World Affairs:
N A T O – A T ool of Imperialist Ag
g r ession
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NATO’s Brussel’s Summit held
in July 2018 began in an
atmosphere of discord but ended
with the release of a unanimous
joint Statement.
Before and right in the
Summit, the US President Donald
Trump made some blunt comments
on his allies, more so, on Germany.
He said: “We are protecting
Germany, France and everybody…
this has been going on for
decades.” “We are not going to put
up with it, we cannot put up with it
and it is inappropriate.” “…they are
saying we are paying you billions
of dollars to protect you but you are
paying billions of dollars to Russia.”
“Germany is a captive of Russia
because it is getting so much of its
energy from Russia”. “NATO is not
a stock exchange where you can
buy security. NATO is an alliance
of sovereign countries united by
strategic targets and common
values.” He said the commitment to
spend 2 per cent of GDP on
Defense is not enough. The allies
must increase it to 4 per cent.
NATO came into existence as
a military alliance in 1949. US,
which came to the fore as the
leader of capitalist world in the post-
Second World War period, had
roped the European powers
scaring them with an imagined and
fictitious threat of attack from the
Socialist Soviet Union. But it was
only an alibi used by the US to
impose its leadership on Europe
and the world.
‘An attack on one member is
an attack on them all’ is the
founding commitment of NATO
allies. It gave the impression that
NATO was defensive in nature. But
the experience of seven decades
had abundantly proved that NATO
is a colossal, monstrous edifice of
imperialist aggression.
August - 2018
The US and its allies used the
UN as and when they needed to
claim a legal cover to their illegal
armed interventions and invasions
against other countries. They used
the name of ‘humanitarian’
intervention to their acts of
marching the invading armed
forces into other countries to
forcibly topple the regimes there.
They bestowed upon themselves
the so called ‘Right to Protect’ (R2P)
the people of a country from Govt.’s
brutal suppression. All the armed
interventions by the US together
with NATO forces were carried on
either under the cover of UN
sanction or under the banner of the
so called “coalition of the willing”
or as a so called global war against
terrorism, as in the case of Iraq,
Afghanistan, Libya and Syria. In
the course of time, NATO had grown
not only into a powerful tool of
imperialist aggression, but also as
a powerful means to pressurize and
coerce the small and weak
countries to come under the
imperialist umbrella and subju-
gation. The US and its NATO allies
made well coordinated attempts to
rope the erstwhile Soviet Republics,
Soviet allies and the countries of
Eastern Europe into NATO and
carried out a strategy to encircle
and out flank Russia. Thus NATO
had dangerously enlarged its
sphere of activity and had emerged
as an alliance of 29 members.
NATO is said to be based on
the principle of equality. But, in
practice, it is the US which
dominates, dictates and runs the
affairs of NATO by dint of its
economic, military and political
power.
Trump’s outbursts in Brussel’s
Summits against the NATO allies
came in the background of serious
crisis plaguing the US economy and
growing contradictions between
the US and other imperialist
powers. US wants that the
economic and trade activities of
other European powers must not
hurt its economy and create no
hurdles in the way of its moves to
overcome the economic crisis. US
wishes that its allies must not make
the US moves to ‘punish’ Iran
through economic sanctions
ineffective. However, these
attempts of US to threaten other
countries to extend the sanctions
even to them if they engage in
economic and trade activity with
Iran can only be said as a height
of imperialist arrogance.
Germany and other European
powers could not digest the US
comments in the NATO Summit.
The German Chancellor Angela
Markel has expressed her
displeasure mildly, when she said,
now we make “our own
independent policies and make our
own independent decisions.”
Donald Tusk, the President of
European Union has called upon
the US President Trump to
“appreciate your allies” and
recollect how Europe had come to
US aid following the 9/11 attacks.
With all the manifestations of
contradictions and fissures, we can
say that none of the European allies
of US presently is prepared to
seriously clash with and challenge
the US domination in NATO.
Therefore, at the end of the
Summit, NATO allies agreed to
greater “burd en sharing.” They
reaffirmed their continued commit-
ment to the fundamental aim of the
Alliance. It means that the imperia-
lists are united in plundering and
oppressing the world people while
competing and striving for a better
share of them.
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