NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is holding a “heads of state” summit in Chicago on May 20 and 21. About 50 countries that are members of and allied with NATO are sending their political leadership to this summit.
NATO presents itself, and is portrayed in the major media of this country and countries it is allied with, as a force for “humanitarian interests.” On its website, NATO claims to be a “leading contributor to peace and security on the international stage.” This benign self image is a vicious lie and masquerade that influences the thinking of far too many people in the U.S. and around the world.
In reality, NATO is the world’s largest military alliance. Its 28 countries account for 65% of the world’s military spending, and far and away the largest of these is the United States. NATO exists to use the most advanced weaponry in the world in service of the interests of the big capitalist-imperialist powers of North America and Europe, above all the U.S. Most of this weaponry, especially in recent years, has been used not against similarly equipped opponents, but against defenseless civilian populations who they characterize as “terrorists.”
In the 60 years of its existence, the year 2011 was, as an article in Foreign Policy put it, NATO’s “busiest year ever for military operations.” (“This Week at War: What Is NATO Good For?” February 3, 2012) NATO maintained an occupation force of over 100,000 troops in Afghanistan, and what it calls a “stabilization force” in Bosnia, in the Balkan region of Eastern Europe. It launched a seven-month air war to topple Muammar Qaddafi in Libya. In Libya, estimates of the civilian death toll from all fighting during the NATO campaign range from 13,000 to 17,000, with 50,000 wounded; civilians killed in the fighting in Afghanistan from 2007 to 2011 total almost 13,000. Countless people have been displaced, wounded, and dispossessed of everything they owned.
NATO’s “peacekeeping” is aimed at maintaining a world of Western imperialist—especially U.S. imperialist—domination over the people of the world, and sustaining overwhelming firepower advantage over any current or potential opponent. The fundamental purpose of NATO’s so-called “humanitarianism” is to devote massive weaponry to protect, defend, and extend a system that inflicts great suffering on the vast majority of humanity and enriches a handful—this is the “world order” of capitalism-imperialism.
Source : The Revolution
