As thousands descend on Washington for a anniversary summit, we posit that the alliance is broken and sleepwalking into war

To mark NATO’s 75th-anniversary summit in Washington this month, the Quincy Institute invited leading experts and practitioners to reflect on the past and future of the alliance.

As of this writing, the US has placed sanctions on over 30 countries, close to one-third of the world’s population. When the pandemic started, the US vetoed the $ 5 Billion emergency loan that Iran had requested from the IMF to buy equipment and vaccines from the foreign market. The Caesar sanctions against Syria, put in place in 2020, have caused a tremendous humanitarian crisis, with 80% of the population having fallen below the poverty line. Studies show that the sanctions on Iraq in the 1990’s caused the death of almost half a million children. The US has repeatedly sanctioned Venezuela’s food distribution program, CLAP, in an effort to bring about the overthrow of the Government of Nicolas Maduro.

Dear Madame President of the Swiss Confederation, Ms Viola Amherd. Dear Federal Councillor and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr Ignazio Cassis.

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, and every rocket fired signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” Dwight D. Eisenhower, Speech to American Society of Newspaper Editors, Washington, D.C., April 16, 1953

“If the Soviet Union were to sink tomorrow under the ocean’s waters, the American military-industrial establishment would have to continue substantially unchanged until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy.” George F. Kennan Foreword to The Pathology of Power by Norman Cousins, 1987.

As was the case in June 1982, people of the United States need to send a collective signal that they will not tolerate policies that lead toward nuclear war.

NATO will mark its 75th year at a three day summit in Washington this week. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine is scheduled to attend the proceedings, during which the alliance is expected to offer, in lieu of membership, what has been described by Biden administration officials as a “Bridge to NATO.”

Exactly ten years ago, power changed in Kiev. Famed in the West as a hymn to freedom, Euromaidan also combined the interests of the oligarchs with those of the pro-Nazi right. It all ended with systematic influence on the political life of Ukraine

Two centuries ago, Washington warned the European powers, primarily the British Empire, against undermining its security throughout the Americas, from Canada to Patagonia. Thus, the Monroe Doctrine was born. Russia seeks to do the same thing, but on a smaller scale, in former Soviet space

Washington, Brussels, and numerous European chancelleries have expressed contradictory positions on the ongoing conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine. Principles and values are defended or ignored depending on convenience. Not without repercussions