Does NATO Represent Forces of Good or Evil?

Supposedly, the leaders of 32 countries meeting in Washington, D.C., for the NATO alliance’s 75th-anniversary summit believe that NATO represents the forces of good. Still, the global majority of the planet might think otherwise, especially in those countries that had already experienced NATO’s “goodwill” intentions, such as Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Russia. Ukraine is a particular case where it took a Western-backed coup in February 2014 to bring to power pro-NATO forces against the wishes of the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians who were against that. Even among the NATO members, where many leaders nowadays have dismal approval ratings, the popularity of this bloc is, softly speaking, questionable. Anti-NATO and anti-war demonstrations are held regularly in the U.S. and many European countries, including before and during the current meeting.

Ukraine’s now illegitimate president, Zelensky, whose term ended on May 21, 2024, is also attending. The former comic actor is NATO’s darling since, with his help, they turned the whole country into a foreign mercenary force to serve those in the West who, as George Kennan explained, need Russia as an enemy rather than a friend.

Indeed, NATO and the Military Industrial Complex are the primary beneficiaries of these forces. In terms of the threat of the Dooms Day scenario that brought about the current crisis, April 30, 1998, is the day when, contrary to previous promises from Western leaders, the U.S. Senate voted to expand NATO to the east. The leading lobbyist for this process was the then U.S. President Bill Clinton who, ironically, was considered the best friend of President Boris Yeltsin and even helped him win the 1996 elections. Clinton’s fellow Democrat, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, was one of 19 senators who voted against it, saying, “This is the road to nuclear war.” However, he did not convince 80 other senators, including Joe Biden, who voted for it, when only 67 such votes were needed.

George Kennan, by no means a friend of Russia and one of the authors of the policy of containing the USSR, called the process of NATO expansion “a fateful error.” In his 1998 NYT interview, he said this, but two years earlier, in 1996, Kennan warned that NATO’s expansion into former Soviet territory was a “strategic blunder of potentially epic proportions.” Robert Skidelsky, a member of the British House of Lords, said that “there was something insane about the whole business, and one is left with the disquieting thought that NATO prolonged the Soviet Union’s life by handing it a ready-made enemy to replace Nazi Germany.”

All this happened when Gorbachev and Yeltsin kept sending solid signals to Washington about their desire to be among American friends and strategic partners. Some in their administrations even talked about an alliance. Facing no interest from official Washington, they engaged in “Track II” or “People’s” diplomacy.

As a member of this effort, which facilitated many direct contacts between Washington and Moscow decision-makers, including meetings in the White House, Kremlin, Capitol Hill, and the Russian Duma, I can testify about the details of many such meetings. Unfortunately, more powerful forces prevented these initiatives at each step of our activities.

In this tragic story, one cannot fail to mention George W. Bush, who, after words of gratitude and even public admiration for Putin for his help after the 9/11 attack in the 2001 Afghan operation, launched a campaign trying to get Georgia and Ukraine into NATO. It is Bush who started the so-called war on terror, which was extended by Obama and Biden to weaken Russia and threaten China with the NATO new auxiliary blocs.

According to the scientists of Brown and American universities’ project Costs of War, at least 940,000 people have died due to direct war violence, including armed forces on all sides of the conflict, contractors, civilians, journalists, and humanitarian workers; over 432,000 civilians have been killed in direct violence by all parties to these conflicts; an estimated 3.6-3.8 million people have died indirectly in post-9/11 war zones, bringing the total death toll to at least 4.5-4.7 million and counting; the post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, and the Philippines have displaced 38 million people.

The tragedy of Ukraine could have been easily avoided, and it could stay within its post-Soviet 1991 borders, had it been allowed by the West to keep a neutral status instead of pushing it to join NATO.

Let us conclude with some glimpses of hope for better days.

Both in the U.S. and Europe, the voices of people who want to save their families and our planet from Armageddon are getting louder. The majority of Americans favor a negotiated peace in this war. When asked in a November 2023 Economist/YouGov poll, “Would you support or oppose Ukraine and Russia agreeing to a cease-fire now?”, 68% said “support,” and only 8% answered “oppose,” with 24% “undecided.”

The new micro-Napoleon, Emmanuel Macron, in his past rare clear-thinking minutes called NATO’s “brain dead”

At the same time, Washington and NATO want to escalate the war by repeatedly rejecting Russia’s calls for peace negotiations, although each day of continuation of this war brings more deaths and destruction, leaving Ukraine in an ever-worsening situation.

However, the self-proclaimed world’s leader, Joe Biden, after his disastrous performance in the recent debate with Trump, is in big trouble when more and more Democrats and their financial backers demand that he steps down from the race. His European vassals, like British Rishi Sunak, are already or on the way out. The recent E.U. parliamentary elections prove this point. The new micro-Napoleon, Emmanuel Macron, who in his past rare clear-thinking minutes called NATO’s brain dead, suffered devastating defeats in both E.U. and French national elections. In the British parliament, there are now new voices like Nigel Farage, who won his seat to a large degree by saying that NATO Eastern expansion caused the war in Ukraine. More people in the West no longer believe the lie that after victory in Ukraine, Putin intends to move West, and they demand the immediate start of peace negotiations. Smart Georgians, looking at what NATO’s policy brought to Ukraine, have sobered up and refused Western demands to open a second front against Russia.

The return to sanity might occur only when more and more people in the West realize that the era of a unipolar world under Washington’s hegemony is over. Their safety and prosperity can be guaranteed only if they accept the win-win paradigm shared by the planet’s global majority. This process has begun, but it needs more energy and expansion to succeed.