Integration of Ukraine into NATO

For 24 years, Canada has consistently campaigned to integrate Ukraine into the NATO bloc in the name of "Euro Atlantic values," during which the Canadian Forces have carried out intensive military training and large-scale exercises on the soil of that country and along its shores. During that period NATO was transformed into a global force and waged wars on three continents, in which Ukrainian forces participated. NATO is not simply a treaty between the governments of the main imperialist powers on joint action, but a military-political organization commanding huge armed forces equipped with modern weapons, including nuclear missiles. NATO joint command can independently decide to unleash a world war under the pretext of having to "repel sudden aggression" and it can intervene in the internal affairs of the member-countries to suppress democratic and revolutionary movements in them. The leading role in the NATO joint military command belongs to U.S. generals. During this period, NATO expansion incorporated all former Soviet states from the Baltic to the Balkans with the significant exception of Ukraine and Georgia. Ukraine is today a de facto and annexed member while de jure formal status seems to have been thrown out of the window as superfluous and problematic. During the upheavals of 1989 to 1991, the major western powers promised Moscow not to station any NATO troops on the territories of former Warsaw Treaty Organization member countries. This commitment -- designed to maintain the military balance in Europe -- has been broken by NATO countries numerous times over the past few years. Canadian military intervention is further shifting this balance of power. Following Ukrainian independence in 1991 as an outcome of the break-up of the Soviet Union, the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the emergence of the unipolar world with U.S. imperialism at the head, the United States and Germany launched an expansion of the NATO bloc, rather than dissolving it. Canada immediately began to play an integral role in the effort to draw Ukraine into NATO in 1993, a year before U.S. President Bill Clinton launched NATO's "Partnership for Peace," an offensive and aggressive program designed to occupy what strategists were calling "post-Soviet space." No sane analyst recognizes that the newly-created Russian Federation posed any threat during the 1990s; a relatively weak power, it was even collaborating with NATO. Nevertheless, the U.S. and Ukraine in 1993 signed a "Memorandum of Understanding and cooperation on defence issues and military cooperation between the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine and the U.S. Department of Defence." In this context, the Mulroney government initially began to provide linguistic, staff/professional development and "peace support operations training" (a la Afghanistan) to members of Ukraine's Armed Forces through the auspices of the Military Training Assistance Program (MTAP). The 1997 Madrid NATO summit established the NATO-Ukraine Commission (NUC) by the NATO-Ukraine Charter on a Distinctive Partnership. The Charter between NATO and Ukraine was formally signed by Ukrainian and allied heads of state and government including the Chrétien government in Madrid on July 9, 1997. The Charter was the first official document announcing Ukraine's intention to draw closer to NATO. An important political declaration, it defined in no uncertain terms the positions of the parties and the priorities guiding their cooperation. The "special partnership" that started with the signing of the Charter evolved into the NATO-Ukraine Action Plan, adopted on November 22, 2002, seven weeks after the Anglo-American invasion of Afghanistan and in the run-up to U.S. aggression against Iraq. Ukrainian forces participated in both invasions, as they also did in NATO's Balkan wars. Paragraphs 3 and 4 of the Charter stated: "3. Ukraine reaffirms its determination to carry forward its defence reforms, to strengthen democratic and civilian control of the armed forces, and to increase their interoperability with the forces of NATO and Partner countries. NATO reaffirms its support for Ukraine's efforts in these areas. "4. Ukraine welcomes NATO's continuing and active adaptation to meet the changing circumstances of Euro-Atlantic security, and its role, in cooperation with other international organisations such as the OSCE, the European Union, the council of Europe and the western European Union in promoting Euro-Atlantic security and fostering a general climate of trust and confidence in Europe." The Charter also established the degree of NATO involvement in strategically important areas within Ukraine, such as: - civil emergency planning and disaster preparedness; - civil-military relations, democratic control of the armed forces, and Ukrainian defence reform; - defence planning, budgeting, policy, strategy and national security concepts; - defence conversion (to NATO standards); - NATO-Ukraine military cooperation and interoperability; - economic aspects of security; - science and technology issues; - environmental security issues, including nuclear safety; - aerospace research and development, through the Advisory Group for Aerospace Research & Development; - civil-military coordination of air traffic management and control. The danger to the world's people posed by the Jean Chrétien and Stephen Harper campaign for Ukraine's integration into NATO came to the fore at the Bucharest Summit in the capital of Romania on April 2-4, 2008, the clearest example of this pressure and its danger to peace. The venue symbolized the expansion of NATO from the Baltic to the Black Sea, the host government's aims for a "Greater Romania" (including Moldova and parts of Ukraine), and set new goals for years to come. Enlargement of NATO, NATO's crisis in Afghanistan and, for the first time, energy security, were dominant themes. The Bush and Harper administrations demanded the immediate admission of Ukraine and Georgia. France and Germany opposed the move for fear that it would unduly antagonize Russia, on which the EU depended for a substantial amount of its energy. German Chancellor Angela Merkel prevented, against U.S., British and Canadian insistence, Ukraine and Georgia's further rapprochement to the war alliance and not solely out of fear that NATO's eastward expansion could seriously jeopardize German-Russian cooperation. The Konrad-Adenauer Foundation (associated with the Christian Democratic Union of German Chancellor Angela Merkel) had already warned at the end of 2006 that the U.S. sought "to include more pro-American oriented countries into the Alliance" to strengthen its own domination. In doing so, George W. Bush and Harper in 2008 committed to support Ukraine and Georgia's admission to NATO. This was like plunging a sharpened dagger deep into Russia's heart, becoming a proximate cause of the war between Georgia and Ossetia backed by Russia in August, 2008 and stoking conflict between the Baltic states and Russia. (On this matter Harper was publicly backed by Bob Rae, then Interim Leader of the Liberal Party.) If Georgia had been admitted, it could have used Article V of the NATO Charter and transformed the 2008 August War with Russia into a regional if not an international war. Activists from the Ukrainian Communist Party and Russian Bloc party, hold a banner reading "No NATO!" and chanting "Yankee Go Home!" during a protest as the U.S. Navy frigate Klakring sails into the Ukrainian city of Sevastopol, the main base of the Russian Black Sea Fleet on March 25, 2009. Following the 2014 coup, the Ukrainian Communist Party was banned along with the public display of "communist symbols." Nevertheless, during the August War, the Harper government activated the HMCS Ville de Québec to be deployed to the Black Sea as part of a NATO fleet, away from its normal area of operations in the eastern Atlantic (and murky missions in the Caribbean Sea, off the coast of Venezuela, etc.). According to reports from the Canadian Press and Chronicle Herald at the time, NATO was deploying this highly armed fleet of warships to the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, including the Canadian frigate HMCS Ville de Québec fully three weeks before the onset of the Georgian aggression. One hundred and twenty-seven Pentagon advisers were already stationed in Tiflis. It is self-evident that the USA quarterbacked the aggression. On the eve of calling the 2008 federal election, then Defence Minister Peter MacKay personally rushed to Halifax to recall the warship and instead redeployed the HMCS Halifax to Somalia with the pretext of providing food aid. The result of the NATO-Ukraine Charter on a Distinctive Partnership is that Ukraine became a base where NATO and the U.S. and Canadian Forces trained its infantry and naval forces. (TML Weekly Supplement No. 23, June 24, 2017)