The Belgrade Forum welcomes initiative of the Head office of the World Peace Council (WPC), in Athens and the Portuguese Council for Peace and Cooperation to hold this meeting, which we consider very important. The dramatic events in several countries over the recent years, planned and implemented by direct involvement of the USA, NATO and the EU, also threatening to propagate to some other countries, are a huge threat to peace and security, especially in the region of the Mediterranean, Asia Minor and Middle East. We are faced with new and dangerous challenges, with new threats and with the introducing of new unrests and turmoil in various parts of the world, targeted by conquering and domination intent of the masterminds of the new world order. The leading Western countries with imperialist ambitions, primarily the USA, are increasingly assuming the right to decide on who can and who cannot lead any given country in the world. The new arms race imposed by the USA, NATO and the EU, establishment of new military bases and new zones of influence, ever more frequent use of force and blatant violation of the fundamental principles of the international law are the ultimate threat to peace, stability and security.
After the failure of bipolar world from the early 1990s, the world revealed true colors of NATO and true intentions of its masters, first of all, the USA. Ever since, the USA and its Western allies, with the use of their NATO arm, have been trying to introduce new rules of international conduct, such as concepts of “humanitarian intervention”, “human rights above sovereignty”, “exceptionalism” and “responsibility to protect” in a bid to secure the excuse for the use of force to instigate civil wars, change of regimes, dissolution of sovereign states.
The first victim of this new USA/NATO doctrine was former Yugoslavia, or Serbia, exactly 13 years ago. Under the pretext of “humanitarian intervention”, led by the USA and without any UN Security Council mandate, NATO committed aggression against Serbia (Yugoslavia) on 24 March 1999 and went on with it for 78 days and nights. For the first time since its establishment, the USA-led NATO applied deadly force against a sovereign country, thus grossly breaching not only its Founding Act but also the UN Charter and the fundamental principles of the international law. In the build-up for this aggression, the USA was strongly supported by its Western allies, primarily by Germany, France and the UK. That-time President Clinton, Prime Minister Tony Blair and NATO leadership told their citizens that bombing of Serbia was a “humanitarian intervention”, cynically named “Merciful Angel”, aiming at preventing the alleged genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Albanian minority in Kosovo. These manufactured lies were all too ready accepted by the so-called free western media in supporting and justifying the aggression. This was the twilight of the Western ethics, twilight of media freedoms.
The focus of such policy was neither democracy nor human rights, but solely the U.S. interests; they employed NATO to harness the entire Balkans under its control, with a view further its imperialist goals in the Asia Minor and the Middle East, the Caspian basin and, ultimately, Russia. Pursuing their hegemonic goals, they embarked on dismembering the territory of Serbia and forcible separating of Kosovo in spite of this Province being a part of Serbia and the cradle of Serbian statehood. The aggressors turned it into a NATO-made pseudo-state called Kosovo, and erected one of the largest American military bases, the Bondsteel Camp, which facilitates control of all strategic routes between Europe and the Middle East. This project was accompanied with systematic destruction of the national, cultural and spiritual heritage of Serbian nation in this part of Serbia.
13 years since NATO aggression, the Balkans remains unstable. Under the UN and EU mandates, Kosovo turned into a training ground for terrorists, a transit base for heroin and human trafficking, and a precedent for dismantling free sovereign states. Albanian separatism is rising once again in the South of the Central Serbia, and Tirana hosts conferences dedicated to creation of Greater Albania. These are the results of spreading “democracy” by Tomahawk/Patriot missiles, unmanned aircrafts, depleted uranium, cluster bombs and graphite bombs.
The USA/NATO aggression against Serbia (Yugoslavia) was a historic turning point and a fatal step leading into destruction of the previously valid limits and rules governing international peace and security introduced since WWII. This illegal act set a dangerous precedent that NATO and the USA keep applying in other parts of the world ever since, threatening the entire structure of international relations, peace and stability. This is how creators of the new world order willfully and by argument of weapons imposed a new reality on the ashes of the international legitimacy, in the form of a parallel “international law”, authored and implemented by the USA through NATO as its implementing tool. This process, unfortunately for us, was followed with marginalization of roles of the United Nations and its Security Council, as the ultimate global body for preserving the peace and stability in the world.
Pursuing its imperial arrogance and misusing the tragic and heinous terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, and backed by its most loyal NATO allies, the USA continued with aggression in Afghanistan in 2001, and then in Iraq in 2003, blatantly violating the international law. They forcibly changed the regimes in both countries. The continued decade-long use of brute force and most advanced weaponry against the peoples in these states caused vast human casualties, tremendous anguish of people and huge material destructions. Just like the aggression against Serbia was based on lies, the aggression against Iraq was also based on defrauding national and global public with lies of alleged production of weapons of mass destruction in that country, which was never found.
The most recent example of illegal and violent behavior of the USA and NATO is aggression against Libya in 2011. The Western leaders praised this NATO campaign as the first example of “responsibility to protect”. In fact, NATO action in Libya is the latest example of USA/NATO violent practice and brute misuse of UN Security Council resolution adopted at the beginning of the conflict in Libya in early 2011. This seven-month long NATO-allies aggression was concluded with forcible change of regime in that country and apprehension, torture and execution of years-long Head of State, President Qaddafi, supported by direct involvement of NATO special forces. The key roles there were played by France, the UK and the U.S., whereas some Arab countries, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, provided ample financial support, especially to those media which supported the aggression and campaigned in demonizing of President Qaddafi and his regime, for the sake of justifying the aggression.
What can be said about the result of such US/NATO “humanitarian interventions”? A full analysis would take too much time, but we could recall its basics:
- During aggression against Serbia (Yugoslavia) was killed more than 3,500 persons out of whom two-thirds were civilians including 79 children under the age of ten; more than 10,000 people were heavily wounded and suffered lasting effects; during and after the aggression, the policy of terror and pre-planned ethnic cleansing resulted in expulsion of more than 230,000 Serbs and non-Albanian people, with only few thousand of them managing to return to their homes in all these years; Serbs who remained in Kosovo have no freedom of movement, have to live in closed enclaves sometimes surrounded by barbed wire, and under constant exposure to harassment and arbitrariness of local Albanian authorities; the whole country suffered material damage of the order of 100 billion dollar; the effects of mass-scale use of weapons with depleted uranium and consequential radiation have lasting adverse consequences on health of the current and the future generations;
- During the years of aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq, hundreds of thousand of civilians were killed, hundreds of thousands of homes were destroyed, and heavy material devastation inflicted, resulting in poverty, chaos and instability; both countries became breeding grounds for conflicts and terrorist groups with tragic outcome for the inhabitants, because the hand-picked governments do not enjoy trust of people; the world will remember brutal and ruthless behavior of the aggressor against local people such as tragic exercise of humiliating prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, or incessant night killings of civilians in Afghanistan by the so-called guided missiles, or recent killing of 17 members of several Afghan families including 9 children in a rampage of a US soldier; in its arrogance, the aggressor put tag value on these lives with as little as 50,000 dollars, in damages to families; 11-year long American war and its atrocities strengthened the resolute and the will of the Afghan people to fight for their country and expel foreign arrogant and inhuman enemy;
- No less tragic is the outcome of seven-month aggression against Libya - thousands of killed civilians, destroyed cities and infrastructure, tens of thousands of jailed proponents of former regime under grave humiliation and torture; the report of UN Human Rights Council and recent reports of some other humanitarian organizations claim that in Libya, including the period of NATO aggression, were committed war crimes and crimes against humanity. Some of these reports include conclusive proof of involvement of NATO forces in crimes committed in Libya; once decades-long stable and prosperous country, Libya of today is devastated and facing conflicts along the regional and tribal lines, under a realistic threat of disintegration that will inflict far-reaching consequences not only for Libya but also for the entire region; Libyan oil reserves, Africa’s richest, were taken over mainly by the Western companies, and Libya was finally integrated in NATO’s so-called Mediterranean Dialogue, a military partnership with NATO, which was the very goal of the aggression.
Recently, the world’s attention has been focused on events in Syria and increasingly direct threats against Iran vocalized by Israel and the USA. Concerning conflict in Syria, one can notice a great similarity with pre-NATO Libya’s developments. Both were caused by direct involvement of foreign factor. As previously in Libya, the dominant roles in Syria belong to foreign mercenaries and paramilitary forces close to radical Islamic groups, which are directly supported by NATO and certain countries from the region. As in Libya, the financial support to insurgents comes from Saudi Arabia and some other countries from the region. The West/NATO repeat in Syria the same method as used in Libya: support to terrorist actions, infiltration of mercenaries to execute military actions, and instigation of conflicts against the regime, smuggling arms to insurgents, training insurgents in training compounds located in some adjacent countries, especially in Turkey; as in Libya, the basic USA/NATO goal is creating instability and chaos, instigating and inciting armed conflict with maximum civilian deaths, as precursor for foreign intervention and overthrowing the regime in Syria.
I wish to use this opportunity and express, on behalf of the Belgrade Forum, our sincere solidarity with nations of Syria and Iran who are exposed to dangerous activities in destabilizing and threatening their respective sovereignty, peace and freedom. I also offer full support to the fight of people of Palestine for freedom and creation of independent state of Palestine within its historic borders from 1967, and Jerusalem as its capital.
We wish to believe that countries and forces defending the peace, sovereignty and observance of the UN Charter and fundamental principles of the international law, combined and in joint exercise, will muster strength to prevent new aggressive “humanitarian interventions” by the USA and NATO. There lies the importance of this meeting, its conclusions and messages, and our joint future activities. The Belgrade Forum gives its full support to the World Peace Council in its tireless efforts to mobilize broadest peace-loving forces in fight against imperialism and in defense of peace, freedom and democracy. The basis for international relations should be the international law with the overarching role of the United Nations in resolving international problems and safeguarding the peace, rather than desires of mighty ones to forcibly change borders and regimes in any country.
Thank you very much for your attention.
Dragomir Vučićević,
Member of the Steering Board of the
Belgrade Forum for a World of Equals
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2012/05/01/balkans-to-caspian-u-s-and-nato-continue-cold-war/
Stop NATO - April 30, 2012
Balkans To Caspian: U.S. And NATO Continue Cold War
Though infrequently acknowledged if even given consideration, the current historical period remains what it has been for a quarter century, the post-Cold War era.
Beginning in earnest in 1991 with the near simultaneous disintegration of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia – instantaneous in the first case, comparatively slower in the second, only complete with the independence of Montenegro in 2006 – the bipolar world ended with the demise of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact and the nonaligned one with the fragmentation of Yugoslavia, a founder of the Non-Aligned Movement.
The dissolution of the two nations, the only both multi-ethnic and multi-confessional countries in Europe, was accompanied by violent ethnic conflicts often reinforced by religious differences. In Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo, the South Caucasus, the Russian North Caucasus and on the east bank of the Dniester River.
In many instances, in Serbian-majority areas of Croatia and Bosnia and in Transdniester, memories of World War II gave rise to legitimate fears of revanchism among populations that recalled the death camps and pogroms of Adolf Hitler’s allies in the early 1940s and witnessed the recrudescence of the ideologies, the irredentism and the political trappings that gave rise to them.
Transdniester refused to become part of post-Soviet Moldova as it foresaw both states being reabsorbed into Romania. Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Adjara, parts of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, didn’t desire to be included in the Republic of Georgia and majority-Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh adopted a similar approach to post-Soviet Azerbaijan. The above are collectively known in certain circles as the frozen conflicts in former Soviet space.
The centrifugal dynamic reached more dangerous proportions when armed secessionist movements went beyond federal republics – the Leninist constitutions of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia formally allowed for their independence under the proper conditions – and arose in autonomous republics, former autonomous republics and other regions: Chechnya and Dagestan in Russia and Kosovo and the Presevo Valley in Serbia. Northwestern Macedonia was the site of the same destabilization in 2001, the direct – and inevitable – result of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s air war against Yugoslavia two years earlier on behalf of Kosovo separatists.
The area collectively assailed by the above violence and national vivisection stretches from the Adriatic Sea to the Caspian Sea, north of the Broader (or Greater or New) Middle East which in turn begins in Mauritania and ends in Kazakhstan, from Africa’s Atlantic coast to China’s western border.
The ever more extensive breakup of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, and the former Soviet Union and former Yugoslavia, correlated with – and more than correlated with – the development of NATO as an expansionist, aggressive and bellicose regional and global military force.
Twenty-one nations and five smaller breakaway states (including Kosovo) where earlier there had been only two created that many more opportunities for the West to expand southward and eastward from Cold War-era NATO territory. Every one of the 21 former Soviet and Yugoslav federal republics is now either a full member of NATO or engaged in a partnership program. Thirteen of them have troops serving under NATO command in Afghanistan.
Two recent announcements demonstrate the constantly increasing penetration and domination of the area that begins in Slovenia and ends in Azerbaijan, a swathe of land that on its eastern extreme borders Russia to its north and Iran to its south.
Recently NATO’s Allied Command Operations website announced the resumption of what had been annual military exercises employed to integrate partners in the Balkans, the former Soviet Union, the Eastern Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf.
The dual exercise, Cooperative Longbow and Cooperative Lancer, respectively a command and a field exercise, will occur this year in Macedonia from May 21-29 with the participation of several NATO members – if the preceding versions are an indication, the U.S. Britain, Canada, Greece, Hungary, Poland, Turkey and others – and perhaps twice as many partnership adjuncts from the Partnership for Peace, Mediterranean Dialogue and Istanbul Cooperation Initiative programs. The exercise, like its predecessors, is based on a “crisis response” scenario and a United Nations mandate. Like Libya last year, for instance.
In the last Cooperative Longbow/Cooperative Lancer exercises, in Georgia in 2009, NATO members the U.S., Britain, Canada, Spain, Greece, Hungary, Turkey, the Czech Republic, Croatia and Albania participated. Longbow/Lancer 2009 was held less than nine months after the five-day war between Georgia and Russia in August 2008 and was also to have included NATO members Estonia and Latvia and twelve partnership nations.
This year’s version is slated to involve the largest number of Partnership for Peace states in any Longbow/Lancer exercises, thirteen: Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Serbia, Switzerland and Ukraine. NATO hasn’t yet disclosed which Mediterranean Dialogue and Istanbul Cooperation Initiative partners will participate this year.
The first Longbow/Lancer exercises were held in Moldova in 2006 with seven NATO members, twelve Partnership for Peace nations (all of the above-mentioned except for Serbia, which joined the Partnership for Peace in that year) and Mediterranean Dialogue partner Israel. Mediterranean Dialogue member Morocco and Istanbul Cooperation Initiative members Qatar and the United Arab Emirates sent observers.
Cooperative Longbow/Lancer 2007 was conducted in Albania and the following year’s exercise in Armenia. All five nations – Moldova, Albania, Armenia, Georgia and Macedonia – are deeply involved, either on their own territory or in neighboring nations, in one or more of the conflicts discussed above. In 2009 Armenia, Kazakhstan, Moldova and Serbia withdrew beforehand because of the Georgia-Russian war of a few months earlier and Estonia and Latvia did also because of an anti-government mutiny staged the day before the almost month-long exercise began.
What role the NATO and partnership troops may have played had the military uprising progressed further than it did can be easily imagined.
The U.S. Marine Corps’ Black Sea Rotational Force posted on its Facebook account (and to date nowhere else) that its six-month rotation for this year will “build enduring partnerships with 19 nations throughout Eastern Europe.” More accurately, as the Marine program formed two years ago identifies as its mission, in “the Black Sea, Balkan and Caucasus regions.”
Two years ago twelve nations were involved, by last year there were thirteen – Albania, Azerbaijan, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Georgia, Greece, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia and Ukraine – and this year nineteen. The six new participating nations were not named.
Black Sea Rotational Force 2012 began its half-year-long deployment in Georgia by joining Agile Spirit 2012 in March at the Vaziani Training Area where the last Cooperative Longbow/Lancer exercises took place. Serbia may host its first military exercises with the force as well.
The U.S. Marine Corps is not only building bilateral and multilateral ties with nineteen countries in the Balkans, the Black Sea region and the Caucasus and other parts of the former Soviet Union, it is also consolidating NATO’s expansion into those areas with the ultimate aim of full Alliance membership for those not already among the bloc’s 28 member states.
It can be argued that the Cold War didn’t end, that the U.S. and NATO continue to wage it with wars and preparations for wars.
Stop NATO - May 4, 2012
British Defence Chief: NATO Absolves Germany Of Nazi Past
Rick Rozoff
While British Defence Secretary Philip Hammond was in Berlin earlier this week touting global NATO ahead of the military alliance's summit in Chicago two weeks from now, he urged Germany to overcome its "historic reluctance" to waging military aggression in Europe and around the world. Regarding the West, a case of what oft was thought, but ne'er so - candidly - expressed.
After meeting with his German counterpart Thomas de Maiziere, Hammond told the British press that World War II "was quite a long while ago” and as such Germany must cast off whatever residual misgivings it may harbor about reassuming an international military role within NATO, as "it is self-evident that there is still huge potential in the German defence structure to deliver more useful firepower to the alliance.” Germany must "significantly increase its military capability,” Hammond advocated.
As Europe's major economic force, it must also be its main military contributor.
The deadliest war in history is yesterday's news, old hat. Time to get over it and move on. To new wars. Concerns about the 1945 Potsdam agreement on the demilitarization of Germany, the Nuremberg principles and the German constitutional ban on preparing wars of aggression are, to use contemporary colloquial language, like so 20th century.
Hammond's remark about Germany's hesitance to get back into the war business, though, is outdated, as the country did so thirteen years ago in support of NATO's air war against Yugoslavia in 1999.
The United Kingdom's defense chief also delivered an address at his country's embassy in Berlin on May 2, co-sponsored by the German Council on Foreign Relations, entitled "Shared Security: Transforming Defence to Face the Future," which reiterated the common Western position of internationalizing NATO for a broader range of missions outside of the Euro-Atlantic area.
His comments included these unequivocal assertions:
"The responsibility of European nations to defend their citizens can no longer be discharged by a strategy of homeland defence and a Fortress Europe.
"The threats we face are no longer territorial, so a passive defence of national territory is no longer adequate protection for our citizens.
"Our security requires that we do not sit back and let threats come to us - but that we project power to meet them - wherever in the world they are forming."
Global NATO, led by its major, its only significant, powers - the United States, Britain, France, Germany and sometimes Italy - will unilaterally and arbitrarily define threats that must be confronted; will practice alleged defense of its territory by going on the offensive half a world away if desired, as the reasons for war are "no longer territorial"; will not let largely chimerical dangers present their calling cards in Brussels, London, Washington, Berlin and Paris, but will anticipate them before they even exist, if they are even capable of existing, and "project power" to preempt them, whether the threats are real or fancied, imminent or remote, latent or without foundation either in the present or the future.
Hammond further stated, "we need to take that final step up from the defensive posture of the Cold War, to respond to a future in which threats can originate thousands of miles away..."
As such, "the NATO Alliance, and the European part of it in particular, must continue to develop together the capability and the political will to act when necessary - to project power, including, but not limited to, military power, and to deploy it rapidly when we must."
And where. And against whom. And under whatever contrived rubric it chooses. Hammond was disabusing Germans of any lingering, antiquated illusions that their armed forces are designed to protect their nation's borders and population.
Hammond applauded the six-month NATO bombing campaign against Libya last year as "a coalition success" within the context he discussed. For as "it is in Europe’s interest that the United States rises to the challenge that the emergence of China as a global power presents and we should support the decisions the US has made," then the inextricable correlate of that is Europe's "Shouldering the major burden in the Balkans and the Mediterranean, but also being prepared, if necessary to take a bigger role in relation to North Africa and the Middle East."
The major NATO powers divide up the world.
But even the alliance of 28 European and North American nations, consisting of three members with nuclear weapons in Europe (which include American tactical nuclear bombs in Germany) and most of the world's largest and most lethal armed forces, are not enough for Hammond and for NATO.
The bloc must expand its already existing partnerships around the world, to date with no less than 40 countries in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, the South Caucasus, the South Pacific and Central, South and East Asia, to yet broader stretches of the planet.
In Hammond's words, "Both Libya and Afghanistan have shown how agile NATO can be in incorporating the contributions of outsiders." In the second instance with troops from 50 nations.
He also cited "The new Northern Group of nations, which includes Germany, the Baltic and Nordic countries (including Sweden), Poland and the Netherlands, as well as the UK," in reference to the initiative of Hammond's superior, Prime Minister David Cameron, last year to launch an Arctic-Baltic "mini-NATO" aimed against Russia.
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2011/01/22/britain-spearheads-mini-nato-in-arctic-ocean-baltic-sea/
German F-4F Phantom II fighter-bombers were deployed for NATO's Baltic air patrol in a four-month rotation ending on April 25, where they were within a three-minute flight from Russia's second largest city, St. Petersburg.
The British defence secretary praised the role of Germany in Afghanistan, where with 4,900 troops (and another 400 held in reserve), exceeding parliamentary limitations on the number of soldiers permitted to be deployed abroad, it is the third largest troop contributor for NATO's International Security Assistance Force.
He also hailed German military deployments to the Balkans, where the nation has the largest number of troops serving with NATO's Kosovo Force (KFOR), almost twice as many as the next biggest contributor, the U.S. The last three KFOR commanders - Erhard Drews, Erhard Bühler and Marcus Bentler - are German generals.
NATO has sent reinforcements to Kosovo, 550 German and 150 Austrian troops, ahead of Serbian presidential and parliamentary elections because the few remaining ethnic Serbs there intend to vote in the elections of what they (and most of the world) still consider their country.
According to Kosovo Force spokesman German Major Marc Stümmler, KFOR is "preparing for...a higher level of tensions."
Germany reentered the world of war in 1999 when it provided Tornado warplanes for the 78-day air assault against Yugoslavia, marking the first time the nation's armed forces participated in a combat mission since World War Two. That the Luftwaffe was deployed over the skies of a country it had extensively bombed in 1941 confirmed with a vengeance, and no shadow of ambiguity, Germany's reemergence as an aggressive military power.
For Serbs and other Balkans peoples Germany's role in World War Two is not forgotten, if it is by Philip Hammond.
Immediately following the latter's visit to Berlin, on May 4th NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen arrived in the city to meet with Chancellor Angela Merkel, to visit the NATO-Mission for Freedom permanent exhibition at the Mauer Museum at Checkpoint Charlie and to lavish praise on his host for, to quote the NATO website, "Germany's steadfast support for the Alliance and its missions, notably in Afghanistan, Kosovo and off the coast of Somalia."
When Germany was reunited in 1990, contrary to the George H.W. Bush administration's pledge to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, NATO immediately moved not only "one inch" but over 200 miles to the east, beginning the process of absorbing all the Soviet Union's former partners in the now defunct Warsaw Pact.
Germany has aided NATO's expansionist and expeditionary designs in the past thirteen years and NATO has rewarded it: Germany is now the world's third largest weapons exporter, its arms sales abroad increasing with each succeeding year.
Britain and NATO insist its leaders demonstrate, to quote Hammond, "the ability to generate the political will and public support for the deployment of military resources more widely in the future in support of Alliance operations beyond our borders."
Post-Cold War NATO has attempted to re-legitimize war as a method of advancing geopolitical objectives. Nations whose constitutions explicitly prohibit the practice - NATO members Germany and Italy, NATO partner Japan - have troops and other military personnel serving under the Atlantic Alliance in Afghanistan. So do NATO partners Finland, which had not engaged in combat operations since the Second World War, and Sweden, which had not done so in two centuries.
But according to Defence Secretary Hammond nations like Germany are not sufficiently involved in the wars of the 20th century and must play an even more pronounced role in them, present and to come.
There is no "quite a long while ago" when it comes to wars of aggression. There is only "never."
L’eterna giovinezza della Nato
di Manlio Dinucci
Durante la guerra fredda, scrive nell’autobiografia ufficiale, non condusse alcuna operazione bellica, ma si limitò ad «assicurare la difesa del proprio territorio contro la minaccia del Patto di Varsavia». Non dice però che questo si formò sei anni dopo la Nato. È con la fine della guerra fredda, in seguito al dissolvimento del Patto di Varsavia e dell’Urss nel 1991, che la Nato rinasce a nuova vita.
Mantenendo però il suo imprinting: il comando Usa. Nel luglio 1992 lancia la sua prima operazione di «risposta alle crisi», la Maritime Monitor, per imporre l’embargo alla Jugoslavia. Nei Balcani, tra l‘ottobre ’92 e il marzo ’99, conduce undici operazioni dai nomi evocativi (Deny Flight, Sharp Guard, Eagle Eye e altri). Il 28 febbraio 1994, durante la Deny Flight in Bosnia, la Nato effettua la prima azione di guerra nella sua storia. Viola così l’art. 5 della sua stessa carta costitutiva, poiché l’azione bellica non è motivata dall’attacco a un membro dell’Alleanza ed è effettuata fuori dalla sua area geografica. Si arriva in tal modo all’operazione Allied Force, lanciata il 24 marzo 1999: per 78 giorni, decollando soprattutto dalle basi italiane, 1.100 aerei, per il 75% Usa, effettuano 38mila sortite, sganciando 23mila bombe e missili sulla Jugoslavia.
Nello stesso anno, il Summit Nato di Washington autorizza i paesi membri a «condurre operazioni di risposta alle crisi non previste dall’articolo 5, al di fuori del territorio dell’Alleanza». E la Nato inizia la sua espansione nell’Est, inglobando nel 1999-2009 nove paesi dell’ex Patto di Varsavia, di cui tre dell’ex Urss, e tre della ex Jugoslavia.
Senza più limiti, l’Alleanza nata come Patto del Nord Atlantico arriva sulle montagne afghane: nell’agosto 2003, con un colpo di mano, la Nato assume «il ruolo di leadership dell’Isaf, forza con mandato Onu». Inizia così «la prima missione al di fuori dell’area euro-atlantica nella storia della Nato».
Nel 2004 essa entra in Iraq, ufficialmente per una «missione di addestramento». Estende quindi le sue operazioni in Africa: nel 2005 in Sudan, nel 2007 in Somalia, nel 2009 nel Corno d’Africa e nell’Oceano Indiano. Nel 2011 è la volta della Libia: nell’operazione Unified Protector la Nato effettua (secondo quanto dichiara) 9.700 missioni di attacco aereo, in cui vengono sganciate 7.700 bombe di precisione allo scopo di «fare tutto il possibile per minimizzare i rischi ai civili».
Ora la Nato prende di mira Siria e Iran, ma sullo sfondo ci sono Russia e Cina. Nella sua «conquista dell’Est», essa è arrivata a ridosso della Cina, in Mongolia, con la quale ha avviato due mesi fa un «Programma individuale di partnership e cooperazione». Poiché dei 28 paesi dell’Alleanza solo cinque si affacciano sul Nord Atlantico, a Bruxelles si sta pensando a un cambio di nome: alcuni propongono «Alleanza Trans-Atlantica». Ma anche questo è restrittivo poiché, sulla scia degli Usa, essa si estende ormai alla regione Asia/Pacifico.
Così l’Alleanza si rinnova, abbeverandosi alla stessa fonte di giovinezza: la guerra.
Stop NATO - May 30, 2012
Pentagon Consolidates Control Over Balkans
Ahead of, during and after the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's 25th summit in Chicago on May 20-21, the Pentagon has continued expanding its permanent military presence in the former Yugoslavia and the rest of the Balkan region.
The military bloc's two-day conclave in Chicago formalized, among several other initiatives including the initial activation of its U.S.-dominated interceptor missile system and Global Hawk-equipped Alliance Ground Surveillance operations, a new category of what NATO calls aspirant countries next in line for full Alliance membership. Three of them are former Yugoslav federal republics - Bosnia, Macedonia and Montenegro - and the fourth is Georgia, conflicts involving which could be the most immediate cause of a confrontation between the world's two major nuclear powers.
This year new NATO partnership formats have sprung up like poisonous toadstools after a summer rain: Aspirants countries, the Partnership Cooperation Menu, the Individual Partnership and Cooperation Programme, the Connected Forces Initiative and partners across the globe among them.
The military bloc's inauguration as an active, aggressive military force in Bosnia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in the 1990s laid the groundwork for the U.S.'s already unmatched military to move troops, hardware and bases into Southeast Europe for actions there and to points east and south: The Middle East, the Caucasus, North Africa and Central and South Asia.
Since 2004 several nations in the east and west Balkans - Bulgaria, Romania, Slovenia, Croatia and Albania - have been incorporated into the alliance as full members and the remainder - Bosnia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and the generally unrecognized Republic of Kosovo - have in the first four instances joined NATO's Partnership for Peace program and in the last had its nascent armed forces, the Kosovo Security Force, built from scratch by the leading alliance powers.
Macedonia, which would have become a full member in 2009 except for the lingering name dispute with Greece, and Montenegro have been granted the Membership Action Plan, the final stage before full accession, and Bosnia will be accorded the same once the quasi-autonomous Republika Srpska is deemed properly stripped of the last vestige of self-governance.
NATO and the wars waged under its command, not only in the Balkans but in Afghanistan and all but officially in Iraq, have provided the Pentagon the mammoth Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo and three major air bases in Bulgaria and Romania as well as headquarters for new military task forces and jumping-off points for "downrange" operations outside Europe. The U.S. Department of Defense has also acquired subservient legionaries for wars in Asia and Africa and training grounds for American and multinational expeditionary units employed in 21st century neo-colonial wars far beyond the Euro-Atlantic area. Romania will host 24 U.S. Standard Missile-3 interceptors starting in three years.
NATO's Cooperative Longbow and Cooperative Lancer 2012 command and field exercises started in Macedonia on the second day of the Chicago NATO summit, May 21, and ended on May 29. The largest of four such exercises held within the framework of the Partnership for Peace program - "to train, exercise, and promote the interoperability of Partnership for Peace forces using NATO standards" - to date, this year's Longbow/Lancer drills included 2,200 troops from several NATO and a dozen Partnership for Peace nations, a total of 25 countries including the U.S.
On May 26 U.S. Army Europe and U.S. Air Forces in Europe launched the Immediate Response 2012 exercise in Croatia with military personnel from the host country, Albania, Bosnia, Montenegro and Slovenia. Macedonia and Serbia sent observers.
A report on the opening of the exercise posted on the website of U.S. European Command appended this paragraph:
"U.S. Army Europe is uniquely positioned to advance American strategic interests across Eurasia, building teams, assuring allies and deterring enemies. The relationships we build during more than 1,000 theater security cooperation events in more than 40 countries each year lead directly to support for U.S. actions such as in Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya."
Balkan states Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Romania and Slovenia deployed troops to Iraq after 2003 and all those nations as well as Montenegro (which became independent in 2006) have troops under NATO command in Afghanistan currently.
NATO's Allied Joint Force Command Naples has military missions in Bosnia, Macedonia and Serbia.
On May 28 the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff began a two-week disaster management and crisis response exercise, Shared Resilience 2012, in Bosnia. In addition to the U.S. and Bosnia, participating nations include Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Montenegro, Norway, Serbia and Slovenia.
Immediately before the NATO summit, the U.S. Marines Corps' Black Sea Rotational Force 2012 held multinational exercises near Constanta, Romania from May 7-18. The Black Sea Rotational Force was established in 2010 and last year doubled the duration of its training exercises in the Balkans, the Black Sea region and the South Caucasus from three to six months annually.
Now spending half the year in the geopolitically vital area, the Black Sea Rotational Force recently announced its mission of building "enduring partnerships with 19 nations throughout Eastern Europe.” The U.S. Marines are being hosted by Romania from April 2 to September 1. Prior to that Black Sea Rotational Force 2012 participated in the Agile Spirit 2012 exercise in Georgia in March.
U.S. Army Europe's Task Force East, employing Stryker combat vehicles, also operates out of Romania as well as Bulgaria: The Mihal Kogălniceanu Airfield and the Babadag Training Area in the first country and the Novo Selo Training Area in the second. In 2009 Task Force East spent three months training in Romania and Bulgaria, primarily preparing troops from the U.S. and the two host nations for operations in Afghanistan.
This year NATO officially identified Afghanistan and Iraq as military partners, in the category of partners across the globe. Since the end of NATO operations against Libya last October, the bloc's secretary general and its American ambassador, Anders Fogh Rasmussen and Ivo Daalder, have mentioned Libya joining NATO's Mediterranean Dialogue military partnership with the other nations of North Africa.
Each NATO military operation over the past 17 years, in Bosnia, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Libya, has provided the alliance with bases, centers, troops and logistics for later and for future wars. Air bases in Bulgaria and Romania were employed for the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya and, as noted above, every Balkan nation but Serbia has supplied troops for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pentagon and NATO military personnel, aircraft, ships and radar in Southeast Europe can be used in attacks on Syria and Iran and in any new armed conflict in the South Caucasus, such as the five-day war between Georgia and Russia four years ago.
The U.S. and its NATO allies are expanding their military presence and infrastructure ever closer to new theaters of war.