Imperialism's 38 steps to war via Nato

The arrival of Barack Obama and Air Force One and, apparently, Air Force Two virtually closed Lisbon Airport last Friday. This created the biggest queue I had ever seen in the exclusive "diplomatic channel" at arrivals as his enormous retinue of advisers, arms dealers, hangers-on and obedient media came to enjoy the jamboree with the other 27 heads of government, plus a few invitees such as presidents Medvedev and Karzai to report on the war in Afghanistan.

Nato was a cold war creation in 1949 and for 41 years pursued a relentless cold war strategy, oblivious to the obvious contradictions of declaring itself for peace and democracy while simultaneously threatening the world with nuclear weapons, or proclaiming democracy and freedom while including the then dictatorships of Spain, Portugal, Greece and Turkey. After the cold war ended and the Warsaw Pact was wound up that should have been the funeral of Nato and its military alliance. The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe should have moved centre stage.

Sadly it did not and instead Nato searched for a role in both expanding eastwards to former Warsaw Pact nations and to create a role for itself as the prosecutor of war and security aims of others. This began with its involvement in Yugoslavia, where it supplanted the United Nations forces, and then moved on after president George W Bush's 2001 war on terror. To do this Nato had to move out of its area, beyond the original 1949 Treaty, and declare itself a global body with global reach. This was done before Bush in 1999 and since then the organisation has never looked back.

Now much bigger and extending all the way to the Russian border, Nato has three big fish on its plate - missile defence, Afghanistan and nuclear weapons. No wonder the arms dealers and defence contractors are so much in evidence at Nato events.  On Saturday the Nato summit produced its 38-paragraph statement on its future which was, apparently, unanimous and dutifully swallowed up by most of the vast media entourage following the carefully choreographed events.

Opening with a high declaration about the "bond of nations to defend one another," the statement goes through pages of scenarios about threats of terrorism, cyber war, instability and insecurity without ever saying where these come from or who the "enemy" actually is. It commits members' states to high levels of defence spending and, in the putative agreement with Russia, extends missile defence to cover a vast area of the globe.
If this is not ominous enough, it is worth looking at the references to nuclear weapons.  In the opening lines the Nato heads of government proclaim the aim for a nuclear-free world but promptly qualify this with the line, "but reconfirms that, as long as there are nuclear weapons in the world, Nato will remain a nuclear Alliance." It also, rather bizarrely, proclaims its support for the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

In its strategic concept it promises an "appropriate mix of conventional and nuclear weapons." In effect it is taking for itself a nuclear role and thus undermining all the efforts for advancement of the non-proliferation process, and the plans for a Nuclear Weapons Convention.

The war in Afghanistan has lasted longer than either of the world wars and if the Nato leaders have their way it will last longer than both combined. They envisage a possible reduction in presence and activity by 2014, and see this war as central to Nato objectives.

The attack on Afghanistan in 2001 was accompanied by new US bases all over central Asia and military aid to Pakistan. The aim was to pacify Afghanistan and make it the centre of a huge US influence in the region. Nine years later, with billions of dollars spent, thousands of Afghans dead and big troop losses for the US and Britain, it has not worked. The war has spread to Pakistan, the resistance to foreign invaders is huge and apparently growing, and the stability of Pakistan is a real concern.

Behind the rhetoric about the Afghan government and its democratic credentials - a bit tarnished by its own electoral commission - hides a reality of licences for mineral exploitation being handed out, and intensive efforts to secure those areas for Western mineral interests. It looks more and more like a war for resources.
This seems to be the direction in which Nato is heading - an alliance of industrial states who have military global reach and are capable of securing influence and control in a far more effective way than the UN can.

Lisbon was also the scene of a counter conference on peace and real security, and demonstrations against the war and its effects. Peace organisations, through an International Co-ordinating Committee including activists from US, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Greece, France, Germany and Britain, approved a statement at the end of three days of intensive debate and discussion.

This statement, headed Nato Means War: No To The New Strategic Concept, concluded: "Nato has no place in our vision of a just world. It stands in opposition to democracy, as its support for the corrupt and warlord-backed Karzai regime in Afghanistan and its repeated repressions of free speech and assembly on the occasion of the Nato summits demonstrate." It ended calling for a world of peace without Nato.
Thousands marched through Lisbon on Saturday as the city was covered in banners supporting the general strike on taking place today against the austerity measures and cuts.

A world of peace is also a world of social and economic justice.  Nato, with a built-in accelerator of arms spending and threats, has no part to play in that.

Jeremy Corbyn is Labour MP for Islington North, London. This article first appeared in the Morning Star   Photograph by Bloco. The banner reads “Portugal out of NATO, NATO out of Portugal”