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STOP NATO: �NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK
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
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