NATO Summit: 1%’s enforcers talk tactics

While 15,000 people were braving police clubs and 50 U.S. military veterans were trashing their medals as they denounced NATO as a criminal military alliance, top officials from the 28 NATO members and some associates were proving that the demonstrators were right on target. NATO intervenes against the people of the world, even as Chicago cops do against protesters.

The NATO Summit’s big public topic was the alliance’s current hot war against the people of Afghanistan. President Barack Obama, who hosted the summit, announced that the war would finally wind down over the next two years. France’s Francois Hollande said he’d pull out French troops before the end of 2012.

Washington had opened this war more than 10 years ago with some nominal NATO help as apparent revenge for the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The Pentagon named the operation “Enduring Freedom.” The war has certainly endured, as has the slaughter of Afghans, and is now set to continue for two more years.

There is no evidence the war or the NATO operation has brought freedom or any other benefit to the Afghan people — just nighttime roundups, drone attacks and sometimes the casual slaughter of civilians by U.S. troops sent to occupy and repress a traumatized, hostile population.

Despite paper support from many NATO members, the U.S. still supplies 90,000 of the 130,000 foreign troops occupying Afghanistan. Annual costs for the puppet Afghan army are expected to be $4.1 billion. France is supposed to pay about $200 million of this as the blood price for pulling out its troops, while still remaining a charter member of the predatory alliance.

The lack of formal talks between Obama and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari gave evidence that the “end game” in the region might go just as badly as the rest of the war. Pakistan has been blocking an essential supply route of NATO’s occupation troops ever since a U.S. airstrike killed 24 Pakistani soldiers. The Pakistanis may reopen the route, but are asking for a toll of $5,000 per truck instead of $250 as in the past. (Chicago Sun Times, May 21)

U.S. bases threaten Russia, Europe

The other big issue at the summit was the U.S. plan to deploy the so-called missile shield to certain European countries, mainly Poland and the Czech Republic. Washington claims the shield is aimed at stopping missiles from Iran. Since Iran has neither nuclear weapons nor long-range rockets, the Russian government considers the shield an aggressive weapon aimed at Russia, one that gives the U.S and NATO the option of a credible first nuclear strike.

Hollande’s reaction to the missile shield gave an indication of what his recent election would mean for French foreign policy.

The Chicago Sun Times reported, “Hollande gave NATO something: He did not pursue objections to a new NATO ballistic missile system based in Europe; French reporters were told he got assurances from NATO that French companies would get some of that business.” (May 21)

NATO’s background

NATO was established in 1949 to prevent workers’ revolutions in Western Europe and to confront the Soviet Union. The U.S. was, and remains, NATO’s dominant member. While 28 NATO members and a couple dozen other countries were represented in Chicago, the core NATO members are the old colonial centers: France and Britain, plus Germany, Italy and other European colonial exploiters of Africa and Asia.

This inner core is the same as the G8, without Japan and Russia. These dominant Western imperialist powers control technology, banking, trade and currency worldwide. Almost every country in Europe is drafted into NATO and then forced to buy weapons from the main powers and supply cannon fodder for Washington’s wars.

Since the downfall of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact in 1991, Washington has consciously turned NATO into a tool for maintaining its control in Europe and carrying out reconquest of the former colonial world.

NATO attacks throughout the 1990s dismembered Yugoslavia and subordinated its pieces — the remaining ministates — to Western European and U.S. imperialism. NATO has provided cover and backup for the occupation of Afghanistan. In 2011 NATO bombed Libya for seven months, destroying that country and making it possible for the Western oil monopolies to pick up the pieces. Now NATO is involved in trying to overthrow the government of Syria.

All the propaganda about “humanitarian interventions” used as a pretext for these operations of conquest are just that: lies. There is no possible progressive role for this brutal military machine. The veterans who destroyed their medals have recognized this — and everyone should.

The spin doctors for imperialism knew what they were doing when they moved the G8 from Chicago to Camp David. It would have been too obvious that while the G8 Summit coordinated the economic interests of the 1 percent of the 1%, the NATO Summit coordinated their enforcers.