People's Counter-Summit and Actions in the U.S.
"No to NATO, Yes to
Peace" counter-summit in Washington, DC, July 6-7.
The broad opposition to NATO's 75th anniversary summit in Washington, DC started the weekend of July 6-7, ahead of the summit, with a people's counter-summit. The counter-summit played an important role in focusing how the Anglo-American imperialists use U.S.-led NATO to attack and threaten competitors on all continents with the aim of maximizing profits of the big corporations and banks. Everything shows that NATO was in fact one of the first oligopolies set up by the U.S. imperialists after World War II with its entanglement of governments, banks, corporations and the U.S. civil-military-industrial complex operating in tandem.
Large numbers of activists, many relatively new to the anti-war movement, gathered in the 35-degree Celsius heat of Washington, DC to oppose and set the tone for the NATO warmongers who would arrive for their summit July 9-11.
Informative panels on July 6 were filled to capacity. The panels and speakers brought out the role of the U.S. government and its aggressive NATO military alliance, and that far from being a defensive alliance, it is actively involved in stoking conflict around the world. Speakers from various organizations gave the perspective of the peoples of Asia, Africa, Europe and the Caribbean and how NATO is involved in their regions and the problems it is causing, as well as the escalation of the danger of nuclear war that threatens all humanity.
Several speakers spoke about how NATO is provoking war against Russia using Ukraine as a proxy and possibly starting World War III there. A youth from Palestine told of how NATO is supporting the U.S. government-backed Israeli genocidal massacres of Palestinians. It was also pointed out that NATO countries are surrounding China with military bases. Other speakers reported eloquently on how the U.S., NATO, NATO members and its so-called global partners are threatening and attacking the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, countries in Africa, and the peoples of South America, the Caribbean, Canada, Europe and the U.S. NATO was also condemned for how it is exacerbating the existential threat of global warming and the climate crisis. Discussion also took place on measures required to further build a united movement for peace and justice.
On July 7, a mass rally near the White House made clear that the peoples' opposition to U.S./NATO wars are a defining character of this period and that the peoples are pursuing their own agenda to ensure that all the peoples of the world can live in security.
Excerpts from Keynote Speech to Counter-Summit
At the "No to NATO, Yes to Peace" counter-summit on July 6, the keynote speech was given by Sevim Dagdelen, a member of the German Bundestag for the party Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht. Posted below are excerpts from her speech.
[...] 75 years of
NATO is equivalent to 75 years of denial, albeit with a dramatic
expansion of scale and scope in recent years.
This is so in part because the three great myths of NATO are now fading.
First is the central myth of a NATO organized as a defence community committed to international law: a NATO that is a community of constitutional states upholding the law, allowing international law to rule its actions so that it exists for no other purpose but to defend the territory of its members.
Yet if we interrogate NATO's actual policies, what do we find?
In 1999, NATO itself conducted a war of aggression, in breach of international law, against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. NATO's war crimes included the bombing of a television station in Belgrade and an allegedly accidental bombing of the Chinese Embassy which killed three Chinese journalists.
In 2011, NATO attacked Libya. It misused a UN Security Council resolution to fight a war for regime change, one result of which was that part of the country came under the rule of Islamists; Libya on the whole was plunged into a state of appalling misery, and even suffered the return of slavery.
In Afghanistan, NATO involved itself from 2003 in a war far from Alliance territory, only to hand power, 20 years later, to the Taliban -- whose overthrow had been the invasion's stated objective. That 20-year war in Afghanistan was marked by numerous war crimes -- such as the October 2015 U.S. airstrike on a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz -- which, needless to say, went unpunished.
NATO has assumed the musketeers' motto: all for one and one for all. This means in practice that the deeds of individual NATO members must also be ascribed to the organization itself. Brown University puts the death toll of the U.S.'s wars in the Middle East over the last 20 years alone at 4.5 million people -- wars, like that in Iraq, based on lies and which were nothing but egregious violations of international law.
NATO's self-image as a community for defence in adherence to international law simply does not match reality. We must rather draw the opposite conclusion.
NATO is a community of illegality and of the violators of international law who, either separately or as an organization, conduct wars of aggression on a politically opportunistic basis.
A second myth, perhaps the one most insistently impressed upon the public, is that of NATO as a community of democracies grounded in the rule of law. But if we examine the past with any care, this flattering self-presentation is immediately deflated by an ugly and shameful record. Until 1974, NATO member Portugal was ruled by a fascist dictatorship which waged blood-soaked colonial wars in Angola and Mozambique. Those who resisted were driven into concentration camps like Tarrafal in Cape Verde, where many Angolans and Guinea-Bissauans were tortured to death. Like fascist Portugal, Greece and Türkiye both were members of NATO in the aftermath of their respective military coups.
NATO itself, as we now know, put into motion Operation Gladio, a clandestine organization to be activated whenever democratic majorities threatened to vote against NATO membership. In Italy, for example, terrorist attacks were carried out in the name of far-left groups so as to discredit the Italian Communist Party in its efforts to form a government.
One might object that here we're referencing a bygone era, and that NATO now stands ready to be called up in the global fight by democrats against autocrats. But on this point too, any serious observer must conclude that something is amiss in that aspect of the 21st century Alliance's self-image.
Take Türkiye under President Erdogan. It has repeatedly conducted illegal wars against Iraq and Syria, supported Islamist terrorist groups in Syria and, according to the German Government's own assessment in 2016, is a launchpad for Islamists; yet Türkiye has always been and remains to this day a valued NATO member.
Bilateral security agreements, such as those struck with Franco's Spain, are now in place with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, even in the full knowledge that these states are avowedly anti-democratic. Clearly, the only meaningful criterion for dealing with the Alliance is geopolitical advantage. NATO is neither a community of democracies, nor does it exist to defend democracy.
Third: NATO presently claims to be safeguarding human rights. Even if we were to overlook how NATO's actions trample on the rights to work, health and adequate housing a million times over -- amidst growing poverty and a historic upward redistribution of wealth domestically -- such a self-serving image does not withstand scrutiny in international matters.
As we debate here, prisoners taken in the U.S.'s so-called "Global War on Terror" still languish in Guantánamo Bay, where they have been kept without trial for nearly a quarter century. That is the reality of "human rights" in NATO's leading state. When it comes to freedom of opinion and the press, the U.S., supported by its NATO auxiliaries, attempted to make an example of Julian Assange by tormenting him for 14 years. His sole crime was having revealed U.S. war crimes to the public. A smear campaign was then launched against him; Hillary Clinton and Mike Pompeo openly contemplated his murder. This is a bit of the reality of NATO's relationship to human rights.
I am thrilled to be able to say finally that Julian Assange is now a free man. And Julian is undefeated.
The international campaign for Assange, all of the confidential talks and the like, were in the end successful. But we must also realize that the fight for Julian Assange's freedom was also part of the struggle for freedom as such. And this struggle continues to rage here at the very heart of the NATO system.
Given the density of the propaganda, how tireless it operates in celebration of the NATO mythology, day in and day out, it is almost a miracle that not only is support for NATO crumbling worldwide, but that it is precisely those most exposed to its propaganda who are increasingly skeptical of the military pact.
In the United States, public approval of NATO has been falling continuously over recent years, while majorities in Germany question the principle of defending all members; that is, they are no longer prepared to commit themselves to Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty.
Why is that? Why are people starting to have doubts about NATO -- despite the onslaught of propaganda?
The answer is simple enough: NATO is itself causing this crisis, and people sense that.
While its defenders speak of the alliance as if it were eternal, the organization's drive toward escalation in Ukraine and its expansion into Asia is exceeding the Alliance's own capacities. Just as with most empires, NATO is falling into a self-made trap of overextension. In this regard, NATO is a political fossil, unprepared to learn from the defeat of the German Empire in the First World War and appears to be repeating the gross miscalculations of the Kaiser's Germany, only on a global scale.
The German Empire believed it could wage a war on two fronts. Today, a similar conviction is gaining traction within NATO that it must not only confront Russia and China, but that it is also to involve itself in the Middle East. This is a claim to global hegemony now under formulation. What hubris!
NATO evidently sees itself waging a war on three fronts. But if it were to do this, its defeat would be certain right from the start.
Given this, it is only logical that three particular meetings are planned for this week's NATO summit. The first is a working session devoted to further ramping up the Alliance's own rearmament. The NATO-Ukraine Council is next on the agenda. It is to discuss how the lavish financial transfers and pledges from NATO to Ukraine can be augmented, with an increase in arms deliveries and eventual NATO membership for Ukraine. Third, there will be a session with the AP4, or Asia-Pacific partners -- Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea -- and a meeting with the leaders of the EU.
Seventy-five years after it was founded, NATO is to push for stepped-up belligerence in Ukraine and expansion into Asia. The intention is to advance the NATO-ization of Asia, and to put the strategy it believes it has already deployed successfully against Russia in place there.
For the moment, the primary focus in the Pacific is not on direct NATO accession for Asian countries, but rather on the expansion of NATO's sphere of influence via bilateral security agreements -- and not only with the AP4, but also with the Philippines, Taiwan and Singapore.
Just as Ukraine was erected as a frontline state against Russia, NATO is hoping to transform Asian countries like the Philippines into challenger states vis-à-vis China. The initial aim is to engage in a cold proxy war, but at the same time to prepare for a hot U.S. and NATO proxy war in Asia.
And just as NATO enlargement was pursued under the "boiling frog" principle with regard to Russia, with enlargement proceeding incrementally so as not to arouse Russia's suspicion too much, the policy of containing China now is comprised of lining up states one by one into a phalanx ready for war. The goal is, as ever, to avoid having to fight such a war oneself, but to be able to access Allies' resources so as to conduct these cold, and then hot, wars. These developments are flanked by economic warfare, which is now also being directed against China and the main burden of which is borne by the economies of U.S. client states.
[...]
As already mentioned, public support for a NATO committed to escalation and expansion is crumbling in the West. In Germany, 55 per cent of people reject Ukraine's accession to NATO. The majority opposes supplying arms to Ukraine and desires an immediate ceasefire. In the United States, financial aid to Ukraine, U.S.$200 billion so far, has become extremely unpopular. Growing numbers of people want a stop on the flow of money to a system in Kyiv which is not only corrupt but honours a far-right state cult around the Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera.
NATO's myths are losing their lustre. The Alliance's strategies are succumbing to their own imperial overextension. What we need now is an immediate end to arms deliveries to Ukraine and, at long last, a ceasefire there. Those who seek peace and security for their own populations must halt the aggressive policy of expansion into Asia.
Ultimately, the fight against NATO is a fight for one's own sovereignty. As an alliance of client states, Europe is in danger of collapsing. Emancipation as seen in Latin America's has yet to materialize. A first step would be to stop letting ourselves be played for fools by a military alliance that funds its aggressive strategy with a social war waged by its constitutive governments against its own population.
This article was published in
Volume 54
Number 42 - July 22, 2024
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmlm2024/Articles/MS54422.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca