for the release of Julian Assange. In hasty complicity, criticism of the hegemon USA is avoided.
On January 11, 2002, the United States set up a prison camp at the illegally occupied Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba. Amnesty International writes: "Many of the approximately 780 people who have been deliberately detained there since then, outside of any judicial control, suffered serious human rights violations before or during their detention - including torture and enforced disappearances. To this day, torture survivors are being held indefinitely in Guantánamo without adequate medical care, without charges or fair trials." Even 22 years after it was set up, there is no indication that the torture camp in Guantánamo will be closed.
Human rights have a very low priority for NATO. This is also reflected in the choice of alliances among NATO members. For example, the USA, Great Britain and Germany are arming the dictatorship in Saudi Arabia, which is beheading scores of opposition figures and whose Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman allegedly personally ordered the sawing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Consulate General in Istanbul.
Rhetorically, NATO remains antithetically tied to its practice. NATO's 2022 Strategic Concept states: "We will strengthen our unity, cohesion and solidarity by building on the enduring transatlantic bond between our nations and the strength of our shared democratic values." Given the close alliances with dictators , autocrats and violators of international law, this self-assurance seems like a bad joke. This hypocrisy is accompanied by double standards: In its Strategic Concept of June 20, 2022, NATO accuses Russia of committing "repeated violations of international humanitarian law" in Ukraine. While NATO uses this as additional justification for its proxy war against Russia, it supports Israel in its flagrant violations of international humanitarian law in Gaza and assures the country of full solidarity. With its veto in the UN Security Council, the USA is preventing any resolution for an immediate ceasefire. Without the arms deliveries from the NATO states USA, Germany and Great Britain, this war would not be possible.
In the Global South, this double standard in the West is being increasingly criticized. The human rights rhetoric of NATO states is seen as purely instrumental in hiding or asserting their own geopolitical interests. NATO appears as a guardian organization of a deeply unjust world order with neo-colonial tendencies.
The myths of NATO transfigure our view of reality. In order to find ways out of the current crisis, it must be revealed. Today, 75 years after its founding, the military pact, with its global expansion and confrontations, is pushing the world closer to the brink of a third world war than ever before. The critical examination of the alliance's current actions as well as its crimes in the past should create the basis for thinking about alternatives. Alternatives to a NATO that relies solely on deterrence, rearmament and confrontation - and thus poses an existential threat to the peaceful coexistence of humanity.
04/22/24
Excerpt from: Sevim Dagdelen: NATO. A reckoning with the alliance of values. Westend-Verlag 2024, 128 pages, 16.00 euros.
Information about the book here
Sevim Dagdelen is the foreign policy spokesperson for the "Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht" group in the German Bundestag and chairwoman of the Foreign Affairs Committee.
Myth defense and international law
NATO is a defense alliance. This is the story repeated over and over again. But a look at the history of the military pact shows that mutual defense was neither the main focus when NATO was founded, nor can NATO's appearance in the past decades be said to have a defensive orientation. Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty is often cited as evidence of NATO's character as a defensive alliance. In their founding agreement, the twelve contracting states USA and Canada as well as the European states Belgium, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway and Portugal agreed in 1949 that "an armed attack against several of them in Europe or North America will be seen as an attack on everyone." NATO members undertake to assist each other in defending themselves against such an attack.
Since the end of the Cold War, NATO has increasingly seen itself in the role of world policeman. The military pact waged its first war in 1999 with the attack on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which at that time still consisted of Serbia and Montenegro. A clear breach of international law, as the then German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder himself admitted 15 years later: "We sent our planes (...) to Serbia, and together with NATO they bombed a sovereign state - without there being a Security Council decision "After this original sin, NATO is evolving into a warfare pact willing to break international law. A clear contradiction to its own charter, in which the NATO states undertake, according to Article 1, "to refrain from any threat or use of force in their international relations that is incompatible with the objectives of the United Nations." The defense of the alliance's territory now becomes only part of the claim to act as a global power of order.
In 2003, NATO members USA and Great Britain invaded Iraq in a war of aggression that violated international law. For this purpose, they put together a "coalition of the willing", which also includes numerous other NATO members such as Italy, Poland, the Netherlands, Denmark, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Portugal and Slovakia, as well as the later NATO members Romania, Bulgaria, Latvia and Lithuania. Washington and its accomplices are thereby blatantly violating international law and the NATO states involved are violating the fundamental provisions of their own charter. The Iraq war is also accompanied by the NATO AWACS operation in Turkey, which can be interpreted as war support. Even if the war against Iraq is not a NATO war, there are serious arguments for attributing the attack to the military pact.
The war of aggression against Iraq by some NATO members, which violated international law, was not even discussed in the NATO Council, nor was the use of NATO infrastructure. Their violation of the North Atlantic Treaty has no impact on the NATO membership of the USA or Great Britain. That was foreseeable. The war policy of the most important member of the alliance must therefore be attributed to the NATO military pact as a whole if NATO's self-image is taken seriously. With its wars that violate international law, the USA stands as pars pro toto, as a part of the whole. In Afghanistan, NATO has been waging a disastrous war for 20 years that has cost the lives of over 200,000 civilians. For the first and only time, the alliance is invoking Chapter 5 of the NATO Treaty in this military operation following the attacks of September 11, 2001. The international public is to be led to believe that the freedom and security of the West are being defended in the Hindu Kush. Twenty years later, in August 2021, the Taliban will move back into Kabul. The military operation turns out to be a complete disaster.
In addition to Belgrade, Baghdad and Kabul, NATO's blood trail also leads to Libya. In 2011, NATO bombed the country in violation of international law and abuse of a UN Security Council resolution. Thousands are killed. Hundreds of thousands have to flee. A delegation from the African Union that wanted to mediate in the conflict was even prevented from landing. What remains is a devastated country in which Islamist militias rule in parts. As a result, the entire Sahel region is destabilized by Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (IS). The individual members must take responsibility for this catastrophe caused by NATO. Totum pro parte, the whole stands here for the part. This also applies to the member states that do not directly participate in the attacks.
Myth of democracy and the rule of law
NATO members are determined to "ensure the freedom, common heritage and civilization of their peoples, based on the principles of democracy, freedom of the person and the rule of law," says the founding charter's legitimizing legend. But that was already a blatant lie in 1949. It's not just in Latin America that the USA has made pacts with dictatorships and fascist regimes from the very beginning; it's not just democracies that are on board among the NATO allies in Europe. The only decisive factor is the willingness to join a front against the Soviet Union. The USA concludes bilateral security agreements with the fascist dictator of Spain, Francisco Franco, and the fascist dictatorship of Portugal is a founding member of NATO. While the secret police of the dictator António de Oliveira Salazar tortured opposition members to death and set up concentration camps in the Portuguese colonies, the USA included Portugal in the community of democrats.
Or let's take Turkey. Thousands of political prisoners are tortured after the 1980 military coup. On the occasion of the tenth anniversary on September 12, 1990, the newspaper Cumhuriyet speaks of 650,000 political arrests, 7,000 requested, 571 imposed and 50 executed death sentences and proven death by torture in 171 cases. Turkey remains in NATO. Even after the military coup, it received extensive military aid from the USA and its allies. The rule of generals is not detrimental to membership. Likewise in Greece. The military coup of 1967, concentration camps and murders of opposition members, the arrest of thousands or expulsion into exile - none of this is a reason to end membership. Even NATO member Turkey's invasion of Cyprus in 1974 as a result of the Greek colonels' coup apparently conformed to the democratic founding consensus of the military alliance.
Now one could dismiss this and point to the "tempi passati", the past times. But even in 2024, Erdogan's autocracy's support of Islamist terror does not contradict NATO membership. NATO is not about democracy and the rule of law, but only about geopolitical allegiance to the USA. Like an empire built on lies, NATO lives by this myth. In schools and universities, these lies are part of the NATO education program.
Myth of community of values and human rights
"Our common values - individual freedom, human rights, democracy and the rule of law - unite us." This is how NATO presents itself as a community of values in its Strategic Concept 2022. Four and a half million people have died as a result of the wars waged by the USA and its allies in the last 20 years alone died, however, according to the renowned Brown University in Rhode Island, USA.
This cannot be reconciled with NATO's self-image, which is widely reported. NATO is not a community that protects human rights. On the contrary: NATO is the protective shield for the human rights violations of its members. And by no means only with regard to the violation of social human rights under the dictatorship of massive rearmament. Rather, NATO pursues a policy of complete impunity for war crimes committed by its member states. Anyone who, like the Australian journalist Julian Assange, dares to make these war crimes public will be tortured and threatened with 175 years in prison in the USA. There are no serious interventions by other NATO governments for the release of Julian Assange. In hasty complicity, criticism of the hegemon USA is avoided.
On January 11, 2002, the United States set up a prison camp at the illegally occupied Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba. Amnesty International writes: "Many of the approximately 780 people who have been deliberately detained there since then, outside of any judicial control, suffered serious human rights violations before or during their detention - including torture and enforced disappearances. To this day, torture survivors are being held indefinitely in Guantánamo without adequate medical care, without charges or fair trials." Even 22 years after it was set up, there is no indication that the torture camp in Guantánamo will be closed.
Human rights have a very low priority for NATO. This is also reflected in the choice of alliances among NATO members. For example, the USA, Great Britain and Germany are arming the dictatorship in Saudi Arabia, which is beheading scores of opposition figures and whose Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman allegedly personally ordered the sawing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Consulate General in Istanbul.
Rhetorically, NATO remains antithetically tied to its practice. NATO's 2022 Strategic Concept states: "We will strengthen our unity, cohesion and solidarity by building on the enduring transatlantic bond between our nations and the strength of our shared democratic values." Given the close alliances with dictators , autocrats and violators of international law, this self-assurance seems like a bad joke. This hypocrisy is accompanied by double standards: In its Strategic Concept of June 20, 2022, NATO accuses Russia of committing "repeated violations of international humanitarian law" in Ukraine. While NATO uses this as additional justification for its proxy war against Russia, it supports Israel in its flagrant violations of international humanitarian law in Gaza and assures the country of full solidarity. With its veto in the UN Security Council, the USA is preventing any resolution for an immediate ceasefire. Without the arms deliveries from the NATO states USA, Germany and Great Britain, this war would not be possible.
In the Global South, this double standard in the West is being increasingly criticized. The human rights rhetoric of NATO states is seen as purely instrumental in hiding or asserting their own geopolitical interests. NATO appears as a guardian organization of a deeply unjust world order with neo-colonial tendencies.
The myths of NATO transfigure our view of reality. In order to find ways out of the current crisis, it must be revealed. Today, 75 years after its founding, the military pact, with its global expansion and confrontations, is pushing the world closer to the brink of a third world war than ever before. The critical examination of the alliance's current actions as well as its crimes in the past should create the basis for thinking about alternatives. Alternatives to a NATO that relies solely on deterrence, rearmament and confrontation - and thus poses an existential threat to the peaceful coexistence of humanity.
04/22/24
Excerpt from: Sevim Dagdelen: NATO. A reckoning with the alliance of values. Westend-Verlag 2024, 128 pages, 16.00 euros.
Information about the book here
Sevim Dagdelen is the foreign policy spokesperson for the "Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht" group in the German Bundestag and chairwoman of the Foreign Affairs Committee.
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