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North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)

Introduction

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was founded in 1949 with the stated purpose of protecting Western Europe from possible military aggression by the Soviet Union and its allies.

With the dissolution of the Communist regimes in the former Socialist bloc in 1990 and 1991, there was no longer any possibility of such aggression, if there ever really had been. The changes in the former Communist countries made NATO redundant. Its raison d'être had vanished. Yet certain groups within the NATO countries began almost immediately to press for a "renovation" of NATO and even for its extension into Central and Eastern Europe. They began to elaborate new rationales which would permit the continuation of business as usual.

– Why Is NATO In Yugoslavia? by Sean Gervasi, 14 January 1996.

Through NATO, through its dominance of global trade groups, and through a "war on terrorism" that is bringing its military to every corner of the Earth, America is fast becoming the world's next empire. More than the world's solo superpower, the United States is fast becoming a world empire.

– America – The World's Next Great Empire by Franz Schurmann, 1 Feb 2002

The bombing of Yugoslavia

The room is filled with the bodies of children killed by NATO in Surdulica in Serbia. Several are recognisable only by their sneakers. A dead infant is cradled in the arms of his father. These pictures and many others have not been shown in Britain; it will be said they are too horrific. But minimising the culpability of the British state when it is engaged in criminal action is normal; censorship is by omission and misuse of language. The media impression of a series of NATO 'blunders' is false. Anyone scrutinising the unpublished list of targets hit by NATO is left in little doubt that a deliberate terror campaign is being waged against the civilian population of Yugoslavia.

Eighteen hospitals and clinics and at least 200 nurseries, schools, colleges and students' dormitories have been destroyed or damaged, together with housing estates, hotels, libraries, youth centres, theatres, museums, churches and 14th-century monasteries on the World Heritage list. Farms have been bombed, their crops set on fire. As Friday's bombing of the Kosovo town of Korisa shows, there is no discrimination between Serbs and those being 'saved'. Every day, three times more civilians are killed by NATO than the daily estimate of deaths of Kosovans in the months prior to the bombing.

– Acts of Murder by John Pilger, 18 May 1999.

In the 1999 NATO bombing campaign, it was state-owned companies – rather than military sites – that were specifically targeted by the world's richest nations. NATO only destroyed 14 tanks, but 372 industrial facilities were hit – including the Zastava car plant at Kragujevac, leaving hundreds of thousands jobless. Not one foreign or privately owned factory was bombed.

After the removal of Slobodan Milosevic, the west got the "fast-track" reforming government in Belgrade it had long desired. One of the first steps of the new administration was to repeal the 1997 privatisation law and allow 70% of a company to be sold to foreign investors – with just 15% reserved for workers. The government then signed up to the World Bank's programmes – effectively ending the country's financial independence.

Meanwhile, as the New York Times had crowed, "a war's glittering prize" awaited the conquerors. Kosovo has the second largest coal reserves in Europe, and enormous deposits of lignite, lead, zinc, gold, silver and petroleum.

The jewel is the enormous Trepca mine complex, whose 1997 value was estimated at $5bn. In an extraordinary smash and grab raid soon after the war, the complex was seized from its workers and managers by more than 2,900 NATO troops, who used teargas and rubber bullets.

Five years on from the NATO attack, the Kosovo Trust Agency (KTA), the body that operates under the jurisdiction of the UN Mission in Kosovo (Unmik) – is "pleased to announce" the programme to privatise the first 500 or so socially owned enterprises (SOEs) under its control. The closing date for bids passed last week: 10 businesses went under the hammer, including printing houses, a shopping mall, an agrobusiness and a soft-drinks factory. The Ferronikeli mining and metal-processing complex, with an annual capacity of 12,000 tonnes of nickel production, is being sold separately, with bids due by November 17.

– The spoils of another war by Neil Clark, 21 September 2004.

Expansion into Eastern Europe

Far from promoting democracy in eastern Europe, Washington is promoting a system of political and military control not unlike that once practised by the Soviet Union. Unlike that empire, which collapsed because the centre was weaker than the periphery, the new NATO is both a mechanism for extracting Danegeld from new member states for the benefit of the US arms industry, and also – ever since the promulgation of NATO's New Strategic Concept in April 1999 – an instrument for getting others to protect US interests around the world, including the supply of primary resources such as oil. It is, in short, a racket.

– The Prague Racket by John Laughland, 22 November 2002.

Membership of NATO – the other western club that eastern Europe's reformers were so desperate to join – means that member states must spend at least 2% of their GDP on defence, regardless of the impact on overall state expenditure. At the same time as the Hungarian government insists that there is no alternative to the "economic reorganisation" of the country's public health service, the Hungarian defence ministry announces it will spend an extra £7.7m on new medium-range, air-to-air missiles from the US arms manufacturer Raytheon. This is on top of a further £34.5m earmarked for training reforms to "adapt" the armed forces to the demands of NATO and EU membership.

In Poland, a country where 17% of the population now live below the poverty line, the government has recently spent $3.5bn on new fighter planes and $250m worth of anti-tank missiles.

– Behind New Europe's facade by Neil Clark, 10 February 2005.

Founded in 1996 by Bruce Jackson together with Greg Craig, the U.S. Committee to Expand NATO (later renamed U.S. Committee on NATO) ceased to exist in 2003. After spearheading two phases of NATO expansion, this neoconservative policy group closed down. But Jackson and two other principals of the committee – Randy Scheunemann and Julie Finley – continue to work to reshape the political, economic, and military course of Europe through the Project on Transitional Democracies, which occupies the former offices of the U.S. Committee on NATO. The committee's motto –“Strengthen America. Secure Europe. Defend Values. Expand NATO” – aptly summed up the main arguments of those who believe that this cold war institution, established in 1949 to contain the Soviet Union, should continue as an instrument of U.S. military power, despite the expiration of its founding rationale.

Among USCN's first board members were Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and Stephen Hadley. Hadley, who serves in the Bush administration as deputy national security adviser to Condoleezza Rice, was a partner in the Shea & Gardner law firm, whose clients included Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

Until 2002 Bruce Jackson was planning and strategy vice president at Lockheed Martin, where he served as the advance man for global corporate development projects. One prominent neocon described Bruce Jackson as “the nexus between the defense industry and the neoconservatives. He translates us to them, and them to us.”

– U.S. Committee on NATO from Right Web.

Member countries and Partnership for Peace

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According to NATO: “The essence of the PfP programme is a partnership formed individually between each Partner country and NATO, tailored to individual needs and jointly implemented at the level and pace chosen by each participating government.”

Member Countries	Partnership for Peace
Belgium Bulgaria Canada Czech Rep Denmark Estonia France Germany Greece Hungary Iceland Italy Latvia Lithuania Luxembourg Netherlands Norway Poland Portugal Romania Slovakia Slovenia Spain Turkey United Kingdom United States	Albania Armenia Austria Azerbaijan Belarus Croatia Finland Georgia Ireland Kazakhstan Kyrghyz Republic Macedonia Moldova Russia Sweden Switzerland Tajikistan Turkmenistan Ukraine Uzbekistan