OMNI's War and Warming Anthologies: OMNI NATO ANTHOLOGY #3 July 17, 2026

OMNI

NATO ANTHOLOGY #3

July 17, 2026

Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice, and Ecology

What’s at Stake: NATO is a war institution that thrives upon fear and loathing of (Soviet) Russia, normalises militarism, encourages increased military spending, diverts resources from diplomacy and human welfare into weapons. These anthologies on NATO bring activists, researchers, parliamentarians, and peace advocates from across the globe to explore the NATO crisis, the changing world order, and how we can build a future based on diplomacy, cooperation, and human security instead of war preparations

CONTENTS NATO ANTHOLOGY #3

EXPANDING NATO: Early History

Edward Lozansky. “How Bill Clinton Looted Russia and Started NATO Expansion.”
Olga Peterson. “NATO/CIA False Flag Operation in Racak in 1999 set precedent for similar operations in Syria and Ukraine…”
Kit Klarenberg. “Declassified files expose British role in NATO’s Gladio terror armies.”

JAMES W. CARDEN. THE GREAT BETRAYAL: How the Democrats Became the Party of War.

ICAN. Finland Lifting Ban on Nuclear Weapons.
Matthew Blackburn. Redlines.
Kryrko. Canada v. Russia.

Stop, Reverse, or Abolish NATO
World Beyond War. “NATO In Crisis: Time To Overcome the War Machine.”
“WATCH: TWTW —‘Europe & Russia Stare at War’.”

WBW. “Gaza and Ukraine to WWIII: The NATO Problem.”
McGovern and Kuznick.
WBW. Medea Benjamin and David Swanson’s book.
Capasso. European Fascism.
B and D. Suspend All Expansion.
Protest Reinstein Military Base.
Global Network. Abolish NATO, Close all US Bases.
Norton. Spain v. NATO Summit
Schalk. NATO Militarism.
Muzaffar. End Ukraine War and Russian Sanctions.
Hedges. NATO + Arms Industry = World Danger
Fr. Boulier. Pope Francism Crit. NATO.
Oberg. NATO Dangerous.

Sources (some of these articles appeared in more than one publication).
ACURA
Antiwar.com
Brave New Europe
The Canada Files
Consortium News
Covert Action Magazine
The Grayzone
ICAN

Monthly Review
OR Books
Scheer Post
Transcend Media Service
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
World BeyondWar

TEXTS

Early History, NATO ORIGINS OF UKRAINE WAR

Edward Lozansky. “How Bill Clinton Looted Russia and Started NATO Expansion.”
Olga Peterson. “NATO/CIA False Flag Operation in Racak in 1999 set precedent for similar operations in Syria and Ukraine…”
Kit Klarenberg. “Declassified files expose British role in NATO’s Gladio terror armies.”
Edward Lozansky. “How Bill Clinton looted Russia and started NATO expansion.”
Originally published: Antiwar.com Blog on September 11, 2023 by Edward Lozansky (more by Antiwar.com Blog) (Posted Sep 15, 2023).

Empire, Imperialism, Movements, State Repression Americas, Europe, Russia, United States Newswire Bill Clinton, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)

During the Cold War there were similar dangerous moments, but John Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev, as well as Ronald Reagan and Michael Gorbachev, managed to avoid the worst-case scenario. George H.W. Bush talked in 1990 about a “Europe whole and free” and a new “security architecture from Vancouver to Vladivostok,” while Boris Yeltsin, during his 1992 address to the joint chambers of Congress, exclaimed, “God bless America.”

So, what went wrong? Why are we talking about nuclear war again? According to Washington, Putin and his desire to restore the Soviet empire are to blame. Moscow points the finger back at Washington for its vision of a unipolar world order under the U.S. hegemony.

Below is my brief take, which I would be happy to debate with those who see it differently. Perhaps during such exchanges, we could come up with some ideas for avoiding our mutual extinction.

December 25, 1991
The Soviet flag over the Kremlin comes down, Russian white-blue-red (symbolically the same colors as the American flag) comes up. It looked like the new era of peace, friendship, and mutually beneficial cooperation had arrived, but regrettably, as we see now, it hasn’t.

1993—2001

Bill Clinton. The greatest robbery of the 20^th Century. NATO Expansion.

The term “Russiagate” entered the American media space much earlier than during Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 presidential campaign, when she tried to blame Russia for her loss. This term was first used by Washington Post correspondent David Ignatius, who is now one of the harshest critics of Russia. But back in 1999 in his WP article Who Robbed Russia? he highlighted some of the most damning revelations of the multi-billion robbery of Russia with the help of the Bank of New York and with the acquiescence of the Clinton administration. “By allowing the oligarchs–in the name of the free market–to grab Russia’s resources and siphon anything of value into their own offshore bank accounts, the United States poisoned Russia’s transition from communism… What makes the Russian case so sad is that the Clinton administration may have squandered one of the most precious assets imaginable–which is the idealism and goodwill of the Russian people as they emerged from 70 years of Communist rule. The Russia debacle may haunt us for generations,”—said Ignatius.

A Congressional September 2000 report about the Clinton Administration’s misdeeds in Russia has many other details on the same subject.

Clinton also meddled in Russia’s 1996 presidential elections. Then he started the first round of NATO expansion despite the objections of many prominent experts, including former U.S. government officials, Members of Congress, and diplomats. For example:

Fifty members of the Arms Control Association wrote a letter to Clinton saying “We, the undersigned, believe that the current U.S.-led effort to expand NATO is a policy error of historic proportions. We believe that NATO expansion will decrease allied security and unsettle European stability.”

“We’ll be back on a hair-trigger” said Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a New York Democrat, during the debates in the Senate. Moynihan continued:

We’re talking about nuclear war. It is a curiously ironic outcome that at the end of the Cold War,we might face a nuclear Armageddon.
Senator Joseph Biden (D-Delaware), while calling Moynihan “the single most erudite and informed person in the Senate,” said he disagreed with him and pushed for NATO’s expansion.
One of America’s most distinguished diplomats, George Kennan, called NATO expansion “a fatal foreign policy mistake.”

2001—2009

George W. Bush. Thanked Putin for help after 9/11, then paid him back with the war in Iraq, abrogation of the ABM treaty, color revolutions in the post-Soviet space, and pushing to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO.

This is what Bush said in November 2001 following Putin’s support for the Afghan operation a month earlier:

“A lot of people never really dreamt that an American President and a Russian President could have established the friendship…. to establish a new spirit of cooperation and trust so that we can work together to make the world more peaceful…. I brought him to my ranch because, as the good people in this part of the world know, you only usually invite your friends into your house…. a new style of leader, a reformer, a man who loves his country as much as I love mine…. a man who is going to make a huge difference in making the world more peaceful, by working closely with the United States.”

What a spirit of sanity from a man who would oversee a disastrous two terms in office which included the war in Iraq and an abrogation of one of the most strategic anti-nuclear war treaties.

Russia considered NATO’s statement during its April 2008 Bucharest summit that Ukraine and Georgia would become part of this military block to be an existential threat.

2009—2017

Barack Obama. Short-lived “Reset”. Gave a Ukrainian Portfolio to his VP Joe Biden which he used to coordinate the February 2014 regime change coup in Ukraine overseen by Victoria Nuland, and make lots of money for his family via Hunter [Biden’s son], both in Ukraine, and around the world. Russiagate 2.0 orchestrated by Hillary Clinton and the Deep State derailed Trump’s presidency and his efforts to improve U.S.-Russia relations.

2017—2021

Donald Trump. Accused of being a Russian stooge. Four years of harassment by the Washington Swamp. Survived two impeachment efforts. Lost the 2020 elections due to the success of Biden’s virtual campaign and corrupt media to shift the blame for Hunter’s “Laptop from Hell” on Russia.

2021—now

Joe Biden. Rejection of Russia’s proposals in December 2021 for the mutual security guarantees that included a neutral status for Ukraine. Destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines. Declared his goal of achieving a devastating strategic defeat of Russia. Continues multi-billion dollar funding of Ukraine for “as long as it takes.”

During a recent speech at the EU Parliament’s foreign affairs committee, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg admitted that the war in Ukraine was the result of NATO expansionism. In his comments he stated that “in the autumn of 2021, Putin sent a draft treaty that he wanted NATO to promise, never to enlarge NATO, to remove our military infrastructure in all Allies that have joined NATO since 1997, introducing some kind of B, or second class membership. So he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders. We rejected that.”

Well, Putin only wanted NATO to honor the pledge “not to expand one inch East” given to Gorbachev by the Western leaders in exchange for allowing the reunification of Germany. The document confirming this is available in the National archives.

By accepting at least one, I believe the most important point of Russia’s proposal, to make Ukraine neutral, Washington and NATO would show goodwill and readiness for negotiations. Unfortunately, they rejected this plan outright.

Conclusion:

The current nuclear threat will end when Washington orders Kyiv to search for diplomatic solutions. However, as long as Biden is in the office that is unlikely. For him, too much is at stake, and the interests of American people who are in favor of ending this war are secondary.

Therefore, we are entering two races: the U.S. presidential election, and how to avoid extinction. The main issue is Ukraine’s neutrality. How important it is for the American people to risk the annihilation?

Edward Lozansky is president of the American University in Moscow. Reprinted from New Kontinent U.S. with permission from the author.

Monthly Review does not necessarily adhere to all of the views conveyed in articles republished at MR Online. Our goal is to share a variety of left perspectives that we think our readers will find interesting or useful. —Eds.

Further discussion: Bill Clinton North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)

Olga Peterson. “NATO/CIA false flag operation in Račak in 1999 set precedent for similar operations in Syria and Ukraine that were designed to create a pretext for military intervention.”
Originally published: CovertAction Magazine on July 7, 2023 by Olga Peterson (more by CovertAction Magazine) | (Posted Jul 11, 2023).
Empire, Inequality, State Repression, Strategy Americas, Europe, Serbia, United States, Yugoslavia Newswire Bucha, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Račak

A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes. — Mark Twain
We are living in terrible times. The great hegemon—the United States of America—and its false flags abound all around. Where do I start? Remember Bucha anyone? Let me tell you about the Račak massacre in Serbian Kosovo and Metohija in 1999, yet another brutal U.S.-NATO false flag that was used to justify military intervention and bombing.

The Serbs have been trying for more than two decades to present the truth about this 1999 false pretext for NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, which at the time consisted of Serbia and Montenegro. MORE

Kit Klarenberg. “Declassified files expose British role in NATO’s Gladio terror armies.” The Grayzone (June 19, 2023 ). Originally published: The Grayzone on June 19, 2023 by Kit Klarenberg (more by The Grayzone). (Posted Jun 27, 2023).
Inequality, Strategy, War Americas, Britain, Europe, France, Italy, Ukraine, United States Newswire CIA, MI6, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Operation Gladio, Russia-Ukraine War

Newly declassified British Foreign Office files have added disturbing details to the history of Operation Gladio. The covert operation was uncovered in 1990, when the public learned that the CIA, MI6 and NATO trained and directed an underground army of fascist paramilitary units across Europe, deploying its assets to undermine political opponents, including through false flag terror attacks. MORE above

USA RULED BY ONE WAR ANTI-RUSSIA PARTY

JAMES W. CARDEN. THE GREAT BETRAYAL: How the Democrats Became the Party of War. O/R Books, 2026. Publisher’s description: BOTH PARTIES NOW SELL WAR.

THE DEMOCRATIC LEADERSHIP ARE HAWKS TOO. How the Democratic foreign-policy establishment abandoned FDR’s vision of great-power reciprocity and cooperation—and became, instead, a party of warmongers.
“An outstanding study of US foreign policy, based on meticulous research. Its anti-interventionist argument will resonate with an American public.” —David N. Gibbs
“Brilliantly traces how the Democratic Party divested of the vision of international order that Roosevelt had once articulated, leaving the American people sick and tired of costly military interventions.”—David Hendrickson
“It’s the book we have been waiting for—explaining one of the great conundrums of contemporary international politics.”—Richard Sakwa
“Carden’s clear, easy to read, and incisive analysis reveals how the imperial hubris of Achesonian Democrats betrayed Rooseveltian ideals of concerted global governance.”—Hall Gardner

See OMNI’s anthologies on US Soviet/Russo bigotry:

#8 https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2025/12/omni-sovietrussophobia-anti-communism.html

NATO EXPANDING THREAT TO RUSSIA , GLOBAL REACTIONS (Seeing the World as Others See It).

ICAN. “Finland Lifting Ban on Nuclear Weapons.” June 17, 2026.
Nuclear Weapons: The Problem Our Solution: The Ban Help Make it Happen
Home Resources and updates News Finland nuclear law repeal vote

Today the Finnish parliament voted in favour for the government’s proposal to repeal the law that bans nuclear weapons from the country. This means they're removing the 1987 safeguard that prohibited the import, transport, supply and possession of nuclear weapons on Finnish territory.

“Finland sits in Russia’s immediate neighbourhood. For four decades it kept itself safe not by matching threat with threat, but by refusing to escalate. This deliberate tradition of restraint has served Finns well through the Cold War and beyond. Today Parliament abandoned that tradition,” said Melissa Parke, Executive Director of ICAN who thinks this move does not make Finland safer, rather more exposed.

The law dates back to 1987 when Finland was neutral and managing a wary relationship with its neighbour the Soviet Union with which it had fought during the Second World War. Finland had been part of the Russian empire until 1918 when the country gained its independence following the empire’s collapse and the Bolshevik revolution.

Following the demise of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, Finland maintained the ban and public opinion in the country was strongly opposed to nuclear weapons.

But, Finnish foreign policy took an abrupt turn in 2023 when the government decided to join NATO because of fear of Russia following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine the year before. The government claims that the law is incompatible with its membership of NATO which relies on nuclear weapons as part of its security strategy. This justification is unconvincing given there is nothing in the North Atlantic Treaty, NATO’s legal foundation, that requires a member to accept nuclear weapons on its territory. In fact, the treaty does not mention nuclear weapons.

And the Finnish public did not ask for this change. While public opinion in Finland is largely supportive of NATO membership, it remains opposed to nuclear weapons and is specifically opposed to the presence of nuclear weapons on Finnish soil. This has been re-emphasised by a new poll conducted by YouGov for ICAN, that has found that only 18% support the deployment of nuclear weapons in the country, while 58% are opposed.

Some opposition parties, including the Social Democrats and the Left Alliance have been critical of the proposal and polling shows the majority of the public is against the change. . . .

ICAN’s Executive Director, Melissa Parke, said: “By opening its territory to nuclear weapons, Finland turns itself into an obvious target and lowers the threshold for a pre-emptive strike in any NATO-Russia confrontation. A hard-won posture of security through restraint has been discarded, and the consequences of that choice are as dangerous as they are unknown.”
Further reading:
Doomsday Clock moves closer to midnight
Namibia ratifies UN nuclear weapon ban treaty
Experts and governments meet to discuss the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons
Saint Kitts and Nevis ratifies UN nuclear weapon ban treaty on Nagasaki anniversary

featured   Finland   NATO   nuclear weapons   TPNW
You might also like: July 13, 2026.   TPNW
The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, Article 8, paragraph 4, states that a review conference shall be convened by the Secretary-General of the United Nations five years after entry into force of the treaty.    The first review conference will take place 30 November - 4 December, 2026 at United Nations Headquarters in New York. Below you will find the official convocation note issued by the Secretary-General on 10 July 2026.    Find the convocation note here

Ukraine, US, West Violating Russia’s Nuclear Redlines

Matthew Blackburn. “When did Western statecraft lose its fear of the unknown?” ACURA (July 2, 2026).
Prudence has been replaced by confidence that conflict can be precisely managed. Nowhere is that more evident than in the European approach to Russia. Read in browser »
As Western leaders departed the G7 summit in Évian talking of a “strategic awakening in support of Ukraine,” the night sky over Moscow was illuminated by the fires of a burning oil refinery just nine miles from the Kremlin. This unprecedented Ukrainian drone strike on Russian territory was met in Western capitals with quiet endorsement rather than anxiety.

During the tensest moments of the Cold War, Western statecraft was anchored by a healthy fear of the unknown. Today, that prudence has been replaced by confidence that conflict can be precisely managed. When Franklin D. Roosevelt famously declared that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself," he was addressing panic during an economic collapse. In contemporary Europe, however, this maxim has been carelessly transposed onto the realm of nuclear redlines.

The prevailing consensus in Europe treats deep strikes into the Russian heartland as a low-cost method of pressuring Moscow into a ceasefire. Assuming Russia is under unsustainable strain, experts continue to argue that Europe can safely coordinate the war, so long as taxpayers accept the costs.

Such a view ignores the risks inherent to a broader unravelling of the global security architecture. Unlike during the Cold War, in which superpowers respected defined chains of command and established redlines, today’s historical guardrails have eroded. The European coalition lacks both coherent leadership and escalation control mechanisms. This makes the conflict far more prone to spiraling into a broader war than commonly acknowledged. . . .

Bottom of Form

This is keeping with the conflict’s trajectory since 2022 of creeping escalation dressed up as controlled policy. As European states take the primary responsibility for supporting Ukraine, this conflict is reaching a new, more dangerous stage.

Europe’s strategy in Ukraine during Trump 2.0

The Western coalition behind Ukraine fragmented after President Donald Trump’s return to the White House. Throughout 2025, European leaders proposed a “coalition of the willing” to deploy forces and integrate Ukraine into an emergent European Union security space following a ceasefire. They essentially demanded that Russia agree to an unconditional ceasefire while holding the upper hand on the battlefield.

When Trump’s Alaska summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin made it clear Washington would not enforce these demands, Europe switched gears. Its leaders agreed to cover the costs of U.S.-made weapons, ramp up domestic military production, tighten sanctions, and keep the pressure on Moscow to agree to a ceasefire.

Lacking the capacity for large-scale ground offensives, Ukraine's strategy shifted to defending its frontlines while increasing costs on Russia through deep strikes. These attacks grew in scale and scope even after Trump’s inauguration signaled a U.S. pivot to a negotiated settlement. The most dramatic case was Operation Spiderweb, during which Ukrainian drones struck Russian airbases, damaging strategic bombers tied to Russia’s nuclear deterrence triad. While Kyiv denied targeting Putin’s Valdai residence in December 2025, President Zelensky’s recent open letter defiantly warned the Russian leadership it could not be “comfortable” given Ukraine’s ability to strike state parades and executive residences.

A war without clear guardrails
Striking a nuclear power's strategic assets and leadership lacks any Cold War precedent. . . . Thousands have gathered in southwestern German town Ramstein to protest against U.S. military hegemony and demanded the U.S. military to withdrawthdraw from Germany. https://www.cctvplus.com/news/2023062... Forwarded by Sonny San Juan via uark.onmicrosoft.com

CANADA, SANCTIONS RUSSIA; UKRAINE AND WWII

Valerie Kryiko. “Canadian sanctions on Russia: Powerless rage with a boomerang effect.” Editor. Mronline.org (6-25-23).

Originally published: The Canada Files on June 20, 2023 by Valerie Krylko (more by The Canada Files) | (Posted Jun 24, 2023).

Financialization, Imperialism, Political Economy, State Repression, Strategy Americas, Canada, Europe, Russia Newswire President Vladimir Putin, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Sanctions

Canada has repeatedly imposed sanctions packages on Russia, both before and after the special military operation (SMO) began. Canada’s recent seizure of a Russian an-124 cargo plane, which had been delivering COVID supplies when it was grounded in February 2022 at Pearson Airport (it was forced to pay a fee for every minute, despite being trapped there), is another sanction among many others.

This is not surprising, as Canada and the UK obediently follow Washington’s policies. Canada has a large Ukrainian diaspora, including descendants of the Nazi SS Division Galicia, many of whom actively support Zelensky’s regime. Moreover, Chrystia Freeland, the deputy prime minister of Canada and the recent Minister of Foreign Affairs, is the maternal granddaughter of Mikhailo Khomyak, who during the Second World War worked as the editor of the Nazi newspaper “Krakovskie vesti” in Nazi-occupied Poland. MORE

CURTAIL OR ABOLISH NATO

ENDING NATO’S WARMAKING
“NATO In Crisis: Time To Overcome The War Machine.”

World BEYOND War <annachiara@worldbeyondwar.org> June 29, 2026.

Dear Dick,

While NATO leaders gather in Ankara on July 7th and 8th to discuss the future of military strategy, we'll be coming together to discuss something else: the future of peace. NATO is a war institution that normalises militarism, encourages increased military spending, and diverts resources from diplomacy and human welfare into weapons.

Join activists, researchers, parliamentarians, and peace advocates from across the globe for two online events exploring the NATO crisis, the changing world order, and how we can build a future based on diplomacy, cooperation, and human security instead of war preparations on July 3 and July 11.

NATO IN CRISIS: TIME TO OVERCOME THE WAR MACHINE (International Actions)
PRE-SUMMIT - with Firuze Taner, Anuradha Chenoy, Reiner Braun

REGISTER HERE

POST-SUMMIT - with Ann Wright, Francis Daehon Lee, Kathy Kelly, Pablo Ruiz, Sean Conner, Ulla Klötzer

REGISTER HERE

We also support and stand in solidarity with the Anti-imperialist Peace Summit happening on July 4, 7:00 pm in Istanbul / Kadikoy.

For a world beyond war,
Annachiara Canetta, Europe Organiser, World BEYOND War
annachiara@worldbeyondwar.org

World BEYOND War is a global network of volunteers, chapters, and affiliated organizations advocating for the abolition of the institution of war.

“WATCH: TWTW —‘Europe & Russia Stare at War’.” Consortium News (6-29-26).
Europe trash talks war. Putin says Russia is ready. The U.S.-Iran ceasefire breaks down again and does NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s victories really signal a new direction for Democrats? Read here...
Guests: Ray McGovern, ex-C.I.A. analyst and historian Peter Kuznick. Host: Joe Lauria. Producer: Cathy Vogan. Tags: Bill Clinton Cathy Vogan Donald Trump JoeLauria NewDeal PeterKuznick RayMcGovern Vladimir Putin Zohran Mamdani

“Gaza and Ukraine to WWIII: The NATO Problem.” World BEYOND War. 5-22-26

What does NATO have to do with current and looming wars? How does NATO work and what is it working on? How does an alliance whose members and partners make up 69.4% of the world's military spending shape international relations? What alternatives exist? What is being planned by advocates for peace and demilitarization? Get some answers from Medea Benjamin, Oleg
Bodrov, Shirine Jurdi, Tamara Lorincz, Jeffrey Sachs, and Yurii Sheliazhenko.

[I did not find a text of this webinar discussion but include the announcement to emphasize the geographical range and individual diversity of the global discussion, and participation by US peace leaders including Medea Benjamin and Jeffrey Sachs . –D]

“NATO: Keeper of peace, or war machine run amok?”

OR Books <info@orbooks.com>

NATO: What You Need To Know by MEDEA BENJAMIN and DAVID SWANSON.

What is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)? What role is played by its members and partners? Does the largest military alliance ever to exist serve the cause of peace or the causes of weapons sales and war mongering? Published to coincide with the 75th anniversary of the alliance, this sharp, concise account examines NATO's origins, structure, and its goals at a time of mounting global tension.

NATO has remade itself repeatedly, as its past purposes have disappeared. In the last 35 years it has been part of wars in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. It has played a major role in Ukraine, and supported warmaking by Israel. NATO is now expanding rapidly both in geography and in scope, adding partners from Colombia to Mongolia to Australia [and Lithuania and Finland nuclear arming], and claiming a role in policing, immigration, economics, public budgeting, scientific research, and environmental protection.

With pointed investigations of how NATO's decisions are made, the widely misunderstood question of the way it is funded, its relationship to international law, and the available alternatives to it, NATO: What You Need to Know is an indispensable primer on an organization that not only confronts expanding military conflict but, the authors contend, plays an active part in its escalation.

Also read Benjamin and Nicholas Davies, WAR IN UKRAINE:Making Sense of a Senseless War

NATO PRESENT AND FUTURE
“The European Left and the Global South: An existential take.” Matteo Cappasso. Mronline.org (10-26-23).

When looking at the current geopolitical moment, it is a rather painful exercise to figure out what role Europe—and the remnants of its progressive force—can play. Can Europe become a somewhat progressive force for the good of the world, or is the entire continent destined to be consummated by the NATO-led appetite for war? . . . .
Therefore, when discussing this new wave of fascism that is facing us, we could talk of a so-called fascism with European characteristics, the main features of which are twofold. The first feature is the increasing centrality of war to the economy of Europe. Ukraine is only the latest stage of this process, which includes the NATO-led bombings of Libya and Syria, as well as the creation of “Fortress Europe.” While European ruling classes have developed a voracious appetite for war, they also completely forgotten about the plight of their working classes. In such a scenario, war is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it is indeed the response of the ruling classes to a crisis, telling us that war must be normalized as the most obvious and objective response. On the other hand, war also translates into chaos, it creates uncontrollable scenarios that might (or not) offer an opening for a progressive alternative.

A second feature is a renewed sense of an ideological mission for humanity. The war between NATO and Russia in Ukraine is attempting to revamp the same old discourse of democracy versus authoritarianism, reconfigured and adopted in other numerous scenarios (that is, Libya, Syria, Iraq, and so on). While this renewed wave of European-led salvation is not being digested silently by the working masses, it is nonetheless the ideological weight of war that impinges on the daily lives of people. On this note, we should also think about the disgraceful statements that the EU top diplomat, Joseph Borrel, has been making in recent times, that,

Europe is a garden… Most of the rest of the world is a jungle, and the jungle could invade the garden.

At the same time, as much as Atlanticism and fascism have consolidated, there are also new contradictions emerging. There is an increasing and clear division, usefully played up by various U.S. administrations, between New Europe (comprising the ex-republics of the USSR and the Baltic states) and Old Europe (meaning France, Italy, Germany, and so on). Having emerged as an idea among numerous conservative political figures in the United States from Donald Rumsfeld to Victoria Nuland, this division alerts us about the existence of potential frictions. We have seen, for instance, how NATO chose Vilnius, Lithuania, for its last meeting and how the United States has been pushing to have the former Estonian prime minister head NATO. It remains rather unclear what the outcome of this contradiction is going to be, but it might only further fragment the regional project of the EU. In such a context, the war-driven economy is undoubtedly crashing the working and middle classes of numerous states in Europe as the increasing inequality and protests emerging in France and Italy demonstrate. Hence, while the objective conditions for revolt exist, the ideological syntax needed to articulate the goal of these protests is predominantly fascist. In other words, we go back to the starting point: the state of disarray in which the European Left is.

Overall, the state of Europe is worrying because war is a major contradiction. While all the progressive forces must be focused on pushing back against this war, there is complete division on such an important issue. Unsurprisingly, in his essay on contemporary imperialism, Amin bluntly stated that “The policy of Russia to resist the project of colonization of Ukraine must be supported. However, this positive Russian ‘international policy’ is bound to fail if it is not supported by the Russian people. And this support cannot be won on the exclusive basis of ‘nationalism.’” This war is not a football match; we cannot simply support one side or another, but must fight against the idea of war itself. Before leaving us, Fidel Castro, when referring to a possible U.S.-led war on Iran, warned that “the U.S. would lose the conventional war and the nuclear war is no alternative for anyone. On the other hand, nuclear war would inevitably become a global nuclear war.” These words resonate too much with the present conditions.

So, is the European Left an enemy of the Global South? Personally, I struggle to answer with a firm “No!” On the contrary, I am constantly faced with the fact that Europe, and the West at large, appear more and more as a jungle of fascism, breeding injustice and requiring something like Nazi fascism to hold itself together. If Europe is not on a path of soul-searching, this time it is going to become an enemy of humanity as a whole, not only of the Global South.

About Matteo Cappasso

Matteo Capasso is Marie Curie Fellow between the University of Venice, Italy and Columbia University, @capassomat.

SUSPEND EXPANSION

Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies. “NATO & a War Foretold.” Consortium News. June 28, 2022.
BIDEN ADMINISTRATION, COMMENTARY, EUROPE, MILITARISM, RUSSIA, U.S., UKRAINE, UNTIL THIS DAY--HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE NEWS Instead of exploiting this crisis to expand even further, Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies says the military alliance should suspend all new or pending membership applications until the current crisis has been resolved.

“PROTEST AGAINST U.S. MILITARY BASE IN GERMANY.“ June 25, 2023. https://youtu.be/ZbFvy0KHpdk

Global Network. “German Statesman Slams EU Leaders' “Spinelessness, Demands NATO's Dismemberment, Closure of US Bases.”

Pub. In Aletho News, Sputnikglobe, Attack the System, Intl Drop, Reddit, etc.

https://sputnikglobe.com/20221128/german-st…

Germany has found itself reaping the consequences of the crisis in Ukraine, facing skyrocketing energy and food costs, recession and the danger of permanent deindustrialization as Washington and Brussels continue to call for more and more sanctions against Russian energy to try to “punish” Moscow for its military operation in Ukraine.

The United States and its allies have spent the entire period since 2014 preparing for a confrontation with Russia in Ukraine, Oskar Lafontaine, a veteran German statesman with over forty years of political experience under his belt, has said.

“Of course, I also mean the conflict in Ukraine, which began with the Maidan putsch in Kiev in 2014. Since then, the US and its Western vassals have been arming Ukraine and systematically preparing it for confrontation with Russia. Ukraine thus became a de facto, if not de jure, member of NATO. This backstory has been studiously ignored by Western politicians and the mainstream media,” Lafontaine told Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten in an interview published Sunday.

“For more than 100 years, it has been the declared aim of US policy to prevent German business and technology from merging with Russian raw materials at all cost. It is perfectly clear that, if you take this history into account, we are dealing with a US proxy war against Russia which has been prepared for a long time,” Lafontaine said.

Crop of Spineless Leaders MORE

Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
P.O. Box 652 Brunswick, ME 04011 globalnet@mindspring.com

(207) 844-8187

Spanish Lawmaker. “NATO Subordinates Europe To US.”

By Benjamin Norton, Multipolarista. Popular Resistance.org (7-6-2). A Spanish lawmaker has condemned the NATO summit that was held in Madrid this June, denouncing the US-led military alliance for advocating for more war and pushing to enrich the weapons industry while Europeans suffer from inflation and an energy crisis. On the floor of Spain’s parliament, leftist Deputy Gerardo Pisarello argued that “the NATO summit was not organized to strengthen the cause of peace,” but rather “was organized basically to reinforce the geostrategic priorities of the United States… above all to weaken China.” -more-

Owen Schalk. “Jens Stoltenberg’s global vision encourages conflict, militarization, and historical amnesia.” Mronline.org (8-12-23).

Recent Foreign Affairs article unmasks NATO’s view on the shifting tides of global power.
Originally published: Canadian Dimension on July 14, 2023 (more by Canadian Dimension).

Empire, Imperialism, Movements, Strategy Global News NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)

On July 10, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg published an article in Foreign Affairs titled “A Stronger NATO for a More Dangerous World.” The piece ran one day before the NATO summit in Vilnius, and it reads as a statement of purpose to the world, meant to frame the major issues that would be discussed in Lithuania: namely, the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO, the membership of Finland and Sweden, NATO’s expanding presence in Asia, and the notion that the NATO alliance is an entirely reactive one and that any and all global tensions are being driven by Russia in Eurasia and China in the so-called “Indo-Pacific.”

Stoltenberg’s arguments are so disconnected from reality that they would be comical if they didn’t portend the increased likelihood of globe-spanning military confrontation. His article is a regurgitation of the hubristic militarism that has always driven NATO, but which has been supercharged by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s economic rise. . . .

Western Purpose of the War: Weaken Russia

Dr. Chandra Muzaffar. “Ukraine: End War. Lift Sanctions.”

JUST - TRANSCEND Media Service. 11 Jul 2022 – NATO’s hardline position on expansion and membership is further reinforced by a motive which has become more obvious in the course of the war. Some members of NATO and the US leadership are keen to exploit the war to emasculate Russia as a military power. This is why they would like to prolong the war. Read more...

CHRIS HEDGES. Listen to this Article: "NATO: The Most Dangerous Military Alliance on the Planet". The Chris Hedges Report, JULy 12, 2022.

The massive expansion of NATO, not only in Eastern and Central Europe but the Middle East, Latin America, Africa and Asia, presages endless war and a potential nuclear holocaust. Narrated by Eunice Wong. Original Text published 07/10/2022.

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The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and the arms industry that depends on it for billions in profits, have become the most aggressive and dangerous military alliance on the planet. Created in 1949 to thwart Soviet expansion into Eastern and Central Europe, it has evolved into a global war machine in Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, Africa, and Asia. . . .

Chris Hedges. NATO: The Most Dangerous Military Alliance on the Planet. The Chris Hedges Report (7-10-22).

The massive expansion of NATO, not only in Eastern and Central Europe but the Middle East, Latin America, Africa and Asia, presages endless war and a potential nuclear holocaust.

Chris Hedges Report (Jul2 10, 2026).

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The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and the arms industry that depends on it for billions in profits, has become the most aggressive and dangerous military alliance on the planet. Created in 1949 to thwart Soviet expansion into Eastern and Central Europe, it has evolved into a global war machine in Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, Africa and Asia.

NATO expanded its footprint, violating promises to Moscow, once the Cold War ended, to incorporate 14 countries in Eastern and Central Europe into the alliance. It will soon add Finland and Sweden. It bombed Bosnia, Serbia and Kosovo. It launched wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya, resulting in close to a million deaths and some 38 million people driven from their homes. It is building a military footprint in Africa and Asia. It invited Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea, the so-called “Asia Pacific Four,” to its recent summit in Madrid at the end of June. It has expanded its reach into the Southern Hemisphere, signing a military training partnership agreement with Colombia, in December 2021. It has backed Turkey, with NATO’s second largest military, which has illegally invaded and occupied parts of Syria as well as Iraq. Turkish-backed militias are engaged in the ethnic cleansing of Syrian Kurds and other inhabitants of north and east Syria. The Turkish military has been accused of war crimes – including multiple airstrikes against a refugee camp and chemical weapons use - in northern Iraq. In exchange for President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s permission for Finland and Sweden to join the alliance, the two Nordic countries have agreed to expand their domestic terror laws making it easier to crack down on Kurdish and other activists, lift their restrictions on selling arms to Turkey and deny support to the Kurdish-led movement for democratic autonomy in Syria.

It is quite a record for a military alliance that with the collapse of the Soviet Union was rendered obsolete and should have been dismantled. NATO and the militarists had no intention of embracing the “peace dividend,” fostering a world based on diplomacy, a respect of spheres of influence and mutual cooperation. It was determined to stay in business. Its business is war. That meant expanding its war machine far beyond the border of Europe and engaging in ceaseless antagonism toward China and Russia.

NATO sees the future, as detailed in its “NATO 2030: Unified for a New Era,” as a battle for hegemony with rival states, especially China, and calls for the preparation of prolonged global conflict. . . .

One cannot talk about war without talking about markets. The political and social turmoil in the U.S., coupled with its diminishing economic power, has led it to embrace NATO and its war machine as the antidote to its decline.

Washington and its European allies are terrified of China’s trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) meant to connect an economic bloc of roughly 70 nations outside U.S. control. The initiative includes the construction of rail lines, roads and gas pipelines that will be integrated with Russia. Beijing is expected to commit $1.3 trillion to the BRI by 2027. China, which is on track to become the world’s largest economy within a decade, has organized the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, the world’s largest trade pact of 15 East Asian and Pacific nations representing 30 percent of global trade. It already accounts for 28.7 percent of the Global Manufacturing Output, nearly double the 16.8 percent of the U.S.

China’s rate of growth last year was an impressive 8.1 percent, although slowing to around 5 percent this year. By contrast, the U.S.’s growth rate in 2021 was 5.7 percent -- its highest since 1984 -- but is predicted to fall below 1 percent this year, by the New York Federal Reserve.

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If China, Russia, Iran, India and other nations free themselves from the tyranny of the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency and the international Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), a messaging network financial institutions use to send and receive information such as money transfer instructions, it will trigger a dramatic decline in the value of the dollar and a financial collapse in the U.S. The huge military expenditures, which have driven the U.S. debt to $30 trillion, $ 6 trillion more than the U.S.’s entire GDP, will become untenable. Servicing this debt costs $300 billion a year. We spent more on the military in 2021, $ 801 billion which amounted to 38 percent of total world expenditure on the military, than the next nine countries, including China and Russia, combined. The loss of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency will force the U.S. to slash spending, shutter many of its 800 military bases overseas and cope with the inevitable social and political upheavals triggered by economic collapse. It is darkly ironic that NATO has accelerated this possibility.

Russia, in the eyes of NATO and U.S. strategists, is the appetizer. Its military, NATO hopes, will get bogged down and degraded in Ukraine. Sanctions and diplomatic isolation, the plan goes, will thrust Vladimir Putin from power. A client regime that will do U.S. bidding will be installed in Moscow.

NATO has provided more than $8 billion in military aid to Ukraine, while the US has committed nearly $54 billion in military and humanitarian assistance to the country.

China, however, is the main course. Unable to compete economically, the U.S. and NATO have turned to the blunt instrument of war to cripple their global competitor.

The provocation of China replicates the NATO baiting of Russia.

NATO expansion and the 2014 US-backed coup in Kyiv led Russia to first occupy Crimea, in eastern Ukraine, with its large ethnic Russian population, and then to invade all of Ukraine to thwart the country’s efforts to join NATO.

The same dance of death is being played with China over Taiwan, which China considers part of Chinese territory, and with NATO expansion in the Asia Pacific. China flies warplanes into Taiwan's air defense zone and the U.S. sends naval ships through the Taiwan Strait which connects the South and East China seas. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in May called China the most serious long-term challenge to the international order, citing its claims to Taiwan and efforts to dominate the South China Sea. Taiwan's president, in a Zelensky-like publicity stunt, recently posed with an anti-tank rocket launcher in a government handout photo.

The conflict in Ukraine has been a bonanza for the arms industry, which, given the humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan, needed a new conflict. Lockheed Martin's stock prices are up 12 percent. Northrop Grumman is up 20 percent. The war is being used by NATO to increase its military presence in Eastern and Central Europe. The U.S. is building a permanent military base in Poland. The 40,000-strong NATO reaction force is being expanded to 300,000 troops. Billions of dollars in weapons are pouring into the region.

The conflict with Russia, however, is already backfiring. The ruble has soared to a seven-year high against the dollar. Europe is barreling towards a recession because of rising oil and gas prices and the fear that Russia could terminate supplies completely. The loss of Russian wheat, fertilizer, gas and oil, due to Western sanctions, is creating havoc in world markets and a humanitarian crisis in Africa and the Middle East. Soaring food and energy prices, along with shortages and crippling inflation, bring with them not only deprivation and hunger, but social upheaval and political instability. The climate emergency, the real existential threat, is being ignored to appease the gods of war.

The war makers are frighteningly cavalier about the threat of nuclear war. Putin warned NATO countries that they “will face consequences greater than any you have faced in history” if they intervened directly in Ukraine and ordered Russian nuclear forces to be put on heightened alert status. The proximity to Russia of U.S. nuclear weapons based in Belgium, Germany, Italy, Netherlands and Turkey mean that any nuclear conflict would obliterate much of Europe. Russia and the United States control about 90 percent of the world's nuclear warheads, with around 4,000 warheads each in their military stockpiles, according to the Federation of American Scientists.

President Joe Biden warned that the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine would be “completely unacceptable” and “entail severe consequences,” without spelling out what those consequences would be. This is what U.S. strategists refer to as “deliberate ambiguity.”

[Practicing War]

he U.S. military, following its fiascos in the Middle East, has shifted its focus from fighting terrorism and asymmetrical warfare to confronting China and Russia. President Barack Obama’s national-security team in 2016 carried out a war game in which Russia invaded a NATO country in the Baltics and used a low-yield tactical nuclear weapon against NATO forces. Obama officials were split about how to respond.

“The National Security Council’s so-called Principals Committee—including Cabinet officers and members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—decided that the United States had no choice but to retaliate with nuclear weapons,” Eric Schlosser writes in The Atlantic. “Any other type of response, the committee argued, would show a lack of resolve, damage American credibility, and weaken the NATO alliance. Choosing a suitable nuclear target proved difficult, however. Hitting Russia’s invading force would kill innocent civilians in a NATO country. Striking targets inside Russia might escalate the conflict to an all-out nuclear war. In the end, the NSC Principals Committee recommended a nuclear attack on Belarus—a nation that had played no role whatsoever in the invasion of the NATO ally but had the misfortune of being a Russian ally.”

The Biden administration has formed a Tiger Team of national security officials to run war games on what to do if Russia uses a nuclear weapon, according to The New York Times. The threat of nuclear war is minimized with discussions of “tactical nuclear weapons,” as if less powerful nuclear explosions are somehow more acceptable and won’t lead to the use of bigger bombs.

At no time, including the Cuban missile crisis, have we stood closer to the precipice of nuclear war.

“A simulation devised by experts at Princeton University starts with Moscow firing a nuclear warning shot; NATO responds with a small strike, and the ensuing war yields more than 90 million casualties in its first few hours,” The New York Times reported.

The longer the war in Ukraine continues -- and the U.S. and NATO seem determined to funnel billions of dollars of weapons into the conflict for months if not years -- the more the unthinkable becomes thinkable. Flirting with Armageddon to profit the arms industry and carry out the futile quest to reclaim U.S. global hegemony is at best extremely reckless and at worst genocidal.

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Father Jean Boulier. I Was a Red Priest: Memories and Testimonials. Red Star, 2022.
REVIEW

“Post-Second World War Social Christianity and Its Relevance to Pope Francis’s Criticism of NATO” by Toby Terrar (Apr 01, 2023).

Topics: Ideology Imperialism Marxism War Places: Europe France Italy

Toby Terrar is with the Silver Spring Catholic Worker, which helps academic libraries acquire Father Jean Boulier’s publications.

Jean Boulier, I Was a Red Priest: Memories and Testimonials (New York: Red Star, 2022).

I Was a Red Priest by Father Jean Boulier offers “a Christian social analysis that, though now minimized, was widely held in the post-Second World War era and continues to be held by those like Pope Francis, who in May 2022 criticized NATO as ‘barking at Russia’s door.’ The book is the autobiography of Boulier (1894–1980), which for the first time has been translated from French into English, complete with newly added scholarly appendices, indexes, graphics, and a bibliography, so that it is also a reference work. . . .

For social Christianity in the post-Second World War era—as taught by Boulier—the main international peace issue that faced believers was the U.S.-led Cold War, waged in order to undo advances made by the working class as a result of capitalism’s Second World War debacle. More specifically, the priest-professor took a stand, based on Christian authority, against anti-communism. He also stood firmly against U.S. nuclear policy, as it violated the Christian principles of war and peace. Finally, he took a stand on the side of social Christianity. Regarding social Christianity, he maintained that Christians can be good citizens of the socialist order, but could not accept the bourgeois state and its fundamental law, the one to which all others finally give in: make money, get rich.

In his scholarly writings and his autobiography, Boulier found Marxism compatible with Thomism, ecumenism, mysticism, liturgy, and church hierarchy. His allies included Cardinal Emmanuel Suhard of Paris and Monseigneur Angelo Roncalli, later Pope John XXIII, who in the postwar period was the papal nuncio to France. Dorothy Day, whom the Vatican is considering for sainthood, articulated the opposition between social Christianity and the warmongering of Cardinal Francis Spellman, the Central Intelligence Agency, John Foster Dulles, and Harry Truman. In her Catholic Worker newspaper, Day defended the collaboration of Boulier and that of U.S.-based priests with the communists.

I Was a Red Priest describes Boulier’s activism beginning in 1912, when he joined the Jesuits. For twenty years he was with the “Company,” and then became a priest of the Parisian clergy and an advocate for Jews resisting the Vichy and Nazi governments in the Second World War. In 1950, fighting the same interests he faced during the war, Boulier helped write and promote the Stockholm Appeal to prevent nuclear war in Korea. The petition gained 273 million signatories, most of whom, as he pointed out, were Christians, not communists. Still later, in 1958, he was convicted of a felony for defaming the French military concerning its conduct in the Algerian War.

In the early 1960s, during the Second Vatican Council, Boulier worked with theologians Father Marie-Dominique Chenu, OP (of the Dominican Order), and Cardinal Leo Joseph Suenens as part of the peace movement. The language in the Catholic constitution Gaudium et Spes contained the essence of Boulier’s proposed text: “Every act of war which tends indiscriminately to the destruction of entire cities or vast regions with their inhabitants is a crime against God and against man himself and it must be condemned firmly and without hesitation.”

Boulier’s activism extended into Eastern Europe, where Christians in significant numbers sided with the communists in the post-Second World War period. This included priests, nuns, and some bishops. There, Boulier worked with clerical organizations, including the PAX Association in Poland, the Association of Priests for Peace in Hungary, and the Movement of Patriotic Priests and Catholic Action in Czechoslovakia. These groups published Boulier’s writings and sponsored his speaking tours to their countries.

In Boulier’s view, the interests that supported fascism during the Second World War sought to unify Europe in order to destroy the communists. Ultimately, these forces achieved their objectives. They unified Europe and, in time, destroyed the USSR. Today, governments use NATO to make the world a police station in order to enslave the working class. Believers, like Pope Francis, resist and offer hope. As Boulier put it, this is a multimillenial war, and present-day Christians are still the first generation. 2023, Volume 74, Number 11 (April 2023)

Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space via sendinblue.com 7-2-22

“Why NATO Is Outdated, Dangerous and Deserves to Be Abolished by Jan Oberg, Ph.D. TRANSCEND Media Service From a conflict-analytical point of view, it is reasonable to say that Russia is responsible for the War but that NATO with its reckless expansion against all promises given to Russia and a series of expert warnings is responsible for the underlying Conflict. Let’s discuss the post-NATO world. Read more...

TRANSCEND MEDIA SERVICE, Solutions-Oriented Peace Journalism, Week 28 // 11 Jul - 17 Jul 2022

https://www.transcend.org/tms/list-of-tms-supporters/

OMNI

NATO ANTHOLOGY #2

JUNE 18, 2023

OMNI's War and Warming Newsletter: OMNI NATO ANTHOLOGY #2, JUNE 18, 2023 (jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com)

Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice, and Ecology

https://omnicenter.org/donate/

CONTENTS NATO ANTHOLOGY #2
What Is NATO Today?

Abelow. How the West Brought War to Ukraine.

Andre Damon. “NATO Announces Plan for Massive European Land Army.” World Socialist Web Site.

Moon of Alabama. “No, NATO Will Not Get Ready for War.” Popular Resistance.