NATO'S True Role in US Grand Strategy:
Encircling Russia, Targeting China
by Diana Johnstone
On November 19 and 20, NATO leaders meet in Lisbon for what is billed as a
summit on "NATO's Strategic Concept". . . .
The one thing missing from the Strategic Concept summit agenda is a serious
discussion of strategy.
This is partly because NATO as such has no strategy, and cannot have its own
strategy. NATO is in reality an instrument of United States strategy. Its
only operative Strategic Concept is the one put into practice by the United
States. . . .
The very heart of what passes for a "strategic concept" was first declared
and put into operation in the spring of 1999, when NATO defied international
law, the United Nations and its own original charter by waging an aggressive
war outside its defensive perimeter against Yugoslavia. That transformed
NATO from a defensive to an offensive alliance. . . .
Indeed, a catalogue of threats enumerated by Rasmussen in a speech last year
seemed to suggest that NATO was working for the insurance industry. NATO,
he said, was needed to deal with piracy, cyber security, climate change,
extreme weather events such as catastrophic storms and flooding, rising sea
levels, large-scale population movement into inhabited areas, sometimes
across borders, water shortages, droughts, decreasing food production,
global warming, CO2 emissions, the retreat of Arctic ice uncovering hitherto
inaccessible resources, fuel efficiency and dependence on foreign sources,
etc. . . .
The main threat to NATO is its own obsolescence. And the search for a
"strategic concept" is the search for pretexts to keep it going.
While it searches for threats, NATO itself is a growing threat to the world. . . .
[THE BOMBING was intended to justify the continued existence of NATO. More
than seven years after the disintegration of the Soviet Union (NATO's
ostensible reason for being), Clinton and his European allies--along with
Boeing and Lockheed--are trying to improvise an afterlife. Milosevic came in
handy. Twice in Clinton's speech to the nation, he brought up the alliance.
"Our mission is clear: to demonstrate the seriousness of NATO's purpose," he
said. Failing to act, he added, "would discredit NATO, the cornerstone on
which our security has rested for fifty years now."--Editorial: "Bill Clinton's War," The
Progressive, April 27, 1999]
[According to the official narrative, technically NATO only left its
(cavernous) building in Europe for Afghanistan under the organization's
Article 5 (emphasizing collective defense) to help Washington fight George W
Bush's "war on terror" against al-Qaeda. Yet even somnolent diplomats in
Brussels know that Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri crossed
from eastern Afghanistan to Pakistan in early December 2001, and disappeared
into a black void.--Pepe Escobar, "Have
(infinite) war, will travel," atimes.com, November 18, 2010]
[General James Jones, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) from 2003
to 2005 . . .
admitted in an October 2005 interview with American Forces Press
Service that NATO had struggled to avoid becoming irrelevant after the
collapse of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact. "NATO
was in limbo for a bit," he said.
But the 9/11 attacks on the US had offered a new opportunity for NATO to
demonstrate its relevance.--Gareth Porter, "NATO
politics driving Afghan war," atimes.com, January 5, 2011
[When the archaeologists of the next millennium excavate, they will find the
evidence of a tectonic shift and turning-point in Russian history that took
place in the two months between December 28 and February 25.
That's from the day Prime Minister Vladimir Putin signed government order
number VP-P13-9308, and instructed Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin to
supervise compliance; to the day when lawyer and prominent blogger Alexei
Navalny listed the most powerful oligarchs in the country (Switzerland too)
as the target of the political opposition - after Putin wins the
presidential election.--John Helmer, "Putin's
oligarch killer," atimes.com, March 2, 2012]