We hate NATO Too

 Welcome to NATO as Globo-cop. NATO fought its first European war in 1999 - the 78-day unilateral bombing of Yugoslavia. NATO bombing raids on Serbia were aimed not just at direct military targets but at the industrial infrastructure of power stations, fuel depots, factories, chemical plants, roads, railways and bridges which serve civilian purposes. By all accounts Moscow has modelled the attack on the NATO strategy in Kosovo, which brought Chechenya to its knees

 Then NATO set out to defend the West in Afghanistan - 11 years of fighting and it now appears that NATO, the international police department, can't even stop AK-47 and RPG armed warlords.

Then there was NATO in Libya "defending democracy". It was so blindingly obvious that the NATO intervention in Libya was about oil that commentators were obliged, for ideological reasons, to deny it and claim "humanitarian reasons".

NATO was created 1949 as a counter against the USSR which disappeared as an entity 20 yrs or so ago. The implosion of the Soviet Union was greeted with joy among the NATO allies and we were promised a golden age in which to spend the “peace dividend.” Now NATO will soon announce an interceptor missile system for Europe and that the case for this "defence system" for Europe will be against North Korean or Iranian intercontinental ballistic missiles, which neither nation presently possess.

Russian retired Lieutenant-General Evgeny Buzhinsky is quoted as asking: "Why spend hundreds of billions of dollars just to intercept three or four Iranian missiles? And why would Iran attack Europe when 70 per cent of its foreign trade is with the EU?"

The essence of the North-Atlantic alliance was a military and political bloc against Russia has not changed since its establishment in 1949. NATO has not changed its goals. In the grand geo-political strategic chessbord little changes ever since Anglo-Austro-Prussian-Franco concerns about an expansionist Tsar in the 18th/19th centuries.

 $4 billion is to be spent to modernise tactical nuclear weapons based in Europe. It is Europe's dirty secret that the list of nuclear-capable countries extends beyond those that have built their own weapons. The truth is that Belgium, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands store nuclear bombs on their air-force bases and have planes capable of delivering them. There are an estimated 200 B-61 thermonuclear-gravity bombs scattered across these four countries. Under a NATO agreement struck during the Cold War, the bombs, which are owned by the U.S., can be transferred to the control of a host nation's air force in time of conflict.

The credibility of the West is in bad shape, even for Westerners. We are better informed than we've ever been, and we are not impressed by what we see. Nobody believes in leaders like they used to. There is something deeply disgusting about the pretence that bombing for peace is a civilising mission. The people who drop bombs from the sky upon towns and villages are bullying cowards and deserve no respect from anyone. The people who give them the orders to drop their bombs are self-serving hypocrites whose concern for the safety of civilains or refugees is about as genuine as their domestic concern for single mothers, the unemployed and the disabled. The minority who own and control the world—the Directors of USA Inc and UK Plc—are ruthless, exploitative thieves whose primary interest is in the fast buck and protecting what they imagine their interests to be. The capitalists have never gone to war to promote justice and they never will. Indeed, the notion that justice can be furthered by violence can only make sense when you have a social system that is rooted in violence and plunder.

 Ethical foreign policy? NATO for peace? What a joke!