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The
Bunker Expanding
NATO The enlargement of
NATO, which the U.S. government is pushing assiduously in the face of Russian
opposition and European coolness, is to serve two purposes. First, by stopping
dead in its tracks the European Union plan to develop an independent military
capability, it will prevent the emergence of a rival superpower in Europe.
Second, by expanding NATO to within a few hundred miles of St. Petersburg, the
U.S. hopes to provoke conflict between Europe and Russia, which, as dishonest
broker, it can then mediate. The EU is already the
largest market in the world. Its version of capitalism, despite the high levels
of taxation and welfare, is at least as productive as that of the United States.
If the Europeans were now to have Russia’s vast mineral wealth at their
disposal–the "strategic partnership" that Russian President Vladimir Putin has
offered–the EU could soon surpass the United States in sheer economic power.
The Bush
administration has no higher priority than to stop this from happening. The
mechanism to ensure permanent European subordination to the United States is
NATO. Anything that strengthens NATO tightens the U.S. grip on Europe. In 1999
Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic joined NATO. Next year in Prague, a
further nine countries may be invited to join, including such stalwart adherents
of democracy and "human rights" as Albania and civil war-torn Macedonia.
The expansion of NATO
is an outrageous violation of solemn pledges made by the United States at the
time of German unification. "There would be no extension of NATO’s current
jurisdiction eastward," Secretary of State James Baker told Gorbachev in
February 1990. Former U.S. ambassador to Moscow Jack Matlock has admitted that
when the Russians "say that it is their understanding NATO expansion would not
happen, there is a basis for it." NATO expansion
happened because the rational alternative–NATO dissolving itself–was something
the U.S. military-industrial-media complex would not countenance. So NATO had to
be reinvented. Expansion went together with its transformation into an
aggressive alliance. In its 1991 Strategic Concept NATO was still belching out
standard "defensive" pap: "The Alliance is purely defensive in purpose: none of
its weapons will ever be used except in self-defense… The forces of the Allies
must…be able to defend Alliance frontiers, to stop an aggressor’s advance as far
forward as possible… The role of the Alliance’s military forces is to assure the
territorial integrity and political independence of its member states." There
was as yet no mention of NATO expansion. NATO’s recently
published handbook reads chillingly differently, however. Gone is talk of an
"attack on one is an attack on all." NATO is the one that will do the attacking.
"The most likely threats to security," the document drones, "come from conflict
on Europe’s fringes... As a result, NATO must now be ready to deploy forces
beyond Alliance borders to respond to crises." Future military operations, it
goes on, "will probably take place outside Alliance territory; they may last for
many years." There is much talk of "operations involving the participation of
nations outside the Alliance…[of] improving NATO’s ability to deploy, at short
notice, appropriate multinational…forces matched to the specific requirements of
a particular military operation." NATO must have "the ability to deploy forces
quickly to where they are needed, including areas outside Alliance territory,"
not to mention "the ability to maintain and supply forces far from their home
bases and to ensure that sufficient fresh forces are available for long-duration
operations." Here then is a
military alliance that arrogates to itself the right to bully countries that are
not even members of the alliance into taking part in its operations. It deploys
its forces "far from their home bases" for extended periods of time whether
anyone likes it or not. NATO expansion thus
has nothing whatsoever to do with offering security guarantees to small
countries terrified of the return of the Russian bear. The handbook does not
even bother to take a supposed Russian threat seriously. To be sure, for
propaganda purposes NATO still wheels out its useful idiots to rhapsodize about
the Western "values" over which NATO supposedly stands guard. The ever more
ridiculous Czech President Vaclav Havel who, these days, devotes most of his
energies to resuscitating anti-Soviet cliches, recently declared that NATO’s
territory "extends from Alaska in the West to Tallin [Estonia] in the East." But
not farther East. Albania belongs to the West, but not Russia.
The Russians must
realize, he went on, "that if NATO moves closer to Russia’s borders, it brings
closer stability, security, democracy and an advanced political culture, which
is obviously in Russia’s essential interest." The "advanced political culture"
is a particularly nice touch. Communism Czech-style, as he well knew before
becoming a hack, was for many years considerably nastier than the version
practiced in Moscow. In any case, if NATO will have such a beneficial effect on
the Russians, why not go all the way and invite them to join? Havel summarily
rejects such a notion. Endless expansion of NATO, he explained, would render it
toothless. So Havel, like his masters in NATO, wants his military alliance to
have sharp teeth. The purpose of this
NATO with sharp teeth is to establish forward bases on Russia’s periphery from
which it will then unleash ethnically based guerrilla armies on the Russians.
One objective will be to exhaust the Russians in fighting endless secessionist
wars. An enfeebled Russia will then be only too eager to sign away mineral
concessions to the rapacious multinationals hovering behind NATO.
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