NATO expansion and Brzezinski’s nightmare

PART 2

By Heather Cottin

Published Nov 7, 2007 11:09 PM

Once the USSR was gone and the Warsaw Pact had been dissolved, the ruling classes of the NATO countries, as well as in Japan, started taking steps to re-establish colonial domination over the peoples and resources of the world.

But obstacles arose. The Iraqi and Afghan peoples’ resistance exposed the weaknesses of the Pentagon. In addition, some of the more powerful of the nonimperialist states have taken joint diplomatic steps to counter the NATO offensive.

Talk of NATO expansion into Africa and Pentagon plans to set up an African command—dubbed AFRICOM—to coordinate its military maneuvers in the area began to arouse opposition. Even Morocco, a U.S. client state, joined Algeria and Libya in saying that AFRICOM was set up “only to secure a constant flow of oil to the United States.”

On July 27, Radio Free Europe, a U.S. propaganda agency set up during the Cold War, said what Washington is thinking: “The Arctic and Antarctica are the last vast untapped reservoirs of mineral resources on the planet. Underneath the Arctic Ocean, there are gigantic reserves of tin, manganese, nickel, gold, platinum and diamonds. But the Arctic’s most lucrative treasure is the enormous deposits of oil and gas, which could amount to 25 percent of the world’s resources.”

Norway, Denmark (through its colony Greenland), Canada and the U.S. are NATO members with coastlines on the Arctic Ocean. However, the longest part of the Arctic coast belongs to Russia. Moscow estimates that the region contains at least 10 billion tons of oil and natural gas reserves.

When NATO threatened to claim the Arctic as its new region of control, the Russian government sent submarines in an unprecedented 13,800-foot dive beneath the North Pole. During the dive, NATO spy planes buzzed the Russian icebreaker Rossia. (Voice of Russia, July 27) The expedition planted the Russian flag on the ocean floor.

The imperialist powers are in a frenzy to control the resources of the world, and have fashioned the new NATO to do this. Only 95,000 troops are left in the European Command (EUCOM) to do the “primary job to ensure European stability,” meaning maintaining rightist and pro-capitalist governments in Eastern Europe and the Balkans. According to U.S. Vice Adm. Richard Gallagher, EUCOM’s new deputy commander and former head of its operations, “stability” in Eastern Europe “is what’s good for us, good for business, good for the United States’ central interests.” (Stars and Stripes, Oct. 16)

NATO’s strategic role

The imperialist powers are using NATO in an attempt to fulfill the strategic imperialist designs that former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski—in the Jimmy Carter administration—described in his book “The Grand Chessboard”in 1997: “For America after the Cold War, the chief prize is Eurasia.” Brzezinski feared an alliance between China, Russia and Iran, and warned that the U.S. had only 20 years to complete the conquest of the region.

Ten have passed and the U.S. and NATO are bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan. Recently the Russian and Chinese militaries participated in joint military exercises, conducting maneuvers in the Ural Mountains. An Iranian newspaper observed, “At the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit both countries warned the U.S. to stay away from the energy-rich and strategic region of Central Asia.” (Tehran Times, Oct. 21)

The two governments have expanded “all spheres of the Russian-Chinese relations: summit and high-ranking contacts, trade, economic and humanitarian cooperation, and inter-regional contacts,” said Konstantin Vnukov, director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s First Asian Department, and Russia has “forged alliances with China, Iran, Syria, and other neighboring states.” (Xinhua News Agency, Oct. 20)

When Russia and China, as well as Serbia and South Africa, together opposed the U.S./NATO plot to make Serbia’s Kosovo province an independent country in July, the U.N. Security Council had to drop the resolution. (Itar-Tass, July 20)

Short of allies, short of troops

With populations rising in opposition to NATO expansion, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the threat of war on Iran, the U.S. has few allies. Nevertheless, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates visited Afghanistan in July and said the U.S. will “fight somewhere in the world for at least 20 to 30 more years.” Besides the major campaigns the U.S. is waging in Afghanistan and Iraq, the military is “very much involved” in some 20 other countries. “There’s a lot going on right now that’s not visible,” Marine Gen. Peter Pace said. (AP, July 18)

What is visible has been nothing but murder and mayhem in Afghanistan and Iraq. These wars and NATO expansion have cost the countries connected to NATO hundreds of billions of dollars, the stripping of their social programs and thousands of young lives.

The volunteer militaries in the NATO countries are having an ever more difficult time attracting recruits when soldiers are being blown up in Iraq and Afghanistan. Popular opposition to the NATO intervention in Afghanistan is growing in Canada and the European countries, too.

“[S]hort of the troops needed for victory,” wrote the International Herald Tribune on Oct. 21, “NATO again is pleading with member states to step up their commitments. ... Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, secretary general of NATO, urged the alliance’s members to stay the course [in] Afghanistan. ... [D]efense ministers are being asked to send troops to Kosovo, Congo, Sudan, Somalia, Lebanon and Chad.”

The governments of Britain, Canada and the Netherlands are urging those in France and Germany to take part in the fighting in the southern part of Afghanistan, but these NATO governments are reluctant, reflecting mass opposition and their own pessimism. Paddy Ashdown, the former U.N. high representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, told the British Telegraph on Oct. 25 that in Afghanistan, “We have lost, I think, and success is now unlikely.”

Articles copyright 1995-2008 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.

Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
Subscribe wwnews-subscribe@workersworld.net
Support independent news http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php