The story of the great NATO deception
NATO is sold as a defence against enemies, a protection against dictatorship and a guarantor of democracy. You should not trust this narrative.
•
By Terje Alnes
NATO is sold as a defence against enemies, a protection against dictatorship and a guarantor of democracy. You should not trust this narrative. The alliance is, and always has been, a tool in the US's exercise of geopolitical power, and is the biggest threat to world peace and continued life on the planet.
•
These days, when we are bombarded with NATO propaganda on every channel, it is appropriate to shout out loud: The whole world will be a safer place if NATO disappears! With its superior military power, insane rearmament plans and nuclear weapons strategy, insatiable expansion and illegitimate power ambitions across the globe, the US-led military bloc is a constant threat to world peace.
NATO has no protection against war. It is the contrary. The NATO strategy is a recipe for war. For Norway, membership means that we have to stand up in wars against states that have never attacked Norway, because Norwegian politicians are repeatedly pressured to show themselves as "a good ally". NATO membership makes Norway a nation of war, in stark contrast to the national self-image of Norway as a nation of peace.
Therefore, several times since 1999, Norwegian forces have participated in illegal wars started based on lies, with disastrous consequences for the countries that have been attacked and occupied by NATO.
NATO is not a defensive defence alliance at all, but represents boundless militarism and war, and threats of war, to achieve political goals that benefit the alliance's patron – the United States.
•
NATO is an existential threat
NATO's function is to secure the USA's position as an absolute global superpower and to defeat everything that stands in its way. To achieve this, the alliance is ready to use absolutely all means at its disposal.
NATO also represents the most destructive form of environmental and climate destruction imaginable (a point that is deliberately omitted in the political debate, where military climate emissions are kept outside international climate agreements). The US military alone is the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the world.
Behind it all lies the threat of a total apocalypse, represented by NATO's nuclear weapons policy. Not a single NATO country respects the UN ban on nuclear weapons, the only real weapon of mass destruction at humanity's disposal. On the contrary; NATO reserves the right of first use of nuclear weapons. Chew on it. The Alliance is prepared to start a nuclear war if it deems it necessary! NATO is in reality a suicide pact for those who cannot bear the thought of living in a world where the US no longer dictates the "rules-governed international order".
•
The backdrop: "The Cold War" 1947-1990
The alliance between the Soviet Union and the Western countries quickly disintegrated after World War II. As early as March 1946, Winston Churchill strongly argued that Western countries had to unite in an anti-Soviet bloc. This is the main reason why NATO was created, but it would take three years before the organization was in place.
In 1947, President Harry S. Truman launched the so-called "Truman Doctrine", in which the United States undertook the task of supporting so-called "free" peoples and nations. In practice, this meant that the US took on a police role, giving itself the right to intervene in other countries' internal affairs. This was the first step in a larger "containment policy" aimed at preventing Soviet influence. Large communist parties were likely to win elections in several countries, which was a threat to US hegemony. In practice, it meant that Washington set limits for other countries' democracies; if the voters voted "wrong," the United States would intervene.
The next step was the "Marshall Plan" in 1948, sold as an economic reconstruction program to the European countries after the ravages of the war. The Soviet Union was also offered Marshall aid, but declined. To receive Marshall's aid, the countries had to accept a set of conditions which, in practice, meant opening up the economy. This was seen as ceding national sovereignty. The Soviet Union, and many on the European left, believed that the purpose of the Marshall Plan was to get the United States out of an overproduction crisis after the war.
The military alliance NATO was the third cornerstone of the US containment policy. The organization was established in Washington DC on 4 April 1949, when foreign ministers from 12 countries signed the "Atlanterhavspakten" (Treaty for the North Atlantic Area). The original member countries were the USA, Canada, Great Britain, Denmark, Belgium, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Norway.
As NATO's first Secretary General, former British General Hastings Lionel Ismay was exemplary when he stated that the purpose (of NATO) was to "keep the Russians out, the Americans in and the Germans down."
Already here, we find an interesting point; namely that NATO was a tool to ensure an American grip on Europe. American strategists such as Zbigniew Brzeziński have been clear that control over the European continent is absolutely essential for US global power. In his main work, "The Grand Chessboard", the Western European states are therefore referred to as vassals of the United States. In practice, this means that they are allowed internal autonomy (unless they vote "wrong" and the US must intervene), while in the field of foreign policy, they are subject to the US and are expected to follow the dictates of Washington.
•
Fascist dictatorships are no problem for NATO
Ismay was an advocate of NATO expansion from the start, saying that NATO "must grow until the whole free world comes under one umbrella."
The statement illustrates the typical NATO rhetoric, where the alliance is allegedly fighting for "one free world". This has little credibility because Portugal, one of NATO's original member states, was a fascist dictatorship until 1974. This dictatorship was no problem for NATO, which never did anything to promote democracy in Portugal.
Greece became a NATO member in 1952. Here, NATO actively contributed to the abolition of democracy through a fascist coup in April 1967, just before an election, the left was likely to win. The 6th Fleet of the US Navy anchored up off Athens before the coup. Two colonels and a brigadier general gained control of the central military communications room in Athens and carried out a military plan entitled "Prometheus" - a NATO plan designed to prevent a communist takeover. The junta remained in power until 1974.
Turkey also became a NATO member in 1952. Nevertheless, Turkish democracy has regularly been sidelined by the military. In 1960, 1971 and 1980, democracy was suspended and replaced with governments appointed by the generals.
•
Democracy does not apply to “the enemy within."
The coup in Greece can also be seen in the context of the revelations of "Operation Gladio", a secret stay-behind network organized by NATO and the CIA, in cooperation with the secret services of a number of European countries. These were built up and existed outside of elected control for many decades after the Second World War. There are therefore limits to NATO democracy, the moment the voters go too far to the left, the military can intervene.
In Italy, it has been established that such stay-behind groups were behind violent attacks and regular terrorist attacks against left-wing parties. In the 1970s, it was also revealed that the Norwegian Armed Forces practised suppressing domestic opposition. The defence leadership branded NATO opponents and striking workers as an "internal enemy".
In Norway, Norway's Communist Party was a major party right after the war. In the first parliamentary election, the party received 11.9% and 11 representatives. NKP's newspaper Friheten (Freedom) was the country's second largest newspaper after Aftenposten. In LO (Workers Union), the communists had 30-40% support (LO congress 1945). For the Labor Party, the struggle was for hegemony in the labour movement.
In February 1948, Einar Gerhardsen, prime minister and party chairman of the Labour Party, gave a speech that announced a crackdown on the party's opponents on the left. Gerhardsen said, among other things:
- What can threaten the Norwegian people's freedom and democracy is the danger that the Norwegian Communist Party represents at all times. The most important task in the fight for Norway's independence, for democracy and the rule of law, is to reduce the influence of the Communist Party and the communists as much as possible…
Plans were made to detain communists in mobilization situations, plans that were effective right up to the 1970s. Anti-communism in Norway was imported from the USA and was an important part in the escalation of the Cold War. When President Truman formulated his doctrine for US foreign policy in 1947, this was a strategy to make the 20th century "America's century".
- I think it must be the policy of this country to support free people who fight against attempts at oppression, whether such attempts are made by armed minorities or are due to pressure from outside... The whole world must accept the American system which can only survive in America if it also a world system.
- Harry S. Truman March 12, 1947
•
Anti-communism became an ideological pillar of US expansionism. This also hit hard across Europe. It made it possible to secure a majority for the Marshall Plan, and also for Norwegian membership in NATO.
Those who fronted anti-communism and the zeal for Norwegian NATO membership had one main message: the Soviet Union threatened Norway. They succeed in spreading this fear of a Soviet invasion in large sections of the population. Opinion polls in 1948 showed that a majority believed that another world war would break out within ten years. This contrasts with the perception among leading politicians in Norway, who did what they could to spread this fear. Those responsible for Norwegian foreign policy did not expect any imminent attack from the Soviet Union against Norway. In a note from Defense Minister Jens Christian Hauge from April 1948 it is stated:
"It must be reasonable to assume that none of the great powers want war or will take responsibility for war today and in the coming years."
Like the Soviet Union during the Cold War, Russia is portrayed today as a threat to Norway. This is despite all the weaknesses that the war in Ukraine has revealed regarding the country's military capacity and striking power (with a defence budget of less than 1/10 of the US).
Do Norwegian politicians really believe that a Russian invasion of Norway is likely, or are they spreading fear of Russia to serve NATO's agenda?
•
The Soviet Union applied for NATO membership in 1954, Russia in 1991 and 2000.
NATO was allegedly a response to the threat the Soviet Union represented to the "free world" during the Cold War. Then it is interesting that in 1954, the year after Josef Stalin died, the Soviet Union asked to join NATO! This came to light when, in 2001, Vladimir Putin published a secret memo sent from the Soviet government to the leaders of the West. The response from the West was that "the unrealistic nature of the proposal does not warrant discussion".
In reality, NATO was not interested in discussing a defence policy security solution that could end to the Cold War. Peaceful coexistence and non-interference in internal affairs are not NATO policy. The following year, in 1955, the Warsaw Pact was established instead as a direct response to West Germany's rearmament and membership in NATO.
When the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact ceased to exist in 1991, NATO's historic role was complete and the alliance's raison d'être was no longer present. But the narrative of NATO as a "defense alliance" turned out to be false.
Instead of disbanding NATO, the organisation's geographical scope was greatly expanded. It was opened up to get involved militarily "out-of-area", i.e. outside the North Atlantic area that NATO was originally supposed to defend.
NATO has never been anything but a tool for Western - mainly American - imperialism. The alliance is, in practice, the military branch of Western capitalism.
That NATO depends on enemies to legitimize its existence is an explanation for why Russia has been told twice since the dissolution of the Soviet Union that membership is out of the question.
Boris Yeltsin is said to have investigated the possibility of Russian NATO membership in 1991, while Vladimir Putin did the same when he took over in 2000. Here Putin followed Gorbachev's vision of a "common European home". US President Clinton bluntly replied that if Russia were part of NATO, there would be no reason for NATO to exist. This means that NATO is, in reality, an obstacle to an all-European security solution and that Europe, as long as the alliance exists, will be an area of military tension.
Here, a bit of counterfactual history writing is in order: If NATO had been dissolved in 1991, we would not have had a war in Ukraine today. Nor if the Soviet Union in 1954, or Russia in 1991 or 2000, had been admitted as a member of NATO.
•
NATO's illegal wars
Russia's attack on Ukraine is condemned in all NATO countries. It is of course appropriate, since the attack is a violation of international law and the UN treaty. But it is hypocritical when the pro-NATO press in the West portrays this as a unique event. On the contrary, NATO has twice itself broken international law and started illegal wars of aggression.
In 1999, NATO launched a military attack against Yugoslavia without a mandate from the UN’s Security Council, which, per definition, is an illegal war.
The justification was "humanitarian", to stop abuses committed by Serbian forces against Albanian civilians. For the first time since World War II, Norwegian forces took part in the hostilities when it committed 6 F-16 aircraft. The war was fought with a superior air force on the part of NATO, in which up to 1,100 aircraft participated. The war marked the end of Yugoslavia, with the province of Kosovo being separated from Serbia. This is how the West secured a client state and loyal supporter in the Balkans.
The NATO war against Yugoslavia did not stop the abuses against civilians, but resulted in new abuses. Commander of the Telemark battalion, Robert Mood, gave the following description of what met NATO's "peacekeeping force" in Kosovo in September 1999:
"It was total anarchy. There was no police, judiciary or hospital. Serbian houses were set on fire, and old Serbian women were beaten to death. Fires ignited by Molotov cocktails and hand grenades thrown into Serbian houses were commonplace. ... We had created an image of the Albanians as victims and the Serbs as the aggressors. But the reality we faced was an Albanian population with an enormous urge for revenge. Everything was turned upside down.”
•
On 17 March 2011, the UN Security Council adopted a resolution that opened the door for military intervention in Libya. The main justification was the claim that Gaddafi was planning a massacre of civilians. The UN adopted an arms embargo and a no-fly zone, but "Resolution 1973" prohibited invasion and did not allow for regime change.
On 19 March, Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said that Norway would participate. Norwegian F-16 aircraft dropped 588 bombs over Libya, most of them over random targets. The resolution from the UN Security Council was made on the basis of intelligence information about an imminent massacre of civilians. It has subsequently become known that this was fabricated precisely to trigger an attack on Libya.
The leadership of the Arab League, which called on the UN to intervene, condemned the bombing of Libya the day after it began. Two days later, the bombing was also condemned by the African Union. Both of these central bodies believed that the bombing would lead to regime change and thus broke with the UN resolution.
The bombing of Libya continued long after the alleged threat of a massacre had been averted and was, therefore, an early violation of international law.
The British House of Commons committee's investigation report from 2016 documents a number of lies and false information that were used to legitimize the attack. On 20 October 2011, Muammar al-Gaddafi was killed and Libya effectively disintegrated.
•
The NATO enlargements after 1991
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, NATO has included a number of former Eastern Bloc countries and Soviet republics as members: Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary in 1999, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia in 2004, Albania and Croatia in 2009, Montenegro in 2017 and North Macedonia in 2020, Finland in 2023 and Sweden in 2024.
After Russia's attack on Ukraine on February 24, a strange debate has arisen over whether promises were actually made to the last leaders of the Soviet Union that NATO would not expand eastward after the fall of the wall. To deny that such promises were made seems incomprehensible, all the while they are easily documented.
On 17 May 1990, e.g. NATO Secretary General Manfred Wörner said the following in a speech (which is still available on NATO's website): "The fact that we are willing not to deploy NATO troops east of West Germany gives the Soviet Union firm security guarantees".
The German magazine Der Spiegel investigated in 2009 whether promises against NATO expansion were made. After talking to many of those involved and examining previously classified British and German documents in detail, Spiegel concluded that there was no doubt that the West was doing everything it could to give the Soviets the impression that NATO membership was out of the question for the country like for example. Poland, Hungary or Czechoslovakia.
The U.S. National Security Archive reached the same conclusion in 2017. Declassified documents show that security assurances against NATO expansion were given to Soviet leaders by a whole host of Western leaders: Baker, Bush, Genscher, Kohl, Gates, Mitterrand, Thatcher, Hurd, Major and Wörner.
It is, therefore, understandable that today's Russian leaders feel deceived and led astray. It has been many years since Russia warned that there is a limit to what the country can accept in terms of NATO expansion, but NATO has chosen to ignore all warnings from Moscow. When the NATO meeting in Bucharest in 2008 opened for future membership for Georgia and Ukraine the limit was reached, this was the red line for the Russians.
Ever since Ukraine gained independence in 1991, the US has worked systematically to influence the Ukrainians politically. The US government has spent more than USD 5 billion on a whole series of programmes designed to promote regime change. A wave of protests and riots culminated in February 2014, when President Yanukovych was forced to flee the country. Since 2014, a war has been waged in Donbass, with government forces attacking separatists who do not recognise the Kiev government. This in turn led to Russia's annexation of Crimea.
Since 2015, the CIA has provided training to thousands of Ukrainian paramilitary forces. From 2017, the US has been building military infrastructure in Ukraine, as if the country were already a NATO member. Russia's "military operation" (read: war) in Ukraine cannot be defended, but it can be understood.
At no point since the fall of the Berlin Wall have NATO and the US been willing to include Russia in a common European security order, but on the contrary have pursued a policy of confrontation. Instead of pursuing a policy to prevent war, the strategy of NATO and the US has provoked war
•
The US tightens its grip on Europe
According to the German sociologist Wolfgang Streeck, the Ukraine war has revitalized NATO and consolidated US control over Europe. If the Americans have ever seen the EU as a competing power, in a few months, the war has done wonders for the USA's dominance over what Zbigniew Brzeziński referred to as the European vassal states.
In particular, it has been important for the USA to gain political control over Germany, which has constantly opposed American directives. Now the European NATO countries obediently follow the slightest hint from Washington.
For the Germans, Hastings Lionel Ismay's statement that the purpose (of NATO) was to "keep the Russians out, the Americans in and the Germans down" must be easily recognizable these days. The US has successfully cut all ties between Russia and the European NATO countries.
The extensive sanctions that have been introduced have weakened Russia to a far lesser extent than expected. On the contrary, it is now Europe that is being hit hard by its own sanctions policy, particularly noticeably in the energy sector, where the EU imported almost half of its gas from Russia.
For the United States, which for many years worked actively to prevent Germany from realizing the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia, the war came as if ordered. Instead of doubling the import of Russian gas, the taps are now being turned back on. It is a disaster for energy-poor Europe but a geopolitical victory for the United States.
Translation: “… and yes, the USA and NATO fight a proxy war against Russia and indirectly against China in Ukraine. It is also in the self-interest of the US and NATO to keep the war going in order to weaken Russia as much as possible - and thereby also the axis China-Russia. No, it is not nice but, yes, it is Realpolitik.”
(Rober Mood, former NATO general, now Secretary General of the Norwegian Red Cross)
•
NATO looks to China
The original 12 member states have become 30, and to 32 if Sweden and Finland also join. The "new" NATO has moved far beyond its original North Atlantic area, and is now gathering around a global strategy.
This will become even clearer at the upcoming NATO summit in Madrid on 29-30 June, (2022), where the new strategic concept for the next decades will be presented.
It is no secret that NATO wants to step up its activities in East Asia, to meet what it refers to as the "threat from China". Here, Taiwan can easily become a parallel to Ukraine. It is indeed striking that a defence alliance, with a justification for its existence in the "Treaty for the North Atlantic Area" ("Atlantic Pact"), should put its main focus on a rising economy in the East, which challenges the US's international trade regime, as it was created after WW2.
This manifests NATO's role as the military arm of Western – mainly American – imperialism.
•
The author
Terje Alnes
More about the author, his articles and many videos here and Alnes’ YouTube Channel.
•
This article was previously published in two parts in June 2022 but is now republished in full on the 75th anniversary of the founding of NATO - 4 April 1949.
The article was published in Norwegian by Spartakus in Norway.
•
Sources
"NATO guide", Stop NATO 2021.
"Large emissions from military activity", Besteforeldrereaksjonen. no 08.07.19. "Hastings Ismay, 1st Baron Ismay", Wikipedia.org.
Zbigniew Brzeziński "The Grand Chessboard. American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives", Basic Books 1997.
Torstein Hjellum "Anticommunism", lecture note autumn 1999.
"Soviets tried to join NATO in 1954", The Guardian 17.06.2001.
Gunnar Garbo "War is also terror", Own publisher 2002.
House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee "Libya: Examination of intervention and collapse and the UK's future policy options", 06.09.2016.
"War Crimes, From Nuremberg to Ukraine", Counterpunch.org 03.06.2022.
"Address by Secretary General Manfred Wörner to the Bremer Tabaks Collegium”, NATO.int 17.05.1990.
“Did the West Break Its Promise to Moscow?”, Der Spiegel.de 26.11.2009,
“NATO Expansion: What Gorbachev Heard”, nsarchive.gwu.edu 12.12.2017. “Bucharest Summit Declaration”, NATO.int 03.04.08.
Ola Tunander “What is not being talked about behind Putin's invasion”, Ny Tid sommer 2022.
Wolfgang Streeck “Fog of War”, newleftreview.org 01.03.2022 and “Return of King”, newleftreview.org 05.04.22.
What a brilliant article! As a Norwegian I must say I was astonished by many of the facts. The news media in Norway is of course telling another story.. I believe this article is 100% correct, sorry to say. Thank you for publishing this!