Sevim Dagdelen
To mark the 75th anniversary of the founding of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Sevim Dagdelen, foreign policy spokesperson for the “Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht” group in the German Bundestag, has published the book “Die NATO. A reckoning with the alliance of values”. In the introduction, the MP addresses the three great myths of NATO.
NATO celebrates its 75th birthday in 2024 and appears to be at the height of its power. More than ever before, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is focusing on expansion. In Ukraine, NATO is waging a proxy war against Russia in response to its war of aggression in violation of international law: the military pact is involved in training Ukrainian soldiers with NATO weapons, with massive arms deliveries, intelligence information and the provision of target data as well as its own soldiers on the ground. The delivery of cruise missiles, such as the German Taurus type, to Ukraine, which can reach Moscow or St. Petersburg with a range of 500 kilometers, as well as the deployment of NATO troops on a large scale are being discussed. The signs are pointing to a storm.
NATO is expanding its presence in Asia: By integrating new partner states such as Japan and South Korea, it is advancing into the Indo-Pacific region and seeking a confrontation with China. The military expenditure of the USA and other NATO member states is soaring to record highs. While the champagne corks are popping at the arms suppliers, the gigantic costs of armament are being passed on to the population.Overstretch, social upheaval and the risk of escalation are the downside of this expansive power policy.They challenge the alliance in an unprecedented way.This makes NATO all the more dependent on legends today.Three major myths run from the founding of the military pact through its bloody history to the present day.
The myth of defense and international law
NATO is a defense alliance.This is the eternally repeated narrative.But a look at the history of the military pact shows:Neither was mutual defense a priority when NATO was founded, nor can there be any talk of a defensive orientation in NATO’s appearance over the past decades.Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty is often cited as proof of NATO’s character as a defensive alliance.In its founding agreement in 1949, the twelve signatory states, the USA and Canada, as well as the European states Belgium, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Portugal, agreed that “an armed attack against any one of them in Europe or North America shall be considered as an attack against all of them”.NATO members undertake to assist each other in order to defend themselves jointly against such an attack.
The Inter-American Treaty of Mutual Assistance serves as an explicit model here. This mutual assistance pact was concluded by the American member states in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1947 on Washington’s initiative and came into force a year later.In the face of the Cold War, the USA wanted to secure its dominance on the American continent with this treaty, as a result of which the Organization of American States (OAS) was founded in the same year.This was in the spirit of an updated Monroe Doctrine, with which the USA had declared the western hemisphere to be its exclusive zone of influence in 1823.
NATO is also part of this tradition. As with the Inter-American Treaty, the signatory states of the North Atlantic Treaty are completely unbalanced in terms of power and military policy.When NATO was founded, the USA was clearly not interested in support from other alliance partners in the event of defense.Rather, Washington is striving to create a “Pax Americana”, an exclusive sphere of influence that gives the USA, as the undisputed leading power, control over the foreign and security policy of the other alliance partners.The basis of NATO is an exchange.The other NATO members give up parts of their democratic sovereignty and are rewarded with the NATO security guarantee, which is de facto a security guarantee from the USA.(…)
Within the military pact, the other NATO members sink to the level of client states, like those that once served as a military buffer zone in the east of the Roman Empire to maintain the Roman Empire’s power.
Any domestic political change that could have called into question the foreign policy orientation was forbidden to these client states on pain of their own downfall.
In order to prevent such developments, NATO relied on its own coup organizations with its Stay Behind groups during the Cold War.They also used terrorist means to actively prevent political forces that questioned NATO membership from gaining power.
The end of the systemic conflict with the Soviet Union radically changed NATO’s primary purpose of creating a “Pax Americana”.Since the end of the Cold War, NATO has increasingly seen itself in the role of world policeman.With the invasion of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which at that time still consisted of Serbia and Montenegro, the military pact waged its first war in 1999.A clear breach of international law, as the then German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder himself admitted 15 years later: “We sent our planes (…) to Serbia, and together with NATO they bombed a sovereign state – without there having been a Security Council decision.” After this original sin, NATO is developing into a warfare pact that is prepared to break international law.A clear contradiction to its own charter, in which the NATO states commit themselves according to Article 1 to “refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations”.The defense of the Alliance’s territory now becomes merely part of its claim to act as a global power.
In 2003, NATO members the USA and the UK invaded Iraq in a war of aggression in violation of international law.They put together a “coalition of the willing” specifically for this purpose, which also included numerous other NATO members such as Italy, Poland, the Netherlands, Denmark, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Portugal and Slovakia, as well as the later NATO members Romania, Bulgaria, Latvia and Lithuania.Washington and its accomplices are thus blatantly violating international law and the NATO states involved are violating the fundamental provisions of their own charter.The Iraq war is also accompanied by the NATO AWACS mission in Turkey, which can be interpreted as support for the war.Even if the war against Iraq is not a NATO war, there are serious arguments for attributing the invasion to the military pact.NATO members such as Germany did not deny the USA the use of military bases as part of the NATO structure in Europe and did not deny overflight rights for US forces, even though the German government’s commitment to the rules of international law in accordance with Article 20 Paragraph 3 and Article 25 of the Basic Law prohibits it from participating in actions by non-German sovereigns on German soil if these violate international law.
The Iraq war is also accompanied by the NATO AWACS mission in Turkey, which can be interpreted as support for the war. Even if the war against Iraq is not a NATO war, there are serious arguments for attributing the invasion to the military pact.NATO members such as Germany did not deny the USA the use of military bases as part of the NATO structure in Europe and did not deny overflight rights for US forces, even though the German government’s commitment to the rules of international law in accordance with Article 20 Paragraph 3 and Article 25 of the Basic Law prohibits it from participating in actions by non-German sovereigns on German soil if these violate international law.
The war of aggression against Iraq by some NATO members in violation of international law was not even discussed in the NATO Council, nor was the use of NATO infrastructure. Their violation of the North Atlantic Treaty has no impact on the NATO membership of the USA or the UK. That was foreseeable.The war policy of the most important member of the alliance must therefore be attributed to the NATO military pact as a whole if one takes NATO’s self-image seriously.With its wars that violate international law, the USA stands as pars pro toto, as part of the whole.In Afghanistan, NATO has been waging a disastrous war for 20 years that has cost the lives of over 200,000 civilians.For the first and so far only time, the alliance is invoking Article 5 of the NATO treaty in this military operation after the attacks of September 11, 2001.The international public is to be made to believe that the freedom and security of the West are being defended in the Hindu Kush. Twenty years later, in August 2021, the Taliban move back into Kabul. The military operation proves to be a disaster. The US attempt to gain a military foothold in Central Asia in order to challenge China and Russia geopolitically has failed. The USA is leaving the country head over heels. Washington does not even inform its allies. Thousands of local NATO forces are being left in the lurch.
There is no sign of alliance solidarity. In order to obtain information, the German foreign intelligence service is even desperately considering bugging the Americans.In addition to Belgrade, Baghdad and Kabul, NATO’s trail of blood also leads to Libya.In 2011, NATO bombed the country in violation of international law and in abuse of a UN Security Council resolution.Thousands are killed.Hundreds of thousands are forced to flee.A delegation from the African Union, which wanted to mediate in the conflict, was even prevented from landing.What remains is a devastated country, parts of which are ruled by Islamist militias.As a result, the entire Sahel region is destabilized by al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (IS). The individual members of NATO must take responsibility for this catastrophe.Totum pro parte, the whole stands for the part.This also applies to the member states that are not directly involved in the attacks.
The myth of democracy and the rule of law
NATO members are determined to “safeguard the freedom, common heritage and civilization of their peoples, based on the principles of democracy, liberty of the person and the rule of law”, according to the legitimizing legend of the founding charter.But this was already an outright lie in 1949.It is not only in Latin America that the USA has been making pacts with dictatorships and fascist regimes from the outset; NATO allies in Europe are not only democracies on board either. The only decisive factor is the willingness to join a front against the Soviet Union.The USA has bilateral security agreements with the fascist dictator of Spain, Francisco Franco, and the fascist dictatorship of Portugal is a founding member of NATO.While the secret police of the dictator António de Oliveira Salazar tortured opposition members to death and set up concentration camps in the Portuguese colonies, the USA included Portugal in the community of democrats.
Another example is Turkey. Thousands of political prisoners are tortured after the military coup of 1980. On the occasion of the tenth anniversary on September 12, 1990, the newspaper Cumhuriyet spoke of 65,000,000 political arrests, 7,000 death sentences requested, 571 imposed and 50 carried out, and the proven death by torture in 171 cases.Turkey remains a member of NATO. Even after the military coup, it receives extensive military aid from the USA and its allies.The rule of the generals is not detrimental to membership.The same applies to Greece.The military coup of 1967, concentration camps and murders of members of the opposition, the arrest of thousands or expulsion into exile – none of these are reasons to end membership.Even the invasion of Cyprus by NATO member Turkey in 1974 following the coup by the Greek colonels is apparently in line with the democratic founding consensus of the military alliance.
Now one could dismiss this and refer to the “tempi passati”, the times gone by.But even in 2024, support for Islamist terrorism by Erdogan’s autocracy is not in contradiction to NATO membership.After all, NATO is not about democracy and the rule of law, but solely about geopolitical allegiance to the USA. Like an empire built on lies, NATO lives from this fairy tale. In schools and universities, these lies are part of the NATO education program.
The myth of a community of values
“Our common values – individual freedom, human rights, democracy and the rule of law – unite us.” This is how NATO presents itself as a community of values in its Strategic Concept 2022. However, the renowned Brown University in Rhode Island, USA, estimates that four and a half million people have died as a result of the wars waged by the USA and its allies in the past 20 years alone.
This cannot be reconciled with NATO’s widely publicized self-image.
NATO is not a community that protects human rights.On the contrary: NATO is the protective umbrella for the human rights violations of its members.And by no means only with regard to the violation of social human rights under the dictatorship of massive armament.On the contrary, NATO pursues a policy of complete impunity for war crimes committed by its member states.Anyone who, like the Australian journalist Julian Assange, dares to make these war crimes public is tortured and threatened with 175 years in prison in the USA.There have been no serious interventions by other NATO governments to secure the release of Julian Assange. In hasty complicity, criticism of the US hegemon is being avoided.
The “Afghanistan War Diary” collection of documents published by Assange in 2010 proves the existence of a secret US force, known as “Task Force 373”, which was used to kill suspected Taliban leaders without legal recourse. The 300-strong elite unit was also stationed in the area controlled by the German Armed Forces in Afghanistan.It was under the direct command of the US government and, according to reports published by the Wikileaks whistleblowing platform, also used internationally banned cluster bombs to kill and destroy indiscriminately.(…)
On January 11, 2002, the USA set up a prison camp at the illegally occupied Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba.Amnesty International writes: “Many of the approximately 780 people who have since been deliberately detained there outside any judicial control have suffered the most serious human rights violations before or during their detention – including torture and enforced disappearances.To this day, torture survivors in Guantánamo are held indefinitely without adequate medical care, charges or fair trials.”Even 22 years after its establishment, there is no prospect of the Guantánamo torture camp being closed.(…)
Human rights have a very low priority for NATO.This is also reflected in the choice of alliances by NATO members.For example, the USA, Great Britain and Germany are arming the dictatorship in Saudi Arabia, which is beheading opposition members by the dozen and whose Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman allegedly personally ordered the sawing up of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Consulate General in Istanbul.
Rhetorically, NATO remains antithetically tied to its practice. NATO’s 2022 Strategic Concept states: “We will strengthen our unity, cohesion and solidarity by building on the enduring transatlantic bond between our nations and the strength of our shared democratic values.”
In view of the close alliances with dictators, autocrats and violators of international law, this self-assurance looks like a bad joke. This hypocrisy is accompanied by double standards: In its Strategic Concept of June 20, 2022, NATO accuses Russia of committing “repeated violations of international humanitarian law” in Ukraine. While NATO uses this as an additional justification for its proxy war against Russia, it supports Israel in its obvious violations of international humanitarian law in Gaza and assures the country of its full solidarity. With its veto in the UN Security Council, the USA is preventing any resolution for an immediate ceasefire until the end of March. Without the arms supplies from the NATO states USA, Germany and Great Britain, this war would not be possible.
In the Global South, this double standard of the West is being increasingly criticized. The human rights rhetoric of NATO states is seen there as purely instrumental in order to conceal or enforce their own geopolitical interests. NATO appears to be the guardian organization of a deeply unjust world order with neo-colonial tendencies. This is demonstrated not least by the fact that NATO members attempt to impose their own policies on third countries such as China, Turkey or the United Arab Emirates in the economic war against Russia with so-called secondary sanctions, in violation of their sovereignty. NATO’s myths distort the view of reality. In order to find a way out of the current crisis, they need to be exposed. That is what this book is about. Today, 75 years after its foundation, the military pact is driving the world closer to the brink of a third world war than ever before with its global expansion and confrontations. This critical examination of the Alliance’s current actions and its crimes in the past is intended to create the conditions for thinking about alternatives. Alternatives to a NATO that relies solely on deterrence, armament and confrontation – and thus poses an existential threat to the peaceful coexistence of humanity.
Excerpt from: Sevim Dagdelen: “Die NATO. Eine Abrechnung mit dem Wertebündnis“, Westend Verlag 2024, 128 pages.
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