Talk:NATO
Add topicLatest comment: 1 year ago by HouseOfChange in topic Removing paragraphs of editorializing and COATRACK pov-pushing from more sections
Re comments used to remove images... "already overloaded with images,
[edit]Hi GreenMeansGo: Re your comments used justify removal of images:
- 17:53, 3 June 2019 GreenMeansGo talk contribs 81,533 bytes -706 also we really don't need three images/quotes from trump, there are more countries in NATO than the US, and more US presidents in the history of NATO other than Trump undothank
- 17:48, 3 June 2019 GreenMeansGo talk contribs 80,056 bytes -959 -3 more images, well overloaded undothank
- 17:30, 3 June 2019 GreenMeansGo talk contribs 81,015 bytes +676 Undo revision 2612137 by Om777om (talk) This is already overloaded with images, to the point where the images continue some 14 inches past the end of the article undothank Tag: Undo
- Please note that there is a very wide range of different views of the same pages depending on machine used (home pc, laptop, tablet, phone, + screen/monitor size, software/web browser used, and the display settings, etc). Please note that while images may have continued some 14 inches past end of article on your machine, you may have been alone, or part of a very small percentage of total viewers obtaining such a view. Considering that this editor is using a very common monitor size, software, web browser and display resolution, along with the fact that page as it appeared on his monitor did NOT extend past the end of the article at all, and that there was actually room for more images at the time you begain removing images, it seems there is a conflict in perceived reality. Maybe you have your text size increased far above the most common average, so you won't have to use a magnifying glass? :-) Perhaps you were not taking such factors into consideration. Please bear all that in mind in your future calculations.
Cheers & Best wishes Om777om (talk) 20:27, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
Who wrote this article?
[edit]The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs? --Spafky (talk) 22:57, 25 May 2022 (UTC)
- Sure seems like it, doesn't it?
- There was a sock farm active here, all pushing a strident anti-West, pro-Russia, OMG the US is the most awful country on earth POV. Obviously it's not all cleaned up (and the sock farm is still active, running on IPs now). Antandrus (talk) 23:08, 25 May 2022 (UTC)
- @Spafky: and @Antandrus: I made a start improving the article, just for the years 2016 to 2019, as well as the usual sock POV-pushing with bolding and image selection. As suggested on my talk page, I put the removed quotes all together here on the talk page, so that others can easily see them and decide if some should go back. (Some quotes in the article I just trimmed to a "quotable" fraction and left in place.) We should also try to find other quotable quotes about NATO from notable people. Thanks for flagging the problems in this article. HouseOfChange (talk) 16:05, 27 May 2022 (UTC)
To quote the policy:
4. Is the author or work from which the quote comes notable? If so, are they very notable, moderately notable, barely notable? Are they notable as a source of quotes (i.e., as a poet, pundit, or Yogi Berra)?
5. Is the quote particularly witty, pithy, wise, eloquent, or poignant? This page, and many others WQ pages lately, are spammed down with long uninteresting quotes, that somebody has written, but nobody would ever bother to quote.
Removing COATRACK pov-pushing with non-notable, non-quotable paragraphs of editorializing
[edit]As suggested, I am storing some "quotes" removed from the main page on this page, so that other editors can make up their own minds whether these quotes should be used in either this article or some other article. HouseOfChange (talk) 14:06, 27 May 2022 (UTC)
Also removing COATRACK POV-pushing by image selection. HouseOfChange (talk) 15:08, 27 May 2022 (UTC)
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(image: USS_Scorpion on ocean floor with two nuclear Mark 45 anti-submarine torpedoes. U.S. Navy photo)
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Removed from 2014
[edit]Just a comment, it is remarkable that in 2014 Russia invaded its neighbor Ukraine and annexed part of Ukraine's territory, but the NATO article talks only about how "pugnacious" and aggressive the "West" was in responding to this big change to the map of Europe. I added some quotes from one article with a different point of viewHouseOfChange (talk) 14:06, 27 May 2022 (UTC)
- It is enlightening to see how pugnacious the U.S. establishment...has been in dealing with the Ukraine crisis. The crisis arguably began when the Yanukovich government rejected an EU bailout program in favor of one offered by Russia. The mainstream media (MSM) have virtually suppressed the fact that the EU proposal was not only less generous than the one offered by Russia, but that, whereas the Russian plan did not preclude further Ukrainian deals with the EU, the EU plan would have required a cut-off of further Russian arrangements. And whereas the Russian deal had no military clauses, that of the EU required that Ukraine affiliate with NATO. Insofar as the MSM dealt with this set of offers, they not only suppressed the exclusionary and militarized character of the EU offer, they tended to view the Russian deal as an improper use of economic leverage, “bludgeoning,” but the EU proposal was “constructive and reasonable” (Ed., NYT, November 20, 2014). Double standards seem to be fully internalized within the U.S. establishment. The protests that ensued in Ukraine were surely based in part on real grievances against a corrupt government, but they were also pushed along by right-wing groups and by U.S. and allied encouragement and support that increasingly had an anti-Russian and pro-accelerated regime change flavor.
- Edward S. Herman in War is Our Business and Business Looks Good, Z Magazine (28 June 2014)
- The European Union and many of its countries, which used to take initiatives in the United Nations for peaceful settlements of conflict, are now one of the most important war assets of the U.S./NATO front. Many countries have also been drawn into complicity in breaking international law through U.S./U.K./NATO wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and so on.
Removed 2016 - 2019
[edit]- The Western response to Russia’s collapse was triumphalist. It was hailed as signaling “the end of history,” the final victory of Western capitalist democracy, almost as if Russia were being instructed to revert to its pre-World War I status as a virtual economic colony of the West. NATO enlargement began at once, in violation of verbal assurances to Gorbachev that NATO forces would not move “one inch to the east” after he agreed that a unified Germany could become a NATO member — a remarkable concession, in the light of history... The possibility that NATO might expand beyond Germany was not discussed with Gorbachev, even if privately considered.
Soon, NATO did begin to move beyond, right to the borders of Russia. The general mission of NATO was officially changed to a mandate to protect “crucial infrastructure” of the global energy system, sea lanes and pipelines, giving it a global area of operations. Furthermore, under a crucial Western revision of the now widely heralded doctrine of “responsibility to protect,” sharply different from the official UN version, NATO may now also serve as an intervention force under US command.- Noam Chomsky, in Chomsky: Who Rules the World? BillMoyers.com (9 May 2016)
- Of particular concern to Russia are plans to expand NATO to Ukraine. These plans were articulated explicitly at the Bucharest NATO summit of April 2008, when Georgia and Ukraine were promised eventual membership in NATO. The wording was unambiguous: “NATO welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO.” With the “Orange Revolution” victory of pro-Western candidates in Ukraine in 2004, State Department representative Daniel Fried rushed there and “emphasized US support for Ukraine’s NATO and Euro-Atlantic aspirations,” as a WikiLeaks report revealed.
Russia’s concerns are easily understandable. They are outlined by international relations scholar John Mearsheimer in the leading US establishment journal, Foreign Affairs. He writes that “the taproot of the current crisis [over Ukraine] is NATO expansion and Washington’s commitment to move Ukraine out of Moscow’s orbit and integrate it into the West,” which Putin viewed as “a direct threat to Russia’s core interests.”.... “Who can blame him?” Mearsheimer asks, pointing out that “Washington may not like Moscow’s position, but it should understand the logic behind it.”- Noam Chomsky, in Chomsky: Who Rules the World? BillMoyers.com (9 May 2016)
- We find troubling... NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s statement... that NATO members will agree to “further enhance NATOs military presence in the eastern part of the alliance,” adding... its “biggest reinforcement since the Cold War.” The likelihood of a military clash in the air or at sea – accidental or intentional – has grown sharply, the more so since, as we explain below, President Obama’s control over top U.S./NATO generals, some of whom like to play cowboy, is tenuous. Accordingly we encourage you, as we did before the last NATO summit, to urge your NATO colleagues to bring a “degree of judicious skepticism” to the table at Warsaw – especially with regard to the perceived threat from Russia.
Many of us have spent decades studying Moscow’s foreign policy. We shake our heads in disbelief when we see Western leaders seemingly oblivious to what it means to the Russians to witness exercises on a scale not seen since Hitler’s armies launched “Unternehmen Barbarossa” 75 years ago, leaving 25 million Soviet citizens dead. In our view, it is irresponsibly foolish to believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin will not take countermeasures... Putin does not have the option of trying to reassure his generals that what they hear and see from NATO is mere rhetoric and posturing... In sum, Russia is bound to react strongly to what it regards as the unwarranted provocation of large military exercises along its western borders, including in Ukraine.
- President Donald Trump pressed allies to double their military spending target to 4% of GDP, while questioning NATO’s value and bashing Germany for supporting a gas deal with Russia. After attacking North Atlantic Treaty Organization leaders for months for not meeting a 2% spending target, Mr. Trump said on Wednesday that the amount was too low.
- Wall Street Journal, Trump Roils NATO Allies With Calls to Double Military Spending, U.S. leader urges allies to double target to 4% while questioning the alliance’s value and bashing Germany for its support of a Russia gas deal, By Rebecca Ballhaus, Valentina Pop and Laurence Norman (11 July 2018)
- What does the US get out of NATO? ...The alliance allows the US to have a strong foothold in Europe, a presence that has traditionally helped it counter Russia's influence in the region. It also allows the US to launch military action in other regions, mainly the Middle East, Africa and South Asia. In Germany alone, the US has 152 military sites for its army and air force, US Defense Department data from 2017 shows. The US' largest military hospital abroad is in Germany, and it uses bases in the country as "lily pads" to go back and forth from countries like Afghanistan. The US also has six nuclear stockpiles in five European NATO countries — Germany, Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey — according to the Federation of American Scientists. It also stores tanks and artillery in Norwegian caves... many countries went to Iraq and Afghanistan and many, many soldiers were killed from all these countries, and it was not their war, it was an American war really, more than anything else.
- Throughout the day before the summit in Helsinki, the lead story on the New York Times home page stayed the same: “Just by Meeting With Trump, Putin Comes Out Ahead.” ... The Washington Post...editorialized that Russia’s President Vladimir Putin is “an implacably hostile foreign adversary.” ...Contempt for diplomacy with Russia is now extreme... A bellicose stance toward Russia has become so routine and widespread that we might not give it a second thought... Often the biggest lies involve what remains unsaid. For instance, U.S. media rarely mention such key matters as the promise-breaking huge expansion of NATO to Russia’s borders since the fall of the Berlin Wall... or the more than 800 U.S. military bases overseas -- in contrast to Russia’s nine... We need a major shift in the U.S. approach toward Russia...The lives -- and even existence -- of future generations are at stake in the relationship between Washington and Moscow... The incessant drumbeat is in sync with what Martin Luther King Jr. called “the madness of militarism.
- The story goes back more than three decades to the fall of the Berlin Wall and eventual re-unification of Germany. At the time, the Soviet Union had some 380,000 troops in what was then the German Democratic Republic, or East Germany. Those forces were there as part of the treaty ending World War II, and the Soviets were concerned that removing them could end up threatening the USSR’s borders. The Russians have been invaded — at terrible cost — three times in a little more than a century. So in the early 1990s, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker, and Soviet general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev cut a deal. The Soviets agreed to withdraw troops from Eastern Europe as long as NATO didn’t fill the vacuum, or recruit members of the Soviet-dominated Warsaw Pact. Baker promised Gorbachev that NATO would not move “one inch east.” The agreement... was followed in practice. NATO stayed west of the Oder and Neisse rivers separating Germany and Poland, and Soviet troops returned to Russia... But President Bill Clinton blew that all up in 1999, when the U.S. and NATO intervened in the civil war between Serbs and Albanians over the Serbian province of Kosovo. Behind the new American doctrine of “responsibility to protect,” NATO opened a massive 11-week bombing campaign against Serbia... From Moscow’s point of view, the war was unnecessary. The Serbs were willing to withdraw their troops and restore Kosovo’s autonomous status. But NATO demanded a large occupation force that would be immune from Serbian law, something the nationalist-minded Serbs would never agree to. It was virtually the same provocative language the Austrian-Hungarian Empire had presented to the Serbs in 1914, language that set off World War I... But NATO didn’t stop there...
- While Moscow is depicted as an aggressive adversary, NATO surrounds Russia on three sides, has deployed anti-missile systems in Poland, Romania, Spain, Turkey, and the Black Sea, and has a 12 to 1 advantage in military spending. With opposing forces now toe-to-toe, it would not take much to set off a chain reaction that could end in a nuclear exchange. Yet instead of inviting a dialogue, the document boasts that the Alliance has “suspended all practical civilian and military cooperation between NATO and Russia.”... The solution seems obvious. First, a return to the 1998 military deployment. While it is unlikely that former members of the Warsaw Pact would drop their NATO membership, a withdrawal of non-national troops from NATO members that border Russia would cool things off. Second, the removal of anti-missile systems that should never have been deployed in the first place. In turn, Russia could remove the middle-range Iskander missiles NATO is complaining about and agree to talks aimed at reducing nuclear stockpiles. But long range, it’s finally time to re-think alliances. NATO was a child of the Cold War, when the West believed that the Soviets were a threat. But Russia today is not the Soviet Union, and there’s no way Moscow would be stupid enough to attack a superior military force. The old ways of thinking are not only outdated, but also dangerous. It’s time NATO went the way of the Warsaw Pact.
- [President Trump is]... perfectly right when he says we should have better relations with Russia. Being dragged through the mud for that is outlandish... Russia shouldn’t refuse to deal with the United States because the U.S. carried out the worst crime of the century in the invasion of Iraq, much worse than anything Russia has done. But they shouldn’t refuse to deal with us for that reason, and we shouldn’t refuse to deal with them for whatever infractions they may have carried out, which certainly exist. This is just absurd.
We have to move towards better—right at the Russian border, there are very extreme tensions, that could blow up anytime and lead to what would in fact be a terminal nuclear war, terminal for the species and life on Earth. We’re very close to that...
First of all, we should do things to ameliorate it. Secondly, we should ask why. Well, it’s because NATO expanded after the collapse of the Soviet Union, in violation of verbal promises to Mikhail Gorbachev, mostly under Clinton, partly under first Bush, then Clinton expanded right to the Russian border, expanded further under Obama... The fate of... organized human society, even of the survival of the species, depends on this. How much attention is given to these things as compared with, you know, whether Trump lied about something?
- As we watch the media today, we are spoon fed more and more propaganda and fear of the unknown, that we should be afraid of the unknown and have full faith that our government is keeping us safe from the unknown. But by looking at media today, those of us who are old enough will be reminded of the era of Cold War news articles, hysteria of how the Russians would invade and how we should duck and cover under tables in our kitchens for the ensuing nuclear war. Under this mass hysteria all Western governments were convinced that we should join Western allies to fight the unknown evil that lies to the east. Later through my travels in Russia during the height of the Cold War with a peace delegation, we were shocked by the poverty of the country, and questioned how we ever were led to believe that Russia was a force to be afraid of. We talked to the Russian students who were dismayed by their absolute poverty and showed anger against NATO for leading their country into an arms race that they could not win. Many years later, when speaking to young Americans in the US, I was in disbelief about the fear the students had of Russia and their talk of invasion. This is a good example of how the unknown can cause a deep rooted paranoia when manipulated by the right powers.
- Firstly, I must say, that I personally believe that Russia is not by any means without faults. But the amount of anti-Russian propaganda in our media today is a throwback to the Cold War era. We must ask the question: Is this leading to more arms, a bigger NATO? Possibly to challenge large powers in the Middle East and Asia, as we see the US approaching the South China seas, and NATO Naval games taking place in the Black Sea. Missile compounds are being erected in Romania, Poland and other ex-Soviet countries, while military games are set up in Scandinavia close to the Russian border to practice for a cold climate war scenario. At the same time, we see the US President arriving in Europe asking for increased military spending. At the same time the USA has increased its budget by 300 billion in one year.
The demonization of Russia is, I believe, one of the most dangerous things that is happening in our world today. The scapegoating of Russia is an inexcusable game that the West is indulging in. It is time for political leaders and each individual to move us back from the brink of catastrophe to begin to build relationships with our Russian brothers and sisters. Too long has the elite financially gained from war while millions are moved into poverty and desperation.
- Designed to pump out a high volume of fire within a short period, rocket artillery systems are particularly dangerous in their ability to obliterate a position before units have a chance to take cover. This is the best of what NATO has to offer. In the 1980s, the United States developed the M270 MLRS, the most common rocket artillery system in NATO. It is fielded by the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Greece, Italy and Turkey. It shoots 227mm rockets, twelve of which are held in two six-rocket pods...
- On Feb. 6, Macedonia signed an accession agreement with NATO, paving its way to join the alliance next year. The country will be renamed “North Macedonia” to appease the Greeks. Despite predictable cheers from the U.S. media and foreign policy elites, the addition of another tiny Balkan country to NATO only highlights a clear reality: NATO is making itself irrelevant by becoming an alliance that can’t fight...
Germany, once NATO’s front line against the Soviets, is the most glaring example. Over the last 25 years, the Germans have chosen to become militarily impotent. On average, just 39 of Germany’s 128 Eurofighter Typhoons, the Luftwaffe’s best fighter plane, were available for service in 2017. Barely a quarter of its older Tornados are serviceable. Maybe this horrible maintenance record is a secondary concern, though: Der Spiegel reported that Germany only had enough missiles for four of the Typhoons to engage in combat... The German military is currently short a staggering 21,000 officers and noncommissioned officers. Even Germany’s elite KSK special operations troops have earned more of a reputation for their beer than their battles.
- NATO turns 70 in 2019 and will celebrate its anniversary on 4th April 2019 in Washington DC... NATO is obsolete, it belongs in the dustbin of history! NATO claims to strive for collective defence and for the preservation of peace and security. But, NATO has never been such a system. It is the largest military alliance in the world with the largest military spending and nuclear stockpiles. It is both the main driver for a new arms race and the main obstacle to a nuclear weapons-free world. Since the end of the Cold War, NATO has been transformed into a global alliance structured to wage “out of area” wars in Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, as well as to “contain” China. Having military troops at the Russian border, new nuclear weapons and a missile defence shield, it is a key driver for confrontation with Russia and a perpetrator of the corrosive “enemy” narrative.
- NATO claims to seek to promote stability and well-being in the North Atlantic area. But, NATO’s heads of states agreed that military spending should amount to 2% of national GPDs. Their unchallenged military spending – NATO members already spend almost 1 trillion US dollars per year – will be increased by billions of US dollars. This should instead be spent on the well-being of the people in the North Atlantic area and beyond. Raising living standards and improving people’s lives must be prioritized over weapons and war which create instability and exacerbate social injustice, deprivation and environmental destruction.
- NATO’s claims are dishonest. It is an unjust, undemocratic, violent and aggressive alliance trying to shape the world for the benefit of a few. On 3rd April 1968, one day before his assassination, Martin Luther King Jr. stated that “It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it’s nonviolence or nonexistence. That is where we are today.” NATO’s choice is violence. 41 years later we state loud and clear: “it’s the dissolution of NATO or nonexistence. That is where we are today!”
- While nostalgic for the past, post-Cold War NATO is a shell of its former self... NATO mimics a dysfunctional club where the U.S. operates as funder, provider, and gatekeeper... In a world without a Soviet juggernaut to contend with, NATO is an organization trying to keep itself in business. As Barry Posen, a professor of political science at MIT, wrote in a New York Times op-ed, "NATO’s founding mission has been achieved and replaced with unsuccessful misadventures.” Some of those misadventures, such as the 2011 regime-change campaign in Libya, have created even more security problems, from the proliferation of terrorist networks in North Africa to an ongoing refugee crisis... Washington should no longer be expected to pick up the tab.
- The promises given to President Mikhail Gorbachev by President George H. W. Bush, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, President Francois Mitterand, Chancellor Helmuth Kohl and their foreign ministers in 1990—not to expand NATO eastward; not to extend membership in the NATO alliance to former member states of the Warsaw Pact—were ignored... In the 1990s, the Russian threat was nonexistent and there was no reason to suppose it would return. In addition, President Clinton and the Senators who were nominally in charge of overseeing the conduct of U.S. Foreign and Security Policy were mesmerized by the prospects of being on the right side of history and campaign donations. Given the voracious appetite for cash in Congress the defense industriess were clearly interested in NATO expansion and found ways to advocate for it. Weapons sales to East European nations invited to join NATO promised huge profits. Bruce Jackson, a Lockheed vice president from 1993–2002, rushed to set up the Committee to Expand NATO and reportedly used contributions from defense companies to lobby Congress for NATO expansion.
Douglas Macgregor in NATO Is Not Dying. It’s a Zombie, The National Interest, (31 March 2019)
- When Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell teamed up to invite NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg to address a joint session of Congress, they had every reason to expect the April 3 speech to be a big hit with U.S. media and political elites. The establishment is eager to affirm the sanctity of support for the transatlantic military alliance. Huge reverence for NATO is matched by how dangerous NATO has become. NATO’s continual expansion -- all the way to Russia’s borders -- has significantly increased the chances that the world’s two nuclear superpowers will get into direct military conflict. But in the United States, when anyone challenges the continued expansion of NATO, innuendos or outright smears are likely. McCain conveyed the common madness of reverence for NATO -- and the common intolerance for anything that might approach a rational debate on whether it’s a good idea to keep expanding an American-led military alliance to, in effect, push Russia into a corner. Doing so is understandably viewed from Russia as a dire threat... Ever since the fall of the Berlin Wall -- and the quickly broken promises by the U.S. government in 1990 that NATO would move “not one inch eastward” -- NATO has been closing in on Russia’s borders while bringing one nation after another into full military membership. During the last three decades, NATO has added 13 countries -- and it’s not done yet.
- The 1990s saw an effort to expand both NATO’s mission (“out of area or out of business” became the mantra of the day) and NATO’s membership. *Despite the well-documented promises made to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev by Secretary of State James Baker (and many others) that the West would not try to expand NATO “one inch eastward,” the Clinton administration embarked on a dual strategy that expanded the alliance eastward and transformed the defensive alliance into what became a staging ground for US interventions in the Balkans, Africa, and the Greater Middle East. One of NATO’s first major post–Cold War missions, the 78-day airial bombing of Serbia, nearly ended in disaster when NATO Supreme Allied Commander Wesley Clark ordered British General Mike Jackson, commander of NATO’s troops in Kosovo, to retake the airfield in Pristina, the capital, from the Russians—by force if necessary. Jackson refused: “I’m not going to start Third World War for you.” Undeterred by that apocalyptic near-miss, NATO has soldiered on, playing supporting roles in the Bush and Obama administrations’ wars of choice.
- The policy of NATO expansion is largely responsible for the dangerous deterioration in relations between Russia and the West and lies at the heart of the ongoing Ukraine crisis. Still more, says Nation contributing editor Stephen F. Cohen, a result of “the new Cold War and its rampant Russophobia …has been the near-end of American diplomacy toward Russia and the almost total militarization of US-Russian relations. This alone is a profound source of insecurity-including the possibility of war with Russia.” The end of the Cold War left NATO purposeless; expansion has made it untenable. ...NATO should address what has gone so wrong over the past three decades by reexamining, its policies of eastward expansion and non-defensive deployment and seriously consider adopting a nuclear “no first use” policy.
- Lockheed Martin has been awarded a $1.14 billion contract for Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems for Poland, Bahrain and Romania. The foreign military sales contract, announced Wednesday by the Department of Defense, covers full rate production for the GMLRS surface-to-surface systems for the three nations. Work on the contract is expected to run through Aug. 31, 2021, and will be performed in Grand Prairie, Texas. Lockheed Martin... has produced more than 25,000 GMLRS through 2016 for the United States and NATO allies.
- Russia follows a pretty standard script when reacting to the U.S. and NATO as a whole, and though it has been slower to react to murmurs of Fort Trump than, say, Washington’s withdrawal from the INF Treaty, Moscow has begun to strike similar notes. Take, for instance, one op-ed run by the state-owned RIA Novosti news agency: “With Suicidal Pleasure: Poland to Make Itself into a Battlefield.” Low-level officials have echoed this sentiment, but the Kremlin has been quiet. As with the Russian reaction to the downfall of the INF treaty, senior leadership is likely to stay out of the fray until there is a concrete development to react to. And even then, Moscow’s counter-moves are unlikely to be any more specific than Putin’s position on INF and possible U.S. missile deployments in Eastern Europe: “We have to ensure our security,” he said in December. Fort Trump would certainly give the Russian government a perceived justification to deploy more troops and equipment in its Western Military District, and bolster support for the Kremlin’s military spending at home.
- And then there is NATO. Again Bolton’s directness—and good sense—in past statements have proved awkward in dealing with current political realities. In July 2016, on a Breitbart News radio program, Bolton denounced then-nominee Trump’s suggestion that the U.S. not defend fellow NATO countries. (NATO is one international accord Bolton considers worthwhile.) He called Trump’s statement “very disturbing” and “a dagger at the heart of the most successful political-military alliance in human history.”
- In January 2018, the experts at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the hands of the Doomsday Clock to two minutes before midnight, where it had stood during the darkest days of the Cold War, from 1953 to 1960. The latest move of the hands was precipitated by the recklessness in Trump’s nuclear thinking and the deepening crisis over Korea. Trump wondered aloud about the point of having nuclear weapons if he couldn’t use them. His answer was to make them more usable, which he did with his new Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), the first since Obama’s 2010 NPR, which had reduced the role of nuclear weapons in the US defense posture. The 2018 NPR significantly elevated their role, permitting use in response to vaguely defined “extreme circumstances,” such as cyberattacks or attacks on the infrastructure of both the United States and its “allies and partners.” The review doubled down on Obama’s unconscionable 30-year trillion-dollar modernization of all parts of the nuclear arsenal. The actual cost looks to be closer to $1.7 trillion and climbing. To make matters worse, all eight other nuclear powers are undertaking their own modernizations, though on a far more modest scale. Russia, it should be noted, actually cut its defense spending this past year.
- Acting like a hegemon, the United States, starting in 1999, took advantage of Russian weakness and broke its promise not to expand NATO, eventually adding 13 countries, the last of which was Montenegro, in 2017. When Bush announced plans to incorporate Georgia and Ukraine, Putin drew the line. Following the US-backed Ukrainian coup, he took back Crimea and made clear that there are limits to his toleration of NATO expansion.
In his March 1, 2018, Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly, he went further, throwing down the gauntlet to the United States. Russia, he acknowledged, had been on the defensive since the Soviet Union collapsed, having lost substantial amounts of its territory, population, GDP, industrial potential, and military capability. It depended on the IMF and World Bank for survival. The United States ignored its appeals not to abrogate the ABM Treaty in 2002 and expanded its global missile-defense system, leaving Russia vulnerable to a US attack. A 2006 article in Foreign Affairs contending that neither Russia or China could even retaliate against a US first strike “sent heads spinning” in Russia, The Washington Post reported, “with visions of Dr. Strangelove.”
- But now, in March 2018, Putin was declaring that the US effort had failed. He unveiled the existence of five new nuclear weapons, all of which could circumvent US missile-defense systems. He concluded defiantly, “I hope everything that has been said today will sober any potential aggressor,” adding, “No one listened to us. Listen to us now.” Independent Russian military analyst Aleksandr Golts said that all the weapons experts he had spoken to were “in shock, as was I.”
- In her 29-year career in the Army and Army Reserves, Colonel Ann Wright served at the NATO subcommand Allied Forces Central Europe, and later as a diplomat in various posts around the world, but resigned from the U.S. government in protest of George W. Bush’s war on Iraq. She agrees... that NATO is an impediment to peace in Europe.
Ann Wright: I think it’s the military industrial complex that needs more weapons sales, and the Russians have always been the bogeyman for the United States from the Cold War period. And even though we had 20 years of peace and tranquility with the Russians, now they are being vilified again. Not to say that it’s–you know, there are some things they’ve done I don’t care for at all. But the fact that now they are the enemy, and the increase in the number of weapons all the countries are manufacturing and selling, is big business.- RealNews Network What is NATO Good For?, The Real News Network, (8 April 2019)
- Trump’s attacks on NATO have been for his own political reasons, that he wants to show his base in the United States that he’s going to stand up to the Europeans, he’s going to stand up to other nations, he’s going to stand up for Americans. He makes a big deal of making sure other people pay for what, you know, they need, and that the United States is not going to support them. But I think it’s all show. I think in the White House, in the Oval Office, when the generals and admirals and the weapons systems CEOs are present, that President Trump’s attitude is much different. He wants to make sure the United States and NATO are as powerful as possible.
NATO is extremely dangerous, as well, too, because of potential conflict with Russia. As we’ve expanded up to the Russian border, as we have based our troops around the Russian border, conducted exercises, the Russians have reacted as you would expect a nation to react. And so we are on the brink of war. And this is not the way it should have been, as it was promised with the end of the Cold War.
NATO conducts military operations around the world, now, to include wars that include mass killing and suffering in places like Libya and Afghanistan, and not doing well, not doing well for the world. Not where you can point and say, look, we resolved this conflict, but rather these conflicts are open-ended with the suffering continual.- What is NATO Good For?, The Real News Network, (8 April 2019)
- The celebration of NATO’s 70 years of existence provides another opportunity to unearth the real history of the ideas, practices and destruction wrought by this military alliance. Even with the clear exposure of the cooperation between NATO, the CIA and the British MI6 to spread terror and psychological warfare in Europe immediately after the formation of this military alliance, the mainstream media, academics and policy makers remain silent on activities of the ‘stay behind armies’ and ‘false flag’ operations that distorted the real causes of insecurity in the world after 1945. The evidence of the manipulations of the peoples of the world to ensure the continued survival of NATO has been well documented in the fraudulent interventions and bombings in the Balkans right up the present multiple wars against the peoples of Iran...
The ostensive reason for the founding of NATO was to ‘thwart’ Soviet aggression, but in practice the organization was a prop for western capital and after the fall of the Berlin Wall, became the core prop for Wall Street. In this year, there will be many commentaries on the fact that the existence of NATO reflects a Cold War relic, that NATO is obsolete and lost its mandate, but very few will link the expansion of NATO to the military management of the international system. Prior to 1991, the planners of NATO could justify the existence of NATO on ideological and political grounds, but with the threat of a multi polar world and the diminution of the dollar, NATO expanded to the point where this author joined with others in labelling this organization Global NATO to reflect its current imperial mandate.
- In the final analysis we must go back to the Middle East where an alliance between women in Bahrain, Israel, Yemen, Iran and Saudi Arabia holds promise for a new platform. The women of Egypt gave us that notice when they mobilized to come out in forces across religious and class lines. These women are opposed to fundamentalist who want women to cover up but will disrobe them and beat them if they fight for their rights. This new mobilization of progressive women can now be seen in the politics of the USA where a new generation is maturing with new skills to fully mobilize against the NATO and the Pentagon. What remains to be seen is whether these forces will oppose the massive expenditures of the Pentagon and return to the call of Seymour Melman for demilitarization and the conversion of the military, financial, information complex.
While the energies of many are focused on the issues of electoral politics, progressives must remain alert to new false flag operations of NATO. We are in a revolutionary moment and revolutionaries cannot be pessimistic. There are three important tasks: dismantle NATO, fight imperialism, racism, and white supremacy globally and be at the forefront for social justice and solidarity in all parts of the world.
- There has always been an element in U.S. politics that questioned American internationalism in general and the U.S. role in European defense in particular. Those views gained new traction after the collapse of the Soviet Union. NATO's future role and its relevance was hotly debated during the Clinton administration.
Ultimately, Washington pushed to expand the organization eastward, offering membership to the newly independent, former satellite states of the Soviet bloc. In doing so, it fundamentally transformed the organization, in Russian eyes, from a purely defensive one to a more aggressive one, infringing on a region that Moscow had long believed was critical to its own security and obligating itself to the defense and independence of countries that historically had often, albeit unwillingly, accommodated Russian interests.
In expanding eastward, NATO accepted new obligations that were not central to its own security at a time when the Russian domination of Western Europe was no longer a viable threat while, at the same time, ensuring that its new commitments would be a source of perpetual conflict with Russia.
- Pentagon and State Department officials have told the European Union they’re “deeply concerned” over plans to potentially exclude US defense firms from competing for billions worth of new arms deals, suggesting the US could slap restrictions on buying European defense equipment in retaliation. At issue is the proposed $14 billion European Defence Fund, and a host of procurement programs under the the Permanent Structured Cooperation, or PESCO, the European economic alliance is undertaking.
- The Bundeswehr has repeatedly called for more financial resources... Those calls have been supported by pressure from NATO allies, particularly the US, to meet the alliance's defense budget target of 2% of GDP. The 2019 German defense budget is €43.2 billion, some €5 billion more than last year, and Merkel did not miss the opportunity on Monday to underline the "significant increase" in military funding.
- Angela Merkel inspects NATO troops in Germany DW, Ben Knight (20 May 2019)
- Turkey doesn’t understand that, for the United States, buying a sophisticated Russian air defense system is a major national security issue that can’t be papered over. But Americans don’t understand that all their tough talk about leveling sanctions against Turkey if the Russian arms sale goes through only plays into Turkish leaders’ hands politically...
Speaking at a forum on Ankara-Washington relations hosted by the Hudson Institute in Washington, Hudson fellow Blaise Misztal said that, to President Tayyip Erdogan and his political coalition partners, “sanctions and kicking you out of 'NATO is a winning policy” because it fuels long-standing and growing anti-Americanism in their nationalist-leaning array of parties. Since 2014, and particularly after a failed coup attempt in 2016 that many Turks believe was known in Washington before it was launched, Erdogan “is becoming closer to [Vladimir] Putin, [[[Bashar al-Assad|Bashir al] Assad]], Iran and China” to burnish his nationalist credentials, Misztal said. As an example of how this plays out, Erdogan told his parliament Wednesday the nation is “passing through a very critical period, from economy to security.” He warned about plotters still inside its borders and their outside supporters. At the same time as Erdogan spoke, a Turkish newspaper reported the defense ministry is sending troops to Russia to receive familiarization training for the S-400 air defense system....All this is taking place even after the United States lowered its asking price for the American Patriot air defense system, which is compatible with 'NATO' standards, Misztal added.
- On 4 April 2019, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, better known as NATO, marked the 70th anniversary of its existence... Coinciding with the anniversary event on 4 April, peace activists and concerned scholars in several countries conducted a variety of events to draw attention to, and further document, the many war crimes and other atrocities committed by NATO (sometimes by deploying its associate and crony terrorist armies – ISIS, Al Qaeda, Al Nusra – recruited and trained by the CIA and funded by Saudi Arabia, other Gulf countries and the US directly or through one or other of its many agencies: see ‘NATO – No Need – NATO-EXIT: The Florence Declaration’), the threat that NATO poses to global peace and security as an appendage of the US military, and to consider ways that NATO might be terminated.
- Robert J. Burrowes in Understanding NATO, Ending War, CounterPunch (23 May 2019)
- NATO member states are harnessed into endorsing Washington’s imperial design of World conquest under the doctrine of collective security.... Chossudovsky offers the most comprehensive list of ideas in this regard well aware that stopping NATO is intimately connected to the struggle to end war and globalization. Chossudovsky’s ideas range from organizational suggestions such as integrating anti-war protest with the campaign against the gamut of neoliberal economic ‘reforms’ and the development of a broad based grassroots network independent of NGOs funded by Wall Street, objectives such as dismantling the propaganda apparatus which sustains the legitimacy of war and neoliberalism, challenging the corporate media (including by using alternative media outlets on the Internet), providing encouragement (including information about the illegality of their orders) for military personnel to refuse to fight (perhaps like the GI coffeehouse movement during the US war on Vietnam...
- Robert J. Burrowes in Understanding NATO, Ending War, CounterPunch (23 May 2019)
- Lockheed Martin sees Europe as a key market opportunity, said Steve Over, director of F-35 international business development at the company. “Europe is probably the seat of interest for the F-35,” he told National Defense. “I see a future in the 2030 timeframe, where, just like the F-16 today is the NATO standard fighter of choice, you’re seeing NATO allies recapitalize those F-16s with F-35s.” By the 2030s, Over said he expects there will be more than 500 joint strike fighters in NATO nation inventories.
- Even in the age of ultra-sophisticated nuclear submarines... the hard truth is inescapable: the sea is the most hostile environment on Earth. It is totally unforgiving of human error or overconfidence. The pressures below 2,000 feet can crush a submarine like an aluminum can in seconds. For reasons that even now are a closely guarded secret, that happened in late May 1968 when the nuclear attack submarine USS Scorpion (SSN-589) sank in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean as she was returning from a long deployment. Ninety-nine officers and men were on board... By 1968 it was obvious to the Navy’s Bureau of Ships that the submarine was badly in need of major overhaul. Yet the demands of the Cold War made it necessary to send Scorpion and her officers and crew on one more deployment... in joint NATO operations. She would, however, sail with one less man. Electrician’s Mate Dan Rogers, who refused to go on the cruise, flatly stated to Lt. Cmdr. Francis Slattery that every man on Scorpion was in danger.
- Poland has formally requested Lockheed Martin (LMT) F-35 fifth-generation fighters as it looks to modernize its Soviet-era fleet. The order for the 32 fifth-generation fighter jets comes as Warsaw launches a $49 billion modernization effort. The stealthy planes would replace Poland's Soviet-era Su-22 and MiG-29 aircraft. Poland became a NATO member 20 years ago, and ordering Lockheed's F-35 is a key step toward making its air force more compatible, or interoperable, with other NATO allies that are buying the fighter as well. NATO allies are bullish on the fifth-generation jet. The U.K., Netherlands, Norway and Italy are also purchasing the F-35. Japan is the largest international buyer of the stealth jet, amid rising regional tensions with China. Earlier this year Germany decided against buying the F-35 to replace is fleet of aging Tornadoes and will instead look at older fourth-generation jets.
- Two decades ago NATO started it’s 78 day bombing campaign against Yugoslavia. Using the language of peace and humanitarianism NATO dismembered Yugoslavia killing more civilians than they did soldiers. A non-stop aerial assault on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia using more than a thousand Nato warplanes delivering 2,000 air-strikes in 40,000 sorties and with over 20,000 bombs dropped on the country.
- RS Ahthion The Dismemberment of Yugoslavia 20 Years On (28 May 2019)
- Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and White House senior advisor Jared Kushner are expected to attend the annual Bilderberg gathering in the Swiss town of Montreux this weekend. Participants at the confab include former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, former CIA Director David Petraeus, James Baker, Director of the Office of Net Assessment at the Pentagon, Evercore’s Roger Altman, Jigsaw’s Jared Cohen, Historians Niall Ferguson, Stephen Kotkin, and Timothy Snyder, Palantir Technologies’s Alex Karp, Henry Kravis, Matthew Pottinger, senior director at the National Security Council, CFR’s Robert Rubin, Hudson Institute’s Nadia Schadlow, and Alphabet’s Eric Schmidt... The event first kicked off in 1954, “when a small group of powerful Europeans met with a group of influential North Americans to discuss the future of the transatlantic liberal alliance,” according to the Washington Post. In 2007, the Anti-Defamation League debunked conspiracy theories that the Bilderberg group is part of a global elite trying to promote a “new world order” under their control.
- Relations between Turkey and Greece are the most fractious of any pair of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) 29 member countries. Disputes range from contested offshore hydrocarbon exploration to Athens granting political refugee status to two of eight Turkish officers who fled to Greece after the failed July 2016 coup attempt (Hürriyet Daily News, May 24, 2018). Now, Turkey is protesting Greece’s activities off its Aegean coast. On May 12, Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hami Aksoy stated that Turkey claims Greece does not respect the demilitarized status of its islands in the eastern Aegean, adding that NATO warships operating in the Aegean should not use Greek ports there for visits and refueling (Mfa.gov.tr, May 12, 2019). Aksoy’s concerns mask a broader anxiety in Ankara that NATO and the United States may be planning to deepen their military presence in the eastern Mediterranean to include more bases in Greece and its Aegean islands.
- Turkey Fumes as Greece Offers Use of Eastern Aegean Islands to NATO, US Eurasia Daily Monitor, Volume: 16 Issue: 80,(The Jamestown Foundation), by John C. K. Daly, (31 May 2019)
- Stephen F. Cohen said when I interviewed him: “The wall had come down...Germany was reunifying. The question became ‘where would a united Germany be?’ The West wanted Germany in NATO. For Gorbachev, this was an impossible sell. Twenty-seven point five million Soviet citizens had died in the war against Germany in the Second World War on the eastern front. Contrary to the bunk we’re told, the United States didn’t land on Normandy and defeat Nazi Germany. The defeat of Nazi Germany was done primarily by the Soviet army.
How could Gorbachev go home and say, ‘Germany is reunited. Great. And it’s going to be in NATO.’ It was impossible. They told Gorbachev, ‘We promise if you agree to a reunited Germany in NATO, NATO will not move—this was [U.S.] Secretary of State James Baker—one inch to the east. In other words, NATO would not move from Germany toward Russia. And it did... As we speak today, NATO is on Russia’s borders,” Cohen said. “From the Baltics to Ukraine to the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. So, what happened? Later, they said Gorbachev lied or he misunderstood. [That] the promise was never made. But the National Security Archive in Washington has produced all the documents of the discussion in 1990. It was not only [President George H.W.] Bush, it was the French leader François Mitterrand, it was Margaret Thatcher of England. Every Western leader promised Gorbachev NATO would not move eastward.”- Manufacturing War With Russia, TruthDig, Chris Hedges (3 June 2019)
- NATO member Bulgaria expects the United States to offer to sell it eight new F-16 fighter jets for its air force at a discounted price of $1.2 billion, the defence ministry said on Tuesday. The U.S. State Department approved the possible sale of eight F-16 aircraft and related equipment at an estimated cost of $1.67 billion, a Pentagon agency said on Monday. Bulgaria, which is also a member of the European Union, is looking to replace its ageing Soviet-made MiG-29s and improve compliance with NATO standards. A deal for Lockheed Martin's F-16 Block 70 would be the Balkan country's biggest military procurement since the fall of Communist rule some 30 years ago.
- Trump, with his America First rhetoric, has made clear that he believes that the sovereignty of individual nations pursuing their own interests should be the basis for international relations instead of formal multilateral institutions... Unique among post-Cold War presidents, Trump ditched the traditional view of NATO and the European Union as institutions that bolster the US-led order and multiply American power. The former real estate tycoon takes a more transactional view of such bodies, making hard-nosed calculations about the material return on US investment -- in strictly financial terms. Many Presidents have griped that the allies have failed to share the burden of the NATO umbrella and about the failure of many to live up to their own defense spending goals. But Trump is the only commander in chief to make such complaints an organizing principle of foreign policy -- a strategy mirrored in his attitude toward Asian allies Japan and South Korea. He left NATO leaders visibly shocked at his first visit to the alliance headquarters in May 2017, claiming that some allies "owe massive amounts of money from past years."
- In 1980, NATO followed the U.S. military’s lead, adopting the 30-round magazine for standard use. The NATO Standard Agreement magazine...is currently compatible with 75 different types of rifles.... The 30-round rifle magazine has been the standard high-capacity magazine for more than three decades. These devices are used by the military and police around the world, and can be found accompanying popular civilian rifles like the AR-15...The new products can reliably fire 40 or more rounds before requiring reloading. ...Online, they can be purchased for as little as $8 apiece.
- This very big, very dirty secret — that war drives climate change — is carefully guarded. To keep things hush-hush the military is excused from oversight or obligation. This exception to the rule of law has always been the practice but G.W. Bush formalized it demanding language to that effect in the 1997 Kyoto Accords, which he later refused to sign anyway... The complete U.S. military exemption from greenhouse gas emissions calculations includes more than 1,000 U.S. bases in more than 130 countries around the world, it’s 6,000 facilities in the U.S., its aircraft carriers and jet aircraft. Also excluded are its weapons testing and all multilateral operations such as the giant U.S. commanded NATO military alliance and AFRICOM, the U.S. military alliance now blanketing Africa. The provision also exempts U.S./UN-sanctioned activities of “peacekeeping” and “humanitarian relief.”
Objections to: Bulk Removal of properly sourced, relevant quotations from notable people. It IS POV Pushing (May 27, 2022)
[edit]- HOC - please note that everyone has different views and that removing quotations that you don't like is POV pushing.
- Suggestion: Instead of deleting the quotations of popular, notable people whose ideology differs from yours, maybe you could leave the material you don't like alone and find worthy quotations from notable people with ideologies that you are comfortable with - and add them to the articles?
- Evidently you have removed much more work that was reviewed & accepted by the administration of this project years or months ago in the last three months, than you've contributed in several years. Removing all those quotations seems an extreme example of POV-pushing. Still you use the phrase "pov pushing" regularly as you push your povs - as if you have been anointed to decide what is and what is not POV pushing. Were you?
- It seems we are witnessing a desperate, extremist act of censorship. The systematic removal of quotations from notable, well-known people who have expressed ideas which tyrants who may be fearful of the truth, fearful of democracy & ethics, tyrants who count on/aim for permanent war profit$ based on permanent conflict$ based on permanent deception, would find objectionable and would want removed. Very inconvenient truths for them. Perhaps their big lie is something like:
The permanent flow of trillions of dollars for weapons, all justified with deception & intentionally cultivated hostilities with some nations (we mu$t have enemie$!), and dirty trick$ are all "good", while certain information that stands in opposition to our beloved mafia state, things like respect for the rule of law, international unity, integrity, diplomacy, truth, democracy, peace & other commonly values are "bad"? - It seems that the hardworking, dedicated, educated, tolerant admins who've been here every day for years, would almost surely have removed anything significant that was inappropriate long ago if doing so was actually a good idea. But here we are.
- Perhaps you see yourself as someone with special powers of observation that exceed those of the admins?
- Maybe your actions here have been purchased? Sorry but it seems such a question should be asked. Maybe someday wikiquotians will sign an agreement, agreeing to certain conditions and standards. Hope so.
- You may want to note that many educated people believe those who put derogatory labels on others are not elevating themselves in so doing.
- Finally, i'm sorry, but not sorry for this conflict. It seems conflict has been and will remain a normal part of life, until the situation on our planet becomes worthy of being called 'civilized' (as long as the blind lead the blind). All conflicts that are well managed by mentally healthy adults seem to lead eventually to harmony. Of course, nobody has all the answers - but when we cooperate/work together - we move forward. It's not always easy & the truth rarely flatters.
Agreeing to disagree, but please take it easy! 24.42.166.244 16:55, 27 May 2022 (UTC)
Calling a quote "Not A Quote" = bullshit. WQ Policy goal: 250 words per quote max
[edit]- Hi HOC: Earlier today, you wrote: "long editorial paragraphs are not "quotes" in a remarkably orwellian manner, as you removed premium, pro-democracy, pro-truth, pro-peace & sanity quotations from: well known & respected authors ie: Noam Chomsky, Ron Paul, and the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) (some of the countless quotes you've removed are listed below with word counts).
Perhaps you are not aware that "250 words" is the target maximum # of words to be used in quotes here according to wikiquotes policy. The quotes you are saying are not quotes were by wikipedia's definitions, quotes. Please use wikiquotes definitions instead of making up your own here.
Also, who would be interested in Wikiquotes if the quotations on controversial topics like NATO were all censored away by those who are foolishly trying to promote NATO? Such would not be good for humanity. It would clearly go against the fundamental principles of wikiquotes/wikipedia. You should know, that Nato has it's own web site & is over promoted already by corporate news media already. And that in a matter of time it will only be found in the history books so, all support of it are in vain.. :-)
Great Quotes Censored
- 139 words: There is a crisis brewing at the NATO-Russian border. It is no small matter. In his illuminating and judicious scholarly study of the region, Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands, Richard Sakwa writes — all too plausibly — that the “Russo-Georgian war of August 2008 was in effect the first of the ‘wars to stop NATO enlargement;’ the Ukraine crisis of 2014 is the second. It is not clear whether humanity would survive a third.” The West sees NATO enlargement as benign. Not surprisingly, Russia, along with much of the Global South, has a different opinion, as do some prominent Western voices. George Kennan warned early on that NATO enlargement is a “tragic mistake,” and he was joined by senior American statesmen in an open letter to the White House describing it as a “policy error of historic proportions.”
- Noam Chomsky, in Chomsky: Who Rules the World? BillMoyers.com (9 May 2016)
- 186 words: The Western response to Russia’s collapse was triumphalist. It was hailed as signaling “the end of history,” the final victory of Western capitalist democracy, almost as if Russia were being instructed to revert to its pre-World War I status as a virtual economic colony of the West. NATO enlargement began at once, in violation of verbal assurances to Gorbachev that NATO forces would not move “one inch to the east” after he agreed that a unified Germany could become a NATO member — a remarkable concession, in the light of history... The possibility that NATO might expand beyond Germany was not discussed with Gorbachev, even if privately considered.
Soon, NATO did begin to move beyond, right to the borders of Russia. The general mission of NATO was officially changed to a mandate to protect “crucial infrastructure” of the global energy system, sea lanes and pipelines, giving it a global area of operations. Furthermore, under a crucial Western revision of the now widely heralded doctrine of “responsibility to protect,” sharply different from the official UN version, NATO may now also serve as an intervention force under US command.- Noam Chomsky, in Chomsky: Who Rules the World? BillMoyers.com (9 May 2016)
- 181 words: Of particular concern to Russia are plans to expand NATO to Ukraine. These plans were articulated explicitly at the Bucharest NATO summit of April 2008, when Georgia and Ukraine were promised eventual membership in NATO. The wording was unambiguous: “NATO welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO.” With the “Orange Revolution” victory of pro-Western candidates in Ukraine in 2004, State Department representative Daniel Fried rushed there and “emphasized US support for Ukraine’s NATO and Euro-Atlantic aspirations,” as a WikiLeaks report revealed.
Russia’s concerns are easily understandable. They are outlined by international relations scholar John Mearsheimer in the leading US establishment journal, Foreign Affairs. He writes that “the taproot of the current crisis [over Ukraine] is NATO expansion and Washington’s commitment to move Ukraine out of Moscow’s orbit and integrate it into the West,” which Putin viewed as “a direct threat to Russia’s core interests.”.... “Who can blame him?” Mearsheimer asks, pointing out that “Washington may not like Moscow’s position, but it should understand the logic behind it.”- Noam Chomsky, in Chomsky: Who Rules the World? BillMoyers.com (9 May 2016)
- 202 words: I work on the assumption that most people really want peace. Because of this, there needs to be a lot of propaganda, along with lies, intimidation and fear mongering in order to get people to foolishly acquiesce to war. This week, news broke regarding the emails of NATO Commander and U.S. General Philip Breedlove. Apparently Breedlove was plotting behind the scenes against Obama, who was not as confrontational with Russia as Breedlove would have liked. All back-channels were used to put pressure on Obama and U.S. public opinion about what was happening in Ukraine. One would think that this would be a major story in the media. But after The Intercept broke the news, it was picked up by a few other outlets, and then fell off the face of the Earth!
NATO should have disbanded after the Cold War, just as the Warsaw Pact did. Instead of disbanding, NATO proceeded to gobble up Eastern European countries that were formerly a part of the Warsaw Pact. The "regime change" and absorption of Ukraine into NATO would put them right on Russia's border. NATO is not a friend of peace. We don't need it.- Ron Paul in NATO Is Not A Friend of Peace (5 July 2016)
- 240 words: We find troubling... NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s statement... that NATO members will agree to “further enhance NATOs military presence in the eastern part of the alliance,” adding... its “biggest reinforcement since the Cold War.” The likelihood of a military clash in the air or at sea – accidental or intentional – has grown sharply, the more so since, as we explain below, President Obama’s control over top U.S./NATO generals, some of whom like to play cowboy, is tenuous. Accordingly we encourage you, as we did before the last NATO summit, to urge your NATO colleagues to bring a “degree of judicious skepticism” to the table at Warsaw – especially with regard to the perceived threat from Russia.
Many of us have spent decades studying Moscow’s foreign policy. We shake our heads in disbelief when we see Western leaders seemingly oblivious to what it means to the Russians to witness exercises on a scale not seen since Hitler’s armies launched “Unternehmen Barbarossa” 75 years ago, leaving 25 million Soviet citizens dead. In our view, it is irresponsibly foolish to believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin will not take countermeasures... Putin does not have the option of trying to reassure his generals that what they hear and see from NATO is mere rhetoric and posturing... In sum, Russia is bound to react strongly to what it regards as the unwarranted provocation of large military exercises along its western borders, including in Ukraine.
- Length of quotes: Inappropriately lengthy quotes will be trimmed or discarded, with a maximum of 250 words per quote, absent a consensus that exceptional circumstances exist.
- Wikiquote:Policies and guidelines
Wikiquote is a collaborative project and its founders and contributors have a common goal:
Our goal with Wikiquote is to create a free compendium of quotations--indeed, the largest compendium of quotations in history, in both breadth and depth. We also want Wikiquote to become a reliable resource.
- Please quit censoring everything that you don't like. :Thank you 24.42.166.244 17:56, 27 May 2022 (UTC)
- Responding to the misleading claim above about quote length, Wikiquote:Quotability#Length says "Typically, the most quotable quotes are one line or two short lines. " Quoting from the same policy, 250 words is "a limit, not a goal. Carefully examine excessively long quotes to determine whether all of the material reproduced is really needed."
- Thus for example, I shortened the 139-word Noam Chomsky quote mentioned above to 73 words: I believe what is STILL IN THE ARTICLE conveys his meaning: "There is a crisis brewing at the NATO-Russian border. It is no small matter. In his illuminating and judicious scholarly study of the region, Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands, Richard Sakwa writes — all too plausibly — that the “Russo-Georgian war of August 2008 was in effect the first of the ‘wars to stop NATO enlargement;’ the Ukraine crisis of 2014 is the second. It is not clear whether humanity would survive a third.”
- The 202-word Ron Paul quote mentioned above is also STILL IN THE ARTICLE although shortened to 61 words, again, it still represents his opinion of NATO: "NATO should have disbanded after the Cold War, just as the Warsaw Pact did. Instead of disbanding, NATO proceeded to gobble up Eastern European countries that were formerly a part of the Warsaw Pact. The "regime change" and absorption of Ukraine into NATO would put them right on Russia's border. NATO is not a friend of peace. We don't need it."
- Anyone who looks at the part of the article I worked on so far, only the years 2016 to 2019, can easily see that despite removing much cruft, I also left many quotes that express your anti-NATO, pro-Russia opinion. Wikiquote is a collaborative project, and I hope editors who have not been banned will contribute to improving the NATO article. HouseOfChange (talk) 19:36, 27 May 2022 (UTC)
Removing paragraphs of editorializing and COATRACK pov-pushing from more sections
[edit]2021 section
[edit]I trimmed some long unquotable passages in this section. The following quotes I removed from the article; posting them here so others can decide if they are COATRACK POV-pushing or relevant quotable quotes about NATO. HouseOfChange (talk) 12:49, 28 May 2023 (UTC)
- During the transition to the new Clinton administration, Madeleine Albright famously asked Gen. Colin Powell, then chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, "What's the point of having this superb military you're always talking about if we can't use it?" In 1999, as secretary of state under Bill Clinton, Albright got her wish, running roughshod over the UN Charter with an illegal war to carve out an independent Kosovo from the ruins of Yugoslavia. The UN Charter clearly prohibits the threat or use of military force except in cases of self-defense or when the UN Security Council takes military action "to maintain or restore international peace and security." This was neither. When U.K. Foreign Secretary Robin Cook told Albright his government was "having trouble with our lawyers" over NATO's illegal war plan, Albright crassly told him to "get new lawyers."
- Twenty-two years later, Kosovo is the third-poorest country in Europe (after Moldova and post-coup Ukraine) and its independence is still not recognized by 96 countries. Hashim Thaçi, Albright's hand-picked main ally in Kosovo and later its president, is awaiting trial in an international court at the Hague, charged with murdering at least 300 civilians under cover of NATO bombing in 1999 to extract and sell their internal organs on the international transplant market. Clinton and Albright's gruesome and illegal war set the precedent for more illegal U.S. wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and elsewhere, with equally devastating and horrific results.
- Well, I was myself recently also in Afghanistan, and I sat down with the mothers in these displacement camps around Kabul. And I asked them, “What about the future? What do you think of the future?” And they told me very clearly, “We believe we will starve and freeze to death this harsh winter, unless there is an enormous aid operation coming through and unless there is a public sector again that is able to provide services.” It is as acute as that. Forty million civilians were left behind when the NATO countries went for the door in August.
- To illustrate the Pentagon’s ho-hum acceptance of mass destruction, it recently opened in Omaha its new, $1.3 billion Strategic Command headquarters for supervising and targeting the nuclear arsenal, and it named the building after General Curtis LeMay, who, the Omaha World Herald reported, designed and conducted the incendiary bombing of 60 Japanese cities at the end of WWII, bombing that “incinerated entire cities” killing as many as 900,000 civilians. General LeMay’s motto and that of Strategic Command used to be “Death from Above,” but after the war it was changed to “Peace is Our Profession.”
In Germany, readiness for attacks with nuclear weapons is maintained by the USAF 702nd Munitions Support Squadron, which tends to Germany’s 33rd Fighter-Bomber Wing at Büchel Air Force Base. Headlines from last October’s bombing “theater” included, and “NATO Holds Secret Nuclear War Exercises in Germany,” “German Air Force training for nuclear war as part of NATO;” from 2017, “NATO nuclear weapons exercise unusually open”; and in 2015, “NATO nuclear weapons exercise Steadfast Noon in Büchel.”
While the uninitiated might be aghast, the US military plans and prepares all year round for nuclear attacks at its far-flung “Defense Nuclear Weapons School” of the Air Force Nuclear College. According to the school’s website, one branch (of “Armageddon Academy”) is at the Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany, the largest US military base outside the country.- US and NATO Nuclear Lunacy Still Raving by John Laforge, CounterPunch, December 24, 2021
- How likely is doomsday? Well back to Ukraine, regarding which, on December 1, Russian President Putin asked the west for legal guarantees that it would cease eastward expansion. This request, made because Washington’s word is worthless (vide just for starters, the Iran nuclear pact, and President George H.W. Bush’s promise that NATO would never, ho, ho, expand to Russia’s borders) and met with scoffs by the white house, comes amid complicated tensions. The Kiev military recently claimed it used Turkish attack drones “in combat against ethnic Russian rebels,” Finian Cunningham reported October 28 in Information Clearing House. This is not good. Turkey is in NATO. If Turkey gets tangled up in the Ukraine imbroglio, that substantially escalates things. According to Anatol Lieven in Responsible Statecraft on November 24, “Moscow is especially alarmed by Ukraine’s acquisition of Turkish Bayraktar combat drones,” used to such deadly effect by Azerbaijan in its 2020 conquest of Armenian territory. Unlike the F-35, these things actually work. Worse, Cunningham reports that “American, British and Canadian military advisors… have carried out training missions with UAF combat units.” Now the Kremlin has warned that “NATO’s support to the Kiev regime was posing a direct threat to Russia’s national security.” That’s called drawing a red line. In fact, on December 2, Putin called NATO deployment of troops to Ukraine exactly that, a red line. Will the U.S. and NATO be stupid enough to cross it? If so, now would be a good time to invest in a bomb shelter.
- Dangerous Games: Western Militaries on the Doorsteps of Russia and China, by Eve Ottenberg, CounterPunch, December 10, 2021
- With regard to nuclear weapons, the situation is far more dangerous than the last Doomsday Clock report. New weapons systems under development are much more effectively dangerous. The Biden administration, expanding upon Trump’s confrontational approach, has Chomsky at a loss for words to describe the danger at hand. Only recently, Biden met with NATO leaders and instructed them to plan on two wars, China and Russia. According to Chomsky: “This is beyond insanity.” Not only that, the group is carrying out provocative acts when diplomacy is really needed. This is an extraordinarily dangerous situation.
According to Chomsky, the Doomsday Clock setting at 100 seconds to midnight is based upon: (1) global warming (2) nuclear war and (3) disinformation, or the collapse of any kind of rational discourse. As such, number three makes it impossible to deal with the first two major problems... As a result, Chomsky says: “We’re living in a world of total illusion and fantasy.” Accordingly, “Unless this is dealt with soon, it’ll be impossible to deal with the two major issues within the time span that we have available, which is not very long.”
HouseOfChange (talk) 12:49, 28 May 2023 (UTC)
2022 section
[edit]I trimmed some longer passages, and removed the following not-very-quotable quotes, still leaving many behind that assert the same POV but have at least more relevance to NATO itself, as opposed to mentioning NATO en passant to a defense of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. HouseOfChange (talk) 13:18, 28 May 2023 (UTC)
- Russia is right: The West promised not to enlarge NATO, and these promises were broken.
- Tarik Cyril Amar, Russia is right: The West promised not to enlarge NATO & these promises were broken, RT, 15 January 2022
- Is the proxy war in Ukraine turning out to be only a lead-up to something larger, involving world famine and a foreign-exchange crisis for food- and oil-deficit countries? Many more people are likely to die of famine and economic disruption than on the Ukrainian battlefield. It thus is appropriate to ask whether what appeared to be the Ukraine proxy war is part of a larger strategy to lock in U.S. control over international trade and payments. We are seeing a financially weaponized power grab by the U.S. Dollar Area over the Global South as well as over Western Europe. Without dollar credit from the United States and its IMF subsidiary, how can countries stay afloat? How hard will the U.S. act to block them from de-dollarizing, opting out of the U.S. economic orbit? U.S. Cold War strategy is not alone in thinking how to benefit from provoking a famine, oil and balance-of-payments crisis. Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum worries that the world is overpopulated – at least with the “wrong kind” of people. As Microsoft philanthropist (the customary euphemism for rentier monopolist) Bill Gates has explained: “Population growth in Africa is a challenge.”
- Unfortunately, it’s US “diplomacy” which brought the US, Russia, Ukraine, and NATO to the current standoff. As the Warsaw Pact disintegrated and the Soviet Union collapsed, US encouragement for those events included pledges that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization wouldn’t take advantage of the situation to expand eastward. Since then, NATO has inexorably pushed in that direction, nearly doubling the number of member states. Thanks, US “diplomacy.”... Things began coming to a head with the US-sponsored coup in Ukraine that replaced its “Russia-friendly” regime with a “US/Europe-friendly” regime in 2014, courtesy of Barack Obama. Thanks, US “diplomacy.”
Then in 2019, the US withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which forbade the US to place missiles within surprise strike distance of Russia, and Russia to place similar missiles within surprise strike distance of NATO. The US followed up by placing exactly such missiles in Poland, courtesy of Donald Trump. Some “diplomacy.”... Then the US went into overdrive (courtesy of Trump and Biden) against the opening of a pipeline (Nord Stream 2) which would have supplied Russian natural gas to Germany. The pipeline would have been a force for peace insofar as Russia likes to sell natural gas (at a fraction of prices the US can offer), and Germans like to not freeze to death.- Ukraine: US “Diplomacy” is the Problem. Can it Become the Solution? Thomas Knapp, CounterPunch, February 23, 2022
- As in a Greek tragedy whose protagonist brings about precisely the fate that he has sought to avoid, the US/NATO confrontation with Russia in Ukraine is achieving just the opposite of America’s aim of preventing China, Russia and their allies from acting independently of U.S. control over their trade and investment policy... The basic U.S. policy has been to threaten to destabilize countries and perhaps bomb them until they agree to adopt neoliberal policies and privatize their public domain. But taking on Russia, China and Iran is a much higher order of magnitude. NATO has disarmed itself of the ability to wage conventional warfare by handing over its supply of weaponry – admittedly largely outdated – to be devoured in Ukraine... All that NATO can do is bomb from a distance. It can destroy, but not occupy. The United States found that out in Serbia, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Afghanistan. And just as the assassination Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo (now Bosnia-Herzegovina) triggered World War I in 1914, NATO’s bombing of adjoining Serbia may be viewed as throwing down the gauntlet to turn Cold War 2 into a veritable World War III. That marked the point at which NATO became an offensive alliance, not a defensive one.... Russia is no more in a position to invade Western Europe than NATO countries are to send conscripts to fight Russia.
- Michael Hudson, American Diplomacy as a Tragic Drama, (28 July 2022)
- In the case of Ukraine, NATO membership for that country implied the expulsion of Russia from the naval base of Sevastopol in Crimea (a city of immense importance to Russia, both strategic and emotional), and the creation of a hard international frontier between Russia and the Russian and Russian-speaking minorities in Ukraine, making up more than a third of the Ukrainian population....while the terms of any compromise with Russia over Ukraine would involve some tough negotiation, we can seek such a compromise without fearing that this will open the way for further Russian moves to destroy NATO and subjugate eastern Europe—a ridiculous idea for anyone who knows either the goals of the Russian establishment or the character of Poles and Estonians.
- Anatol Lieven,Russia Has Been Warning About Ukraine for Decades. The West Should Have Listened Time, January 25, 2022
- Failing at least initial moves towards such a compromise, it does indeed look likely that there will be some form of new Russian attack on Ukraine, though by no means necessarily a large-scale invasion. In the event of war, however far the Russian army marches will be followed by a new Russian proposal for a deal in return for Russian withdrawal. The only difference between then and now will be that NATO will have been humiliated by its inability to fight, the West and Ukraine will be in a much weaker position to negotiate a favorable deal—and that in the meantime, thousands of people will have died.
- Anatol Lieven,Russia Has Been Warning About Ukraine for Decades. The West Should Have Listened Time, January 25, 2022
- That NATO advance makes no sense. It is going to lead us again to a division of the world.
- José Mujica, referring to 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Quoted in José Mujica habla así de Putin y augura qué va a pasar: alucinan hasta los periodistas, huffingtonpost (19 July 2021)
- We had a moment in history, between 1988 and 1991, where we could have worked with Mikhail Gorbachev to make his vision of perestroika succeed. Instead, we allowed him to fail, without any real plan on how we would live with what emerged from the ruins of the Soviet Union. Save for a short period of time during the Second World War where we needed the Soviet Union to defeat Germany and Japan, we have been in a continual state of political conflict with the Soviet Union. Even after the Soviet Union collapsed, we viewed the Russian Federation more as a defeated enemy that we needed to keep down, than a friend in need of a helping hand up. Yeltsin’s Russia was useful to the US and NATO only to the extent that we could exploit it economically while controlling its domestic politics in a manner that kept Russia in a perpetual state of weakness. The Obama “reset” was simply a ploy to remove Vladimir Putin, who rejected the vision of Russia projected by the west, and replace him with Dmitri Medvedev, whom Obama believed could be remade in the figure of Yeltsin. The fact that Putin believes in a strong Russia has upset the plans of the US, NATO, and Europe for post-Cold War hegemony, predicated as they were on a weak, compliant Russian state.
- Scott Ritter as quoted in What Are The Prospects For Peace? by John Rachel, Dissident Voice / February 24th, 2022
- There’s a lot of talk about nuclear weapons. Why? Russia respects Article five of the NATO treaty, which is an attack against one is an attack against all. Russia is fully cognizant of the fact that if it attacks Poland or the Baltic states, it’s at war with NATO, and they know what that means.
But NATO doesn’t respect anything about Russia... NATO’s been expanding nonstop. They lied about it, about not wanting to do it back in 1990 to Gorbachev, they’ve lied about it ever since... But one of the whole reasons we’re at war in Ukraine right now is because of NATO wanting to expand and bring Ukraine into its umbrella. So when Russia moved into Ukraine, it also had to mollify Belarus, which is very nervous saying, well, okay, while you guys are down here doing the Ukraine thing, what’s to protect us? What if NATO decides to come into us? So Russia... said, if NATO decides to get involved in this, intervene, we will use all the means at our disposal to protect ourselves. And everybody went nuclear... There are other weapons that Russia has called hypersonics... I think what Russia was saying is we will take out NATO cities, NATO decision making centers, with non-nuclear means, all the means at our disposal. And Putin talked about weapons that are deployed such as the Kinzhal or the dagger, the hypersonic missile that’s been used, NATO can’t shoot it down... If Russia launches it against NATO, it will hit the target...- Scott Ritter: Don't Believe the Hype. Ukraine Can't Win This War; The Real News Network; (15 November 2022)
- Despite assurances to the contrary, NATO is not a ‘defensive organization’. Even though American memories are short, people elsewhere remember the bombing campaign against Serbia, and the removal of Gaddafi from power in Libya. What NATO is in fact is the military arm of US hegemony, a hegemony that has seen it expand eastwards through Europe, right up to Russia’s very own borders.
- Niccolo Soldo, "Fuck it!" Russia's Final Break With the West, Substack, 24 February 2022
Long passages of editorializing by non-notable people, none of which are notable or quotable
[edit]IMO none of the following quotes are suited to WQ's mission of hosting short notable/quotable passages. Archiving them here for those who want to check whether they agree. The uniform POV expressed in these is still amply represented in the article, but in more quotable ways. HouseOfChange (talk) 09:03, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
- The key issue is the status of NATO and the role of NATO in general and particularly with regard to the Ukraine. First, let me just begin with the more general issue of NATO. I think the Soviet Union to the very end expected that NATO would simply disappear because the Soviet counterpart to NATO, the Warsaw Pact effectively went out of business in 1989. And, you know, NATO didn’t seem to have any purpose anymore since the Cold War — by everybody’s agreement — was effectively over by the end of 1989.
- In terms of the Ukraine, in 2008, there were repeated statements by both U.S. and NATO officials that the Ukraine would be welcomed into NATO, and the Russians insisted that that was simply a bridge too far and they would not allow it.... I think there’s a tendency not to realize how provocative this is to the Russians in light of A, the fact that this is a violation of a U.S. agreement and B, that this is directly on the southern border of Russia. It’s a little bit like how the United States would feel if, let’s say, Russia established an alliance with Mexico and began building bases in Mexico.
- While Civil Society and a global movement work steadfastly across dozens of fields for the abolition of nuclear weapons, planning, preparations, and rehearsals for attacks using deployed H-bombs and nuclear missiles are routine in the US military and NATO.
- US and NATO Nuclear Lunacy Still Raving by John Laforge, CounterPunch, December 24, 2021
- NATO, originally set up to counter the USSR’s expansion into Europe, was left without a raison d’etre after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the USSR. Nevertheless, it pressed on eastwards, and thanks to the CIA and MI6, effected Colour Revolutions to put into power friendly regimes that sought NATO membership in places like Tbilisi and Kiev. Where Colour Revolutions weren’t necessary due to historical grievances against Russia, NATO missile systems pointed at Russia have been set up (Romania and Poland).
- Niccolo Soldo, "Fuck it!" Russia's Final Break With the West, Substack, 24 February 2022
- The alliance’s expansion coincided with the creeping spread of neoliberalism, helping secure the dominance of U.S. financial capital and sustain the rapacious military-industrial complex that underpins much of its economy and society. The umbilical bond between NATO membership and neoliberalism was expressed clearly by leading Atlanticists throughout the alliance’s eastward march.
- Pawel Warden, "NATO and the Long War on the Third World." Monthly Review. January 1, 2023.
Draft
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Excerpt from NATO's home page
[edit]- The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is one of the world’s major international institutions. It is a political and military alliance that brings together 29 member countries from Europe and North America. These countries meet to cooperate in the field of security and defence. In this respect, NATO provides a unique link between these two continents for political and security cooperation.
As the nature of threats changes, so must the methods of preserving peace. NATO is reorienting its defence capabilities towards today’s threats. It is adapting forces and developing multinational approaches to deal with terrorism, failed states and other security threats such as weapons of mass destruction.- NATO, What is NATO?
- Each member country has a permanent delegation at NATO’s political headquarters in Brussels, Belgium. It is headed by an ambassador, who represents his/her government in the Alliance’s consultation and decision-making process. The North Atlantic Council is the most important political decision-making body within the Organization. It meets at different levels and is chaired by the Secretary General of NATO, who helps members reach agreement on key issues.
- All decisions within each of NATO’s committees are reached by consensus. A “NATO decision” is therefore the expression of the collective will of all member countries. NATO has very few permanent forces of its own. When an operation is agreed by the North Atlantic Council, members contribute forces on a voluntary basis. These forces return to their countries once the mission is completed.
It is the role of the military command structure to coordinate and conduct these operations. This structure consists of headquarters and bases located in different member countries. NATO’s day-to-day activities, civil and military structures and security investment programmes are funded through common budgets to which member governments contribute in accordance with an agreed cost-sharing formula.- NATO, How does NATO work?
Statement by NATO Heads of State and Government (24 March 2022)
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- We, the Heads of State and Government of the 30 NATO Allies, have met today to address Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, the gravest threat to Euro-Atlantic security in decades. Russia’s war against Ukraine has shattered peace in Europe and is causing enormous human suffering and destruction.
- We condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in the strongest possible terms. We call on President Putin to immediately stop this war and withdraw military forces from Ukraine, and call on Belarus to end its complicity, in line with the Aggression Against Ukraine Resolution adopted at the UN General Assembly of 2 March 2022. Russia should comply with the 16 March ruling by the UN International Court of Justice and immediately suspend military operations. Russia’s attack on Ukraine threatens global security. Its assault on international norms makes the world less safe. President Putin’s escalatory rhetoric is irresponsible and destabilizing.
- Ukrainians have inspired the world with heroic resistance to Russia’s brutal war of conquest. We strongly condemn Russia’s devastating attacks on civilians, including women, children, and persons in vulnerable situations. We will work with the rest of the international community to hold accountable those responsible for violations of humanitarian and international law, including war crimes. We are deeply concerned about the increased risk of sexual violence and human trafficking. We urge Russia to allow rapid, safe, and unhindered humanitarian access and safe passage for civilians, and to allow for humanitarian aid to be delivered to Mariupol and other besieged cities. We also condemn attacks against civilian infrastructure, including those endangering nuclear power plants. We will continue to counter Russia’s lies about its attack on Ukraine and expose fabricated narratives or manufactured “false flag” operations to prepare the ground for further escalation, including against the civilian population of Ukraine. Any use by Russia of a chemical or biological weapon would be unacceptable and result in severe consequences.
- Russia needs to show it is serious about negotiations by immediately implementing a ceasefire. We call on Russia to engage constructively in credible negotiations with Ukraine to achieve concrete results, starting with a sustainable ceasefire and moving towards a complete withdrawal of its troops from Ukrainian territory. Russia’s continuing aggression while discussions are taking place is deplorable. We support Ukraine’s efforts to achieve peace, and those undertaken diplomatically by Allies to weigh in on Russia to end the war and relieve human suffering.
- We stand in full solidarity with President Zelenskyy, the government of Ukraine, and with the brave Ukrainian citizens who are defending their homeland. We honour all those killed, injured, and displaced by Russia’s aggression, as well as their families. We reaffirm our unwavering support for the independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders extending to its territorial waters.
- Ukraine has a fundamental right to self-defence under the United Nations Charter. Since 2014, we have provided extensive support to Ukraine’s ability to exercise that right.
- We are united in our resolve to counter Russia’s attempts to destroy the foundations of international security and stability. We are holding Russia and Belarus to account. Massive sanctions and heavy political costs have been imposed on Russia in order to bring an end to this war. We remain determined to maintain coordinated international pressure on Russia. We will continue to coordinate closely with relevant stakeholders and other international organizations, including the European Union. Transatlantic coordination remains crucial for an effective response to the current crisis.
- We remain committed to the foundational principles underpinning European and global security, including that each nation has the right to choose its own security arrangements free from outside interference. We reaffirm our commitment to NATO’s Open Door Policy under Article 10 of the Washington Treaty.
- We will continue to take all necessary steps to protect and defend the security of our Allied populations and every inch of Allied territory. Our commitment to Article 5 of the Washington Treaty is iron-clad.
In response to Russia’s actions, we have activated NATO’s defence plans, deployed elements of the NATO Response Force, and placed 40,000 troops on our eastern flank, along with significant air and naval assets, under direct NATO command supported by Allies’ national deployments.
- We are increasing the resilience of our societies and our infrastructure to counter Russia’s malign influence. We are enhancing our cyber capabilities and defences, providing support to each other in the event of cyber-attacks. We are ready to impose costs on those who harm us in cyberspace, and are increasing information exchange and situational awareness, enhancing civil preparedness, and strengthening our ability to respond to disinformation. We will also enhance our preparedness and readiness for chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats.
- Russia’s unprovoked war against Ukraine represents a fundamental challenge to the values and norms that have brought security and prosperity to all on the European continent. President Putin’s choice to attack Ukraine is a strategic mistake, with grave consequences also for Russia and the Russian people. We remain united and resolute in our determination to oppose Russia’s aggression, aid the government and the people of Ukraine, and defend the security of all Allies.
Madrid Summit Declaration (29 June 2022)
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- Madrid Summit Declaration issued by NATO Heads of State and Government participating in the meeting of the North Atlantic Council in Madrid (29 June 2022)
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- We, the Heads of State and Government of the North Atlantic Alliance, have gathered in Madrid as war has returned to the European continent. We face a critical time for our security and international peace and stability. We stand together in unity and solidarity and reaffirm the enduring transatlantic bond between our nations. NATO is a defensive Alliance and poses no threat to any country. NATO remains the foundation of our collective defence and the essential forum for security consultations and decisions among Allies. Our commitment to the Washington Treaty, including Article 5, is iron-clad. In this radically changed security environment, this Summit marks a milestone in strengthening our Alliance and accelerating its adaptation.
- We are united in our commitment to democracy, individual liberty, human rights, and the rule of law. We adhere to international law and to the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations. We are committed to upholding the rules-based international order.
- We condemn Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine in the strongest possible terms. It gravely undermines international security and stability. It is a blatant violation of international law. Russia’s appalling cruelty has caused immense human suffering and massive displacements, disproportionately affecting women and children. Russia bears full responsibility for this humanitarian catastrophe. Russia must enable safe, unhindered, and sustained humanitarian access. Allies are working with relevant stakeholders in the international community to hold accountable all those responsible for war crimes, including conflict-related sexual violence. Russia has also intentionally exacerbated a food and energy crisis, affecting billions of people around the world, including through its military actions. Allies are working closely to support international efforts to enable exports of Ukrainian grain and to alleviate the global food crisis. We will continue to counter Russia’s lies and reject its irresponsible rhetoric. Russia must immediately stop this war and withdraw from Ukraine. Belarus must end its complicity in this war.
- We warmly welcome President Zelenskyy’s participation in this Summit. We stand in full solidarity with the government and the people of Ukraine in the heroic defence of their country. We reiterate our unwavering support for Ukraine’s independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity within its internationally recognised borders extending to its territorial waters. We fully support Ukraine’s inherent right to self-defence and to choose its own security arrangements. We welcome efforts of all Allies engaged in providing support to Ukraine. We will assist them adequately, recognising their specific situation.
- We will continue and further step up political and practical support to our close partner Ukraine as it continues to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity against Russian aggression. Jointly with Ukraine, we have decided on a strengthened package of support. This will accelerate the delivery of non-lethal defence equipment, improve Ukraine’s cyber defences and resilience, and support modernising its defence sector in its transition to strengthen long-term interoperability. In the longer term, we will assist Ukraine, and support efforts on its path of post-war reconstruction and reforms.
- Resilience is a national responsibility and a collective commitment. We are enhancing our resilience, including through nationally-developed goals and implementation plans, guided by objectives developed by Allies together. We are also strengthening our energy security. We will ensure reliable energy supplies to our military forces. We will accelerate our adaptation in all domains, boosting our resilience to cyber and hybrid threats, and strengthening our interoperability. We will employ our political and military instruments in an integrated manner. We have endorsed a new chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear defence policy. We will significantly strengthen our cyber defences through enhanced civil-military cooperation.
- Climate change is a defining challenge of our time with a profound impact on Allied security. It is a threat multiplier. We have decided on a goal to significantly cut greenhouse gas emissions by the NATO political and military structures and facilities, while maintaining operational, military and cost effectiveness. We will integrate climate change considerations across all of NATO’s core tasks.
- We have met here in Madrid with many of NATO’s partners. We had valuable exchanges with the Heads of State and Government of Australia, Finland, Georgia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, New Zealand, Sweden, and Ukraine, as well as the President of the European Council and the President of the European Commission. We welcomed the engagements with the Foreign Ministers of Jordan and Mauritania, as well as the Defence Minister of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
- Taking into account our unprecedented level of cooperation with the European Union, we will continue to further strengthen our strategic partnership in a spirit of full mutual openness, transparency, complementarity, and respect for the organisations’ different mandates, decision-making autonomy and institutional integrity, and as agreed by the two organisations. Our common resolve in responding to Russia’s war against Ukraine highlights the strength of this unique and essential partnership. The participation of our partners from the Asia-Pacific region, alongside other partners, demonstrated the value of our cooperation in tackling shared security challenges.
- We will further enhance our partnerships so that they continue to meet the interests of both Allies and partners. We will discuss common approaches to global security challenges where NATO’s interests are affected, share perspectives through deeper political engagement, and seek concrete areas for cooperation to address shared security concerns. We will now move ahead with strengthening our engagement with existing and potential new interlocutors beyond the Euro-Atlantic area.
- Today, we have decided to invite Finland and Sweden to become members of NATO, and agreed to sign the Accession Protocols. In any accession to the Alliance, it is of vital importance that the legitimate security concerns of all Allies are properly addressed. We welcome the conclusion of the trilateral memorandum between Türkiye, Finland, and Sweden to that effect. The accession of Finland and Sweden will make them safer, NATO stronger, and the Euro-Atlantic area more secure. The security of Finland and Sweden is of direct importance to the Alliance, including during the accession process.
- With our decisions today, we have firmly set the direction for the Alliance’s continued adaptation. NATO remains the strongest Alliance in history. Through our bond and our mutual commitment, we will continue to safeguard the freedom and security of all Allies, as well as our shared democratic values, now and for future generations.
Quotes about NATO
[edit]1949
[edit]- [I]f the Kaiser in World War I and the Fuehrer in World War II had been on notice that an armed attack against any of the friendly nations with whom we associate ourselves would be considered a cause even for us to consider and study and determine whether or not we would enter into the common defense, it would have stopped both those wars before they occurred, and in my opinion that one single designation of a commanlty of interest in the North Atlantic pact...is the best assurance against world war III.
- Arthur Vandenberg, speech in the United States Senate (14 February 1949), quoted in Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates of the 81st Congress. First Session. Volume 95—Part 1. January 3, 1949, to February 17, 1949 (1949), p. 1164
- [T]his Pact is a purely defensive arrangement for the common security of the countries who join it, and it is not directed against anyone. If we are accused of ganging up against any country or group of countries I should say simply: "Examine the text. There is no secrecy about it, and there are no secret clauses. You will not find in the text any provision which threatens the security or the well-being of any nation." No nation innocent of aggressive intentions need have the slightest fear or apprehension about it.
- [T]he Pact must be regarded as a concrete expression of the identity of view long held among the Western nations. It recognises the common heritage and civilisation of their peoples, founded on principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law between nations. It is not elaborate; its simplicity is apparent, but I can assure the House that it is based on an understanding and determination to preserve our way of life.
- The paramount purposes of the pact are peace and security... It is clear that the North Atlantic Pact is not an improvisation. It is the statement of the facts and lessons from two world wars in less than half a century. That experience has taught us that the control of Europe by a single aggressive, unfriendly Power would constitute an intolerable threat to the national security of the United States... We must make it clear that armed attack will be met by collective defence, prompt and effective. That is the meaning of the North Atlantic Pact.
- Dean Acheson, radio broadcast (18 March 1949), quoted in The Times (19 March 1949), p. 4
- [The North Atlantic Pact is] an instrument of tremendous moral power. It lays before the world the desires of great nations to live in peace and to be free from molestation and hostile pressures by aggressive States. It mobilizes the forces of peace against the forces of exploitation and war. It is a shining monument to the highest and finest international ethics. It is a symbol of national integrity and good faith between nations.
- Tom Connally, statement quoted in The Times (19 March 1949), p. 4
- The Atlantic Treaty is not aggressive. It is purely defensive. Those who attack it as offensive do so from a bad conscience. They take just the same line as the Nazis did when every attempt by the nations to get together was denounced as the encirclement of Germany. We seek by the pact to gain for the nations a sense of security which they so ardently desire. We seek by the organization of security to make the world safe against aggression and by pooling of strength to reduce the burden of armaments.
- Clement Attlee, speech in Glasgow (10 April 1949), quoted in The Times (11 April 1949), p. 4
1953
[edit]- I am speaking tonight, not as an Englishman, but as an international servant of the fourteen countries which are linked together by the North Atlantic Treaty. I hope that I am being heard by many men and women in those countries, because I am convinced that, if the Alliance is to prosper, it must have the personal understanding and support of the citizens of the North Atlantic Community. When I am asked: "What is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization?", I am tempted to answer: "It is a great adventure. It is perhaps the most challenging and most constructive experiment in international relations that has ever been attempted. It is undoubtedly our best chance of preventing the measureless catastrophe of a third world war." But obviously I must be more specific than that. The best definition of NATO that I can give you in a few wordsis that it is the organisation that has been set up to ensure that the fourteen partners to the Treaty think together and act together in political, military, economic, social, cultural and other matters: in fact, to ensure that it is a true and thorough partnership. The fourteen partners are (I give them in alphabetical order): Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States.
- Hastings Ismay, BBC Radio Talk, 13 September 1953
- Now let me explain why these countries have bound themselves together by a treaty. At the end of the Second World War the democracies, hoping and believing that the United Nations would prove an effective instrument for peace, disarmed as fast as they could. Soviet Russia did nothing of the sort. They maintained their armed strength at wartime level. They launched a world-wide campaign of lies and hatred against the free world. They turned the proceedings of the United Nations into a farce by the use of the veto. They brought under their control, one by one, the countries of Eastern Europe. The democracies realised that unless something were done, it was only a matter of time before the countries of Western Europe alse were overrun. What was to be done? How was the balance of power to be restored? No single nation could do this alone. It could be done only by combining. That is why the North Atlantic Treaty was conceived. It was signed about 4½ years ago.
- Hastings Ismay, BBC Radio Talk, 13 September 1953
1956
[edit]- Yes, today we have genuine Russian weather. Yesterday we had Swedish weather. I can't understand why your weather is so terrible. Maybe it is because you are immediate neighbours of NATO.
- Nikita Khrushchev, at a Swedish-Soviet summit which began on March 30, 1956, in Moscow. The stenographed discussion was later published by the Swedish Government, as quoted in Raoul Wallenberg (1985) by Eric Sjöquist, p. 119.
1961
[edit]- With the creation of a separate West German state, with the conclusion of the Paris Agreements and with the inclusion of West Germany in NATO, the Western powers finally unilaterally broke the Potsdam Agreement, this sole valid document in international law for Germany in the postwar period. It is not coincidental that in connection with this a special occupation status of the three powers was established in West Berlin. By this three-sided occupation status, the Western powers themselves confirmed that they violated the international-legal basis of their occupation regime in West Berlin and that this regime was based only on undisguised military force.
- Walter Ulbricht, "Speech at the Moscow Conference, 3-5 August 1961" (3 August 1961).
1972
[edit]- Needless to say, in the 1950s when most Africans were still colonial subjects, they had absolutely no control over the utilization of their soil for militaristic ends. Virtually the whole of North Africa was turned into a sphere of operations for NATO, with bases aimed at the Soviet Union. There could easily have developed a nuclear war without African peoples having any knowledge of the matter. The colonial powers actually held military conferences in African cities like Dakar and Nairobi in the early 1950s, inviting the whites of South Africa and Rhodesia and the government of the U.S.A. Time and time again, the evidence points to this cynical use of Africa to buttress capitalism economically and militarily, and therefore in effect forcing Africa to contribute to its own exploitation.
- Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, p. 198
1981
[edit]- Washington and its NATO partners more and more often resort in international relations to the policy of blackmail and crude pressure. They try to impudently force their will on other countries and nations. Imperialist bigwigs put forward adventurist doctrines of either a "limited" nuclear war or a war with the use of only conventional, non-nuclear weapons.
1982
[edit]- The decay of the Soviet experiment should come as no surprise to us. Wherever the comparisons have been made between free and closed societies -- West Germany and East Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia, Malaysia and Vietnam -- it is the democratic countries what are prosperous and responsive to the needs of their people. And one of the simple but overwhelming facts of our time is this: Of all the millions of refugees we've seen in the modern world, their flight is always away from, not toward the Communist world. Today on the NATO line, our military forces face east to prevent a possible invasion. On the other side of the line, the Soviet forces also face east to prevent their people from leaving.
- Ronald Reagan, Address to the Parliament of the United Kingdom, 8 June 1982
1985
[edit]- NATO was a triumph of organization and effort, but is was also something very new and very different. For NATO derived its strength directly from the moral values of the people it represented, from their high ideals, their love of liberty, and their commitment to peace. But perhaps the greatest triumph of all was not in the realm of a sound defense or material achievement. No, the greatest triumph after the war is that in spite of all of the chaos, poverty, sickness, and misfortune that plagued this continent, the people of Western Europe resisted the call of new tyrants and the lure of their seductive ideologies. Your nations did not become the breeding ground for new extremist philosophies. You resisted the totalitarian temptation. Your people embraced democracy, the dream the Fascists could not kill. They chose freedom. And today we celebrate the leaders who led the way—Churchill and Monnet, Adenauer and Schuman, De Gasperi and Spaak, Truman and Marshall. And we celebrate, too, the free political parties that contributed their share of greatness—the Liberals and the Christian Democrats, the Social Democrats and Labour and the Conservatives. Together they tugged at the same oar, and the great and mighty ship of Europe moved on.
- Ronald Reagan, Address to a Special Session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, The American Presidency Project; 8 May 1985
1989
[edit]- We are convinced that it is high time talks on tactical nuclear systems were initiated among all interested countries. The ultimate objective is to completely eliminate those weapons. Only Europeans who have no intention of waging war against one another are threatened by those weapons. What are they for then and who needs them? Are nuclear arsenals to be eliminated or retained at all costs? Does the strategy of nuclear deterrence enhance or undermine stability? On all these questions the positions of NATO and the Warsaw Pact appear to be diametrically opposed. We, however, are not dramatising our differences. We are looking for solutions and invite our partners to join us in this quest.
- Mikhail Gorbachev, Speech to the Council of Europe (6 July 1989)
1990
[edit]- We understand the need for assurances to the countries in the East. If we maintain a presence in a Germany that is a part of NATO, there would be no extension of NATO’s jurisdiction for forces of NATO one inch to the east.
1997
[edit]- [P]erhaps it is not too late to advance a view that, I believe, is not only mine alone but is shared by a number of others with extensive and in most instances more recent experience in Russian matters. The view, bluntly stated, is that expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era. Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking.
- George F. Kennan, "A Fateful Error", New York Times (5 February 1997)
- The North Atlantic Treaty Organization and its member States, on the one hand, and the Russian Federation, on the other hand, hereinafter referred to as NATO and Russia, based on an enduring political commitment undertaken at the highest political level, will build together a lasting and inclusive peace in the Euro-Atlantic area on the principles of democracy and cooperative security.
- NATO and Russia do not consider each other as adversaries. They share the goal of overcoming the vestiges of earlier confrontation and competition and of strengthening mutual trust and cooperation. The present Act reaffirms the determination of NATO and Russia to give concrete substance to their shared commitment to build a stable, peaceful and undivided Europe, whole and free, to the benefit of all its peoples. Making this commitment at the highest political level marks the beginning of a fundamentally new relationship between NATO and Russia. They intend to develop, on the basis of common interest, reciprocity and transparency a strong, stable and enduring partnership.
- I consider the administration’s recommendation to take new members into NATO at this time misguided. If it should be approved by the United States Senate, it may well go down in history as the most profound strategic blunder made since the end of the Cold War.
- Jack F. Matlock Jr., statement at the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in 1997, cited in I was there: NATO and the origins of the Ukraine crisis, February 15, 2022
2001
[edit]
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- NATO should dispose of large fragments of depleted uranium (DU) ammunition remaining in Kosovo 18 months after the conflict ended, because they represent an unnecessary risk to health, a UN study says. Further details of the preliminary results of the UN Environment Programme investigation emerged yesterday as the EU began an inquiry into whether there is a link between radioactive military debris and the death from cancer of soldiers who served in the Balkans.
- NATO urged to clean up its uranium debris in Kosovo, Call for ban on radioactive shells as EU investigates link with soldiers' cancer deaths, The Guardian, Peter Capella in Geneva and Owen Bowcott (4 Jan 2001)
- Concern has been mounting rapidly throughout Europe over the effects of depleted uranium (DU) munitions used by NATO in Bosnia and Yugoslavia during the 1994-95 and 1999 wars. At least 12 soldiers... who served in the Balkans have died of leukemia or other forms of cancer; several... are being treated for cancer... Other soldiers and aid workers have experienced symptoms including “chronic fatigue, hair loss and various types of cancer” (New York Times, 1/7/01)...
Italy, Belgium, France, Portugal and Germany have all demanded that NATO conduct a thorough investigation into the health and environmental impacts of DU, and have expressed distrust of Pentagon and NATO reassurances (Agence France Presse, 1/8/01). Reports in the European press suggest that the situation is causing serious divisions within the alliance, with the conservative London Times asserting that the soldiers’ “Deaths Threaten the Unity of NATO” (1/6/01)... Germany has called on NATO to ban the toxic and radioactive metal (The Independent, 1/9/01), while the United Nations’ war crimes tribunal has offered to make available all relevant records on the Kosovo war, raising the question of the legality of NATO’s use of DU (Agence France Presse, 1/8/01). Since the new year, stories about the DU controversy have been running almost daily in every major British newspaper, with the Guardian (1/8/01) and Independent (1/6/01) each running editorials calling for a NATO investigation into DU’s health effects...
- Meanwhile, in the U.S.—the country most responsible by far for DU contamination—newspapers have relegated most of their coverage to news briefs and short wire stories. The only U.S. newspaper in the Nexis media database to have run an editorial on the current controversy is the Seattle Times (1/6/01). Big picture questions about the extensive use of DU since the Gulf War, its lasting impact on civilian populations and the record of official deception around DU have been largely ignored in both print and broadcast reports... According to a search of the Nexis database, no major U.S. newspaper, magazine, television show or wire service has reported on the COE’s suggestion that NATO countries deliberately violated international law. Despite questions raised by veterans, health researchers and international organizations like the UN, NATO’s use of DU in Kosovo has received almost no sustained media attention, either during or after the war. One war time report on ABC‘s Nightline (4/1/99) criticized Serbian state media’s coverage of the conflict, highlighting what it described as “this astonishing claim” from a Belgrade news report: “They [NATO forces] even use radioactive weapons… which are forbidden by the Geneva Convention.” Astonishing, perhaps, but true; at the time, the Pentagon had already admitted using DU in Kosovo. As for the possibility that NATO violated the Geneva Conventions, ABC has never returned to it.
2007
[edit]- Our recommitment to Afghanistan must include increasing NATO forces, suspending the debilitating restrictions on when and how those forces can fight, expanding the training and equipping of the Afghan National Army through a long-term partnership with NATO to make it more professional and multiethnic, and deploying significantly more foreign police trainers.
- I think it is obvious that NATO expansion does not have any relation with the modernization of the alliance itself or with ensuring security in Europe. On the contrary, it represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust. And we have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended? And what happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today? No one even remembers them. But I will allow myself to remind this audience what was said. I would like to quote the speech of NATO General Secretary Mr. Woerner in Brussels on 17 May 1990. He said at the time that: “the fact that we are ready not to place a NATO army outside of German territory gives the Soviet Union a firm security guarantee.” Where are these guarantees?
- Vladimir Putin, 2007 Munich speech, cited in We Poked the Bear, March 17, 2022
2011
[edit]- NATO this morning detained a tanker in Malta that was due to ship fuel from Italy to a port in western Libya, a senior Libyan source told Petroleum Economist. The Jupiter was destined for a port within the Qadhafi-held east and the well-placed sourced said it was carrying 12,750 tonnes of gasoline for use by the regime's military forces. A Nato official told Petroleum Economist that the ship was boarded "and told it cannot deliver its gasoline because fuel is being diverted to regime forces". He added that the ship was now at anchor off Tripoli awaiting instruction from its owner. Nato added: "It is the Qadhafi regime which is depriving its own citizens of vehicle fuel by diverting reserves for military use. Nato naval forces can deny access to vessels entering or leaving Libyan ports if there is reliable intelligence to suggest that the vessel or its cargo will be used to support attacks or threats on civilians, either directly or indirectly."
Stopping a ship in international waters or within Libyan maritime territory “could be considered an act of war”, according to Martijn Feldbrugge, a sanctions expert at Business Sanctions and Consulting Nieuwediep...Preventing fuel supplies to the regime rests on assumptions that gasoline shortages could hamper Qadhafi’s military, or trigger an uprising in Tripoli by locals. Such a strategy could yet backfire, Shashank Joshi, a military expert and associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London, said. “Fuel shortages will hurt the civilians in Tripoli first, not the military. The anger that causes may not be directed at the regime but at NATO.”
2014
[edit]- Frighteningly, today, there are senior officials in Washington and Moscow who are actually considering a head on clash in Ukraine between Russian forces and NATO – which is an extension of US military power. Intensifying attacks by Ukrainian government forces (quietly armed and financed by the US) against pro-Russian separatists and civilian targets in eastern Ukraine are increasing the danger that Moscow may intervene militarily to protect Ukraine’s ethnic Russian minority.
- Eric Margolis, What if There's a Real War in Ukraine? Common Dreams, August 9, 2014
- The footage of President Obama strolling through the ancient ruins at Stonehenge was an apt bookend to the meeting of NATO, a Cold War relic that should have been abolished after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. But while hundreds of protesters marched through the streets calling for NATO to be dissolved — “From Iraq to Ukraine, NATO only causes pain,” they chanted — NATO leaders saw the crisis in Ukraine as an opportunity to breathe new life into the moribund military alliance.
- Medea Benjamin, Ukraine Conflict: Red Meat For Anemic NATO Alliance, September 9, 2014
- A creature of the Cold War created in 1949 to defend Europe from Soviet expansion, NATO did not dissolve when the Soviet Union collapsed peacefully. But it did assure Russia that it would not expand eastwards beyond the reunified Germany, and it would not station significant numbers of troops in Eastern Europe. NATO broke the pledge. In 1999, it admitted three former Warsaw Pact countries: the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. In 2004, it admitted the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania), Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. Today the NATO security alliance covers 28 member states. It does not include Ukraine, but Ukraine is pushing for NATO membership. One does not have to sympathize with Putin’s oligarchic authoritarianism or its annexation of Crimea to recognize the West’s intimidation.
- Medea Benjamin, Ukraine Conflict: Red Meat For Anemic NATO Alliance, September 9, 2014
- ...one Western policy stands out as a phenomenal success, particularly when measured against the low expectations with which it began: the integration of Central Europe and the Baltic States into the European Union and NATO. Thanks to this double project, more than 90 million people have enjoyed relative safety and relative prosperity for more than two decades in a region whose historic instability helped launch two world wars.
- Anne Applebaum in "The myth of Russian humiliation" Washington Post (October 17, 2014)
- Before joining NATO, each country had to establish civilian control of its army. Before joining the European Union, each adopted laws on trade, judiciary, human rights. As a result, they became democracies. This was “democracy promotion” working as it never has before or since.
- Anne Applebaum in "The myth of Russian humiliation" Washington Post (October 17, 2014)
- For the record: No treaties prohibiting NATO expansion were ever signed with Russia. No promises were broken. Nor did the impetus for NATO expansion come from a “triumphalist” Washington. On the contrary, Poland’s first efforts to apply in 1992 were rebuffed...But Poland and others persisted, precisely because they were already seeing signs of the Russian revanchism to come.
- Anne Applebaum in "The myth of Russian humiliation" Washington Post (October 17, 2014)
- ... constant efforts were made to reassure Russia. No NATO bases were placed in the new member states, and until 2013 no exercises were conducted there. A Russia-NATO agreement in 1997 promised no movement of nuclear installations. A NATO-Russia Council was set up in 2002. In response to Russian objections, Ukraine and Georgia were, in fact, denied NATO membership plans in 2008.
- Anne Applebaum in "The myth of Russian humiliation" Washington Post (October 17, 2014)
- The [2014] crisis in Ukraine, and the prospect of a further crisis in NATO itself, is not the result of our triumphalism but of our failure to react to Russia’s aggressive rhetoric and its military spending. Why didn’t we move NATO bases eastward a decade ago? Our failure to do so has now led to a terrifying plunge of confidence in Central Europe...Our mistake was not to humiliate Russia but to underrate Russia’s revanchist, revisionist, disruptive potential.
- Anne Applebaum in "The myth of Russian humiliation" Washington Post (October 17, 2014)
2016
[edit]- Our first action that really set us off in a bad direction was when Nato started to expand, bringing in eastern European nations, some of them bordering Russia. At that time we were working closely with Russia and they were beginning to get used to the idea that Nato could be a friend rather than an enemy ... but they were very uncomfortable about having Nato right up on their border and they made a strong appeal for us not to go ahead with that.
- William J. Perry, cited in Russian hostility 'partly caused by west', claims former US defence head, 9 Mar 2016
- There is a crisis brewing at the NATO-Russian border. It is no small matter. In his illuminating and judicious scholarly study of the region, Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands, Richard Sakwa writes — all too plausibly — that the “Russo-Georgian war of August 2008 was in effect the first of the ‘wars to stop NATO enlargement;’ the Ukraine crisis of 2014 is the second. It is not clear whether humanity would survive a third.” The West sees NATO enlargement as benign. Not surprisingly, Russia, along with much of the Global South, has a different opinion, as do some prominent Western voices. George Kennan warned early on that NATO enlargement is a “tragic mistake,” and he was joined by senior American statesmen in an open letter to the White House describing it as a “policy error of historic proportions.”
- Noam Chomsky, in Chomsky: Who Rules the World? BillMoyers.com (9 May 2016)
- NATO should have disbanded after the Cold War, just as the Warsaw Pact did. Instead of disbanding, NATO proceeded to gobble up Eastern European countries that were formerly a part of the Warsaw Pact. The "regime change" and absorption of Ukraine into NATO would put them right on Russia's border. NATO is not a friend of peace. We don't need it.
- Ron Paul in NATO Is Not A Friend of Peace (5 July 2016)
- Many of us have spent decades studying Moscow’s foreign policy. We shake our heads in disbelief when we see Western leaders seemingly oblivious to what it means to the Russians to witness exercises on a scale not seen since Hitler’s armies launched “Unternehmen Barbarossa” 75 years ago, leaving 25 million Soviet citizens dead. In our view, it is irresponsibly foolish to believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin will not take countermeasures... Putin does not have the option of trying to reassure his generals that what they hear and see from NATO is mere rhetoric and posturing... In sum, Russia is bound to react strongly to what it regards as the unwarranted provocation of large military exercises along its western borders, including in Ukraine.
2017
[edit]- But by 1949 fear seemed to rule out all other considerations. Truman managed to get a coalition together in Congress for a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), an integrated alliance that included a mutual defense obligation. Though much time was spent in Washington on discussing who in Europe could join, what was most remarkable was how European governments lined up to get inside quick. In Italy and France, their Christian Democrat and liberal governments delivered their countries for NATO. In Britain and the Low Countries both labor parties and conservatives were in favor. Even in Scandinavia, with its long tradition of neutrality, Danish and Norwegian Social Democrats steamrolled applications for membership through their parliaments. The Norwegian ambassador to the United States explained that “Norway learned her lesson in 1940.… Today [it] does not believe that neutrality has any relation to the facts of life.” The most curious addition was Portugal, which was neither a democracy nor a World War II ally. But both Britain and the United States viewed the Portuguese Atlantic islands as essential bases in case of a war against the Soviets. In April 1949 the treaty was signed in Washington.
- Odd Arne Westad, The Cold War: A World History (2017)
- The initial effects of NATO in Europe were neither military nor political. They were substantially psychological. Non-Communist western Europeans started to believe that the United States would not withdraw from the continent anytime soon. This meant that Europe would remain divided. But it also meant security against a Soviet attack. The setting up of NATO was not about a civilizational definition of a European core (“from Plato to NATO,” as some put it—even though Greece would not join until 1952). It was about stability on a continent that had been going through hell for more than a generation. If the purpose of NATO—as its first general secretary, Lord Ismay, is said to have quipped—was to “keep the Americans in, the Soviets out, and the Germans down,” then this was a purpose with which the majority of western Europeans agreed around 1950. The exception, of course, were the Communists, who protested everywhere.
- Odd Arne Westad, The Cold War: A World History (2017)
2018
[edit]
- The crucial question...what is NATO for? ...From the beginning.. we had drilled into our heads that the purpose of NATO was to defend us from the Russian hordes... OK, 1991, no more Russian hordes...So, what’s NATO doing altogether? Well, actually, its mission was changed. The official mission of NATO was changed to become to be—to control and safeguard the global energy system, sea lanes, pipelines and so on. And, of course, on the side, it’s acting as a intervention force for the United States. Is that a legitimate reason for us to maintain NATO, to be an instrument for U.S. global domination? I think that’s a rather serious question. That’s not the question that’s asked.
- President Trump says he knows more about the North Atlantic Treaty Organization than Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis. "Frankly, I like Gen. Mattis. I think I know more about it than he does," Trump said during an interview with CBS News' "60 Minutes" that aired Sunday. "And I know more about it from the standpoint of fairness, that I can tell you." Trump made the comments when asked whether Mattis, a former four-star Marine general, explained to the commander in chief that NATO was crucial to preventing World War III. "The answer is this," Trump said. "I will always be there with NATO, but they have to pay their way. I'm fully in favor of NATO, but I don't wanna be taken advantage of." Trump has repeatedly bashed the country's NATO partners for their slow progress in achieving the alliance's defense spending target of 2 percent of GDP by 2024.
- Naomi Lim, "Trump: 'I know more' about NATO than Defense Secretary Jim Mattis", Washington Examiner, (14 October 2018)
- For six decades, the real power of NATO was not its tanks, planes, or even its nuclear weapons, but rather, the American government’s implicit promise to use them. Article 5 of the NATO Treaty implies that the U.S., with its overwhelmingly large army, would come to the aid of any member under attack. But let’s be honest: in 2018, nobody really knows if this would happen.
- Anne Applebaum, "The black hole at the heart of NATO", Wilson Center Quarterly (Fall, 2018)
2019
[edit]
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~ President Donald Trump
January/June
[edit]- Non-US members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) will invest a further $100bn in defence spending, according to secretary general Jens Stoltenberg. A NATO official told Army Technology: “At the Wales Summit in 2014, all NATO allies agreed to stop cutting defence budgets, increase defence expenditures as GDP grows, and aim to move towards spending 2% of their GDP on defence within a decade."
- President Trump’s nationalistic foreign policy has rattled U.S. allies and NATO members — and as he has pushed them to pay more for having U.S. troops stationed on their territory and framed the alliance in transactional terms.
- Washington Post As Europe worries about Trump, congressional leaders invite NATO head for joint address, Seung Min Kim, Rachael Bade and Robert Costa (11 March 2019)
- The transatlantic alliance deserves a resounding “happy birthday”. It kept the peace for 40 years of cold war, protected western Europe from communism, helped stabilise central Europe after the Soviet Union’s collapse and enabled unprecedented prosperity. “We’re incredibly complacent about the continuous delivery of peace and stability in our lives, and a hell of a lot of that depends on NATO,” says Sir Adam Thomson, a former British ambassador to nato, now with the European Leadership Network, a London-based think-tank. “We tend to take it for granted.”
- Since Russia’s annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in 2014, Poland, the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia as well as other Eastern European states have expressed concerns about their security. The United States has deployed and rotated troops in the region since the Ukraine crisis began in an effort to deter Russia. NATO has also increased its presence near Russia’s borders.
- Poland has been lobbying hard for a greater US military presence in the country ... as part of NATO operations, with the suggestion that a permanent base be created – for which Poland has offered to pay – dubbed "Fort Trump”, doubtless as a way of appealing to the current US president’s ego.
- NATO’s creators hoped the Alliance would never have to go to war. For 40 years, that was the case. When, in the 1990s, NATO did go into combat, the enemy wasn’t Russia. Moreover, that catastrophic war finally came to an end in large measure because of Russian diplomacy.
- Strobe Talbott in A brief history of NATO, from Truman to Trump, Brookings Institution (27 March 2019)
- When NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg gives his speech to the assembled members of Congress next Wednesday, you can count on the House Speaker and Senate Majority Leader to be right behind him. The bipartisan enthusiasm will be obvious -- in tribute to a militarized political culture that is vastly profitable for a few, while vastly destructive in countless ways. Only public education, activism, protests and a wide range of political organizing have the potential to disrupt and end the reflexive support for NATO in Washington.
- President Donald Trump: By 2020 I think we’ll have at least another hundred billion dollars spent by the Allies, the other countries, the 27 countries outside of ourselves...
- What is NATO Good For?, The Real News Network, (8 April 2019)
- The world is arming itself to the teeth. That is the conclusion of a new report published on April 29th by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), a think-tank. Global military spending last year rose to $1.8trn, says SIPRI—the highest level in real terms since reliable records began in 1988, during the cold war, and 76% higher than in 1998, when the world was enjoying its “peace dividend”.
- Military spending around the world is booming, The Economist,] (28 April 2019)
- Many observers in Russia believe that the 1997 Russia-NATO Founding Act was a mistake and the Russia-NATO Council established in 2002 never worked as a conflict settlement arrangement. Rather, it was meant to symbolize an upcoming unity between Russia and NATO, something that never materialized.
- Andrey Sushentsov in A Phony Cold War, Valdai Club, (12 May 2019)
- NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has praised the United Kingdom for maintaining a continuous at-sea nuclear deterrent for 50 years in a letter to Prime Minister Theresa May. At least one Royal Navy submarine carrying nuclear missiles has been on undersea patrol at all times since April 1969. This mission, called Operation Relentless, is the longest sustained military operation ever undertaken by the UK. Mr. Stoltenberg stressed that NATO Allies face a highly complex international security environment. “Our goal is to maintain peace and security for all our nations and people”, he wrote. “The commitment the UK has made, and continues to make, is a vital contribution to NATO's overall deterrence effort, including against the most extreme potential threats. This helps protect all NATO Allies.”
- NATO News NATO Secretary General marks 50 years of UK submarine nuclear deterrent (21 May 2019)
- Former vice president Joe Biden... warned during a private Coral Gables fundraiser that the greatest threat to the future of America — world peace, even — is currently occupying the White House....“Eight years of this and I think we’ll have a phenomenal dislocation occur around the world. I think you’ll see the end of NATO and a whole range of other things that really are the things that maintain peace.”
- The NATO ‘alliance’ of 29 member states (with Israel also a de facto member), most with US military bases, US military (and sometimes nuclear) weapons and significant or substantial deployments of US troops on their territory, was designed to sustain ‘the de facto “military occupation” of Western Europe’ and to confront the Soviet Union as the US administration orchestrated the Cold War to justify its imperial agenda – global domination guaranteed by massive US military expansion – in service of elite interests (including the profit maximization of the military industrial complex, its fossil fuel and banking corporations, and its media and information technology giants)...
- Robert J. Burrowes in Understanding NATO, Ending War, CounterPunch (23 May 2019)
- A relative latecomer to the cyber game, NATO is beginning to “operationalize” cyber capabilities into its overall structure by integrating those tools of member nations, said the alliance’s secretary general. “We are tackling increasingly complex cyberthreats faster and more efficiently. And we are more aware of the threats, more resilient to incidents,” Jens Stoltenberg said May 23 at the Cyber Defense Pledge Conference in London. “We also need to consider how we can deter attacks in cyberspace.”
- Mark Pomerleau NATO to integrate offensive cyber capabilities of individual members, Fifth Domain (28 May 2019)
- NATO was created in 1949 to prevent possible Soviet attacks on the United States, Canada and a number of Western European nations. In case of an attack on one member, all NATO countries are required to rush to its defense. Even though the Soviet threat is long gone and the United States spends more on defense than any other NATO member, the military alliance’s supporters argue that the benefits outweigh the costs.
In a letter, former NATO secretaries... wrote, “We believe that the transatlantic alliance is the cornerstone of a stable, peaceful and free world. Few things symbolise this alliance, and the enduring benefits of American global leadership, more vividly than the life and work of John McCain... We urge NATO to repay this lifetime of service to its mission by naming its new Brussels headquarters after Senator McCain."
- "What Nord Stream 2 does is salami slice NATO by cutting some of the Eastern European countries away from the Western ones and particularly Germany...” The company behind Nord Stream 2 argues the pipeline adds much needed supply capacity at a time when European gas reserves are diminishing... They reject the suggestion the pipeline furthers the Kremlin's geopolitical interests in Europe.
- ''SkyNews: Nord Stream 2: The Russian oil pipeline 'salami slicing' through NATO ', Diana Magnay (31 May 2019)
- Bathed in late afternoon sun, the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, boarded a steamboat on Lake Geneva. He was there for drinks and nibbles with the King of Holland and the head of NATO, a glamorous end to a busy day at the Bilderberg summit. Representing the White House, Jared Kushner wore a beatific smile... Security at the wharf was drum tight. Amid a sea of secret service personnel, Pompeo was accompanied by the US ambassador to Switzerland... The pair looked keen to continue the geopolitical strategizing over canapés. The secretary general of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, was flanked by heavily armed bodyguards... He has attended the last three Bilderberg meetings, turning up for “informal discussions”... Up on deck, King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands chatted to James O Ellis, a former head of US Strategic Command, now a director of Lockheed Martin. In all, it was a bit eerie watching such a relaxed, twinkly drinks party in the context of a conference featuring so many Pentagon officials and advisers and NATO strategy chiefs. A large chunk of the agenda had a military flavour: “The weaponisation of social media”, “cyber threats”, even “the importance of space”. A couple of weeks ago, Stoltenberg announced that NATO is about to announce a new “space policy”.
- ...the new Cold War with Moscow shows little sign of abating. It is used to justify the expansion of NATO to Russia’s borders, a move that has made billions in profits for U.S. arms manufacturers... This new Cold War predates the Trump presidential campaign. It was manufactured over a decade ago by a war industry and intelligence community that understood that, by fueling a conflict with Russia, they could consolidate their power and increase their profits.
- Chris Hedges in Manufacturing War With Russia, TruthDig ] (3 June 2019)
- The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a Western military alliance long viewed as a foe by Russia, is ready to open its doors to North Macedonia, a country considered a key battleground between Russia and the West, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Monday.
- The leading members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Monday unveiled legislation that would allow the U.S. to provide loans for members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to upgrade their weapons stockpile and reduce their dependency on Russia and China for acquiring arms. The bill, co-sponsored by committee Chairman Eliot Engel, New York Democrat, and ranking member Michael McCaul, Texas Republican, would give Secretary of State Mike Pompeo the power to authorize direct loans to the 29-member alliance to modernize their armed forces.
July/December
[edit]- Who is our common enemy? This question deserves to be clarified. Is our enemy today, as I hear sometimes, Russia? Is it China? Is it the Atlantic alliance’s purpose to designate them as enemies? I don’t think so... Our common enemy at the alliance is, it seems, terrorism, which has hit all of our countries.
- French President Emmanuel Macron in France's Macron: I'm not sorry I called NATO brain dead,Reuters, (28 November 2019)
- NATO’s fundamental problem is that the military alliance no longer reflects a common strategic reality. Created to counter a threat that no longer exists, the alliance’s widening fissures are becoming impossible to ignore... Neither Trump nor Macron is the real threat to NATO. Reality is.
- NATO was set up to fight the Cold War and push back against Soviet power in Europe, but the USSR is long gone, and whatever threat is posed by Russia today cannot compare.
2020
[edit]- In the years gone by, NATO summits were important events in the life of the alliance. Over the past two decades, however, the gatherings became almost annual, and therefore less than exciting. Until the 2017 NATO summit in Brussels, that is. Trump livened things up by not referring to the North Atlantic Treaty's iconic article 5, which stated that "an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all." This provision is actually less binding than its reputation, since each alliance member will merely take "such action as it deems necessary." It had been invoked only once, after the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. Nonetheless, NATO had been a successful deterrence structure, for decades blocking the Red Army from knifing through Germany's Fulda Gap and deep into the heart of Western Europe. Of course, the United States was always the overwhelmingly greatest force contributing to our alliance, and it was primarily for our benefit, not because we were renting ourselves out to defend Europe, but because defending "the West" was in America's strategic interest. As a Cold War bulwark against Soviet expansionism, NATO represented history's most successful politico-military coalition.
- John Bolton, The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir (2020), p. 133
- Did NATO have problems? Of course. Not for nothing was Henry Kissinger's famous 1965 work entitled The Troubled Partnership: A Reappraisal of the Atlantic Alliance. The list of NATO's deficiencies was long, including, after the Soviet Union's 1991 collapse, the feckless abandonment by several European members of their responsibility to provide for their own self-defense. Under President Clinton, America suffered its own military declines, as he and others saw the collapse of Communism as "the end of history," slashing defense budgets to spend on politically beneficial domestic welfare programs. This "peace dividend" illusion never ended in much of Europe, but it ended in America with the September 11 mass murders in New York and Washington by Islamicist terrorists. NATO's future has been intensely debated among national-security experts for decades, with many urging a broader post-Cold War agenda. Barack Obama criticized NATO members for being "free riders," not spending adequately on their own defense budgets, but, typically, he had simply graced the world with his views, doing nothing to see them carried out.
- John Bolton, The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir (2020), p. 133-134
- Trump, at his first NATO summit in 2017, complained that too many allies were not meeting their 2014 commitment, collectively made at Cardiff, Wales, to spend 2 percent of their GDP for defense in the European theater. Germany was one of the worst offenders, spending about 1.2 percent of GDP on defense, and always under pressure from Social Democrats and other leftists to spend less. Trump, despite, or perhaps because, of his father's German ancestry, was relentlessly critical. During consultations on the strike against Syria in April, Trump asked Macron why Germany would not join in the military retaliation against the Assad regime. It was a good question, without an answer other than domestic German politics, but Trump rolled on, criticizing Germany as a terrible NATO partner and again attacking the Nord Stream II pipeline, which would see Germany paying Russia, NATO's adversary, substantial revenues. Trump called NATO "obsolete" during the 2016 campaign but argued in April 2017 that the problem had been "fixed" in his presidency. His noteworthy failure in 2017 to mention article 5 allegedly surprised even his top advisors because he personally deleted any reference to it from a draft speech. True or not, the 2017 summit set the stage for the potential crisis we faced in 2018.
- John Bolton, The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir (2020), p. 134
- The storm had been brewing well before I arrived in the West Wing, but now it was directly ahead. Trump was correct on the burden-sharing point, as Obama had been, a convergence of views that might have shaken Trump's confidence in his own had he paid attention to it. The problem, from the perspective of US credibility, steadfastness, and alliance management, was the vitriol with which Trump so often expressed his displeasure with allies' not achieving the objective, or in some cases not even seeming to be interested in trying. In fact, earlier Presidents had not succeeded in keeping the alliance up to the mark in burden-sharing in the post-Cold War era. I certainly believed that, under Clinton and Obama in particular, the US had not spent enough on its own behalf for defense, regardless of what any of the allies were doing or not doing. If any of this were merely a critique of Trump's style, which it seemed to be for many critics, it would be a triviality. Personally, I've never shied away from being direct, even with our closest friends internationally, and I can tell you they are never shy about telling us what they think, especially about America's deficiencies. In fact, it was not Trump's directness but the veiled hostility to the alliance itself that unnerved other NATO members and his own advisors.
- John Bolton, The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir (2020), p. 134-135
- When reports come out that certain countries don’t really like me too much, that’s not because of my personality, although it could be that also, frankly. It’s because of the fact that I’ve been very tough on countries that have been ripping us off for so many years. If you look at NATO, with the exception of eight countries—we’re one of them—every country is way behind. They’re delinquent, especially Germany, in paying their NATO bills. That means we end up paying it, and we’re not doing it. I told them; we’re not doing it. And they’ve increased their spending now $130 billion, going up to $400 billion a year. It’s all because of me. Then you hear the country doesn’t like me. I mean, I can understand that, because President Obama and other presidents, in all fairness, would go in there and they’d make a speech and they’d leave. I went in there, I looked, and I said, “This is unfair. We’re paying for NATO.” We’re paying for NATO. Almost all of it. So they rip us off on the military and then they rip us off, with the European Union, on trade. And Biden doesn’t have a clue. You know he doesn’t have a clue. Everybody knows he doesn’t have a clue. In primetime, he wasn’t good. And now it’s not primetime.
- Donald Trump, Labor Day Speech, (2020)
- The mutual trust that emerged with the end of the Cold War was severely shaken a few years later by NATO's decision to expand to the east. Russia had no option but to draw its own conclusions from that.
- Mikhail Gorbachev, What Is at Stake Now (2020)
2021
[edit]- The February meeting of NATO...defense ministers... revealed an antiquated, 75-year-old alliance that, despite its military failures in Afghanistan and Libya, is now turning its military madness toward two more formidable, nuclear-armed enemies: Russia and China.
- Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies, What Planet Is NATO Living On? It's No Longer Useful to This One, Salon, (24 February 2021)
- NATO's failure to seriously examine its own role in what it euphemistically calls "uncertain times" should be more alarming to Americans and Europeans than its one-sided criticisms of Russia and China, whose contributions to the uncertainty of our times pale by comparison.
- Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies, What Planet Is NATO Living On? It's No Longer Useful to This One Salon, (24 February 2021)
- In a more dangerous and competitive world, NATO continues to do whatever is necessary to keep our people, nations and values safe. Over the past year, Russia's aggressive rhetoric and actions have continued apace, culminating in the brutal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in late February 2022. President Putin has been clear that his objectives are not limited to Ukraine. He has demanded legally binding agreements to end further NATO enlargement, and to remove troops and infrastructure from NATO Allies that joined after 1997 — almost half of the Alliance.
- What I think is happening as a result of NATO expansion, of Biden being a tremendously hawkish figure on Ukraine and basically daring Vladimir Putin to stand up to NATO expansion, is that you run the risk of what is ultimately the elite business class of the world having their battles spilling over into overt military conflict. I think China in particular is very concerned about the aggressive U.S. stance because I think China would be very happy to find a way to just sort of divvy up the world for domination in various regions. The United States is not going to accept that. The U.S. posture is pushing China and Russia into an even closer alliance akin to the relationship during the Cold War.
- Listen, there's been a campaign, a war against Russia going on for a long time. It started again in the United States around 2006, '07, when he made that speech in Munich, but I think there's no evidence really of the aggressiveness of Russia. The aggressiveness is truly coming from the NATO forces that have encircled Russia and that are also, by the way, encircling China.
- Oliver Stone, Transcript: A Conversation with Oliver Stone, (streamed live on youtube) The Washington Post (12 May 2021)
2022
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- I have pursued a lone heresy of wondering why NATO even survived the end of its enemies, the USSR and the Warsaw Pact. Do we still maintain alliances against Austria-Hungary or the Ottomans? I can find no trace of them. Perhaps, overlooked in some elegant Paris street and living off ancient funds, elderly, learned men still occupy these joyous sinecures, hoping that they will not be found out.
- Peter Hitchens, "How NATO Lost Its Way", Compact, March 22, 2022
- The reason I testified against expanding NATO expansion — against expanding NATO, in the beginning, in the late ’90s, was because we had — at the end of the Cold War, we had removed the Iron Curtain. We had created what we had aimed for: a Europe whole and free. And it was obvious, if you start piecemeal expanding NATO, you are going to — without including Russia — you are going to once again precipitate a buildup of arms and a competition, an armed competition, then.
- The problems with Russia are not just NATO expansion.
- Bush promised no expansion of NATO. Clinton & Bush II decided expanding NATO was a good idea.
- Fred Watson Jr., Weeks & Decades, American Sun, 1 March 2022
- The best thing for the security of Sweden and the Swedish people is to join NATO...We believe Sweden needs the formal security guarantees that come with membership in NATO.
- Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson quoted in "Finland announces 'historic' NATO bid, and Sweden follows"Al Jazeera (May 15, 2022)
- Finns were reminded of the events of 1939, when the Soviet Union denied their country’s right to exist and attacked it in the Winter War. More than eighty years later, Russia’s unprovoked aggression against Ukraine did far more to sway opinion in Finland and Sweden than its questioning of their right to join NATO.
- René Nyberg, "Russian Collateral Damage: Finland and Sweden’s Accession to NATO", Carnegie Politika (June 10, 2022)
2023
[edit]- President Putin wanted to slam NATO’s door shut. Today, we show the world that he failed. That aggression and intimidation do not work. Instead of less NATO, he has achieved the opposite. More NATO. And our door remains firmly open.
- Jens Stoltenberg welcoming Finland as it joins NATO, "Press Statement by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg with the President of Finland, Sauli Niinistö" April 4, 2023