The NATO summit is wrapping up in Portugal today, the main topic on the agenda was to decide the fate of Afghanistan, and also the adoption of a new “strategic concept” for the alliance. On the side of the summit, NATO was also courting former enemy Russia to get more involved and to offer substantial logistic assistance in the Afghan conflict.
NATO was created in 1949, strictly in the context of the Cold War, as a response to what was perceived as the “threat of expansion” by the Soviets to Western Europe. After the collapse of the USSR, it would have being perfectly logical to dismantle a military alliance which had become obsolete by losing its enemy. However, NATO not only survived but thrived in the context of the post cold war era. Today, NATO is still expanding its global reach under the strict leadership of the Pentagon. In order to justify itself, new “global security threats” are either invented, amplified and generously recycled. The perfect example is of course the so called “war on terror”, which was and still is an opportunity for increase militarization, and global policing at the expense of the most basic rights of democracies.
Yesterday in Lisbon, thousands of people marched in a peaceful anti-NATO demonstration. An heavy presence of armed riot police prevented the peace activists from getting near the cordoned-off summit site. The showing was small compared to the one at the 2009 NATO summit in Strasbourg where demonstrators clashed with riot police.
Afghanistan: NATO Troops To Stay Indefinitely In A “Supporting Role”
On Saturday, leaders of countries with troops in Afghanistan endorsed a plan to “exit the Afghan conflict by 2014″. There is of course a big caveat to it, which make this date of 2014 meaningless: NATO will stay afterward, with no end date, in an undefined “supporting role”.
Washington’s man in Kabul, Hamid Karzai, signed the deal along with NATO Secretary General General Rasmussen and United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
“We have launched the process by which the Afghan people will once again become masters in their own house. The direction starting today is clear towards Afghan leadership and Afghan ownership. That is the vision President Karzai has set out. It is a vision we share, and we will make it a reality starting early next year,” Rasmussen told a press conference in Lisbon.
However, the war is unpopular in Europe and governments are under increased pressure to pull their respective troops out, especially in the context of austerity programs started in response to the global recession. Of course the United States, and NATO new “spokesperson”, General Rasmussen, only listen to Karzai when he goes with the overall agenda. For example, one of Karzai’s best initiative to end the conflict, which is an attempt to negotiate with the Taliban, and bring them to the political process, was barely mentioned at the Lisbon NATO summit after been endorsed by previous international conferences in London and The Hague.
NATO: The Global Armed Forces Of America Empire Inc.
All member states of NATO are under strict obedience to the decisions made by the “mother ship”: the Pentagon. From the inception of NATO, in 1949, the only world leader who had the courage and the foresight to oppose the alliance and see its dangers was General de Gaulle. The fiercely independent French leader had no intention of becoming the vassal of the United States. Some of the most tragic consequences of the growth of the monstrous Leviathan that is NATO are; systematic militarization of its member states; the strengthening of military power working in conjunction with para-military police, despite of the recession and poverty hitting people on both sides of the Atlantic; the systematic use of war to control resources- energy, water, minerals etc- and their transport routes; the growing expansion of its area of interventions.
Rick Rozoff from Global Research Canada, an anti-globalization web site, argues that after the Lisbon NATO summit, the United States will intensify its military drive into Asia. Rozoff also explains that Europe has become a pawn in the game, a vassal of the “first global empire”, and Rozoff calls President Obama the empire’s “latest rotating emperor”.
“So uncritically and unquestioningly compliant has Europe been in the above regards that Obama and the governing elites in the imperial metropolis as a whole have already looked beyond the continent for additional military partners. With the exception of fellow members of the NATO Quint- Britain, Germany, France and Italy (Britain more and Italy less than the others)- alliance partners are accorded the same status and assigned the same functions as American territories like Puerto-Rico, Guam etc: geopolitically convenient locations for live-fire military training and for troop, warplane and warship deployments. Two millenia ago the Pax Romana of Augustus brought roads and ports, aqueducts and irrigation, amphitheaters and libraries, and Greek writers from Aristotle to Aeschylus to occupied territories. Bellum Americanum burdens its vassals and tributaries with military bases, interceptor missile batteries, McDonald’s and Lady Gaga,” wrote Rick Rozoff in his article.
