After 75 years of NATO – debunking myths and get to the bottom of things

Around 4 April 2024, the day on which NATO turned 75 years old, there were many analyses and commentaries on the past and present of this US-led military alliance. NATO apologists have sung its praises: NATO had a history of success and was still indispensable for the defence of the free world. In detail, however, there are also lamentations: what will happen to NATO if Donald Trump becomes the next US president? What is still missing so that the NATO states can stand up to the enemies of freedom in the coming years?
  But the critics didn’t mince their words either. On 8 April, a new book was published from a critical perspective: “Die NATO. Eine Abrechnung mit dem Wertebündnis” (NATO. A reckoning with the alliance of values) is the title, Sevim Dagdelen, former member of the parliamentary group “Die Linke” in the German Bundestag, now in the “Sarah Wagenknecht Alliance” (BSW), is the author.
  However, it must be added: Apologists and critics do not meet at eye level. In the mainstream of the NATO states, almost only the apologists have their say, the critics are – and actually always have been – marginalised and dependent on smaller media, which are also threatened by coercive state measures. And there is certainly no dialogue between the apologists and the critics. Nor will there be such a dialogue in the foreseeable future. The NATO states are engaged in a propaganda war that is being waged no less fiercely and relentlessly than the actual war. Interest-driven myths are gaining the upper hand, and historical and political analyses trying to be closer to the truth are currently not in demand.

Unbearable

At first, I didn’t want to write anything about 75 years of NATO. That only changed when I read an article by Dagmar Henn on rt deutsch on 1 April. After reading it, I asked myself again how “free” we really are if this author and this medium are taboo throughout the EU. A few days later, I had to read what NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said about Ukraine at the “anniversary” meeting of the foreign ministers of the NATO states in Brussels on 4 April. I couldn’t bear it any longer.
  What did Dagmar Henn write? Eloquently she referred to the fact that the governments of Ukraine and Russia had largely agreed on a treaty to end the war at the end of March 2022, but Western governments vetoed it and put pressure on the Ukrainian government to continue the war – NATO’s proxy war against Russia – primarily with people from Ukraine and weapons from the NATO states. For this, not only did Russian war crimes have to be invented in Bucha, but since the end of March 2022, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians have lost their lives.
  On the “anniversary”, Jens Stoltenberg said that NATO must take more leadership in the Ukraine war in future. This could not be left to the individual member states. He was willing to continue supplying Ukraine with massive amounts of NATO armaments in the coming years and to continue the war with active NATO participation (but so far officially without NATO soldiers) in any case and until victory. More NATO involvement in the war, according to Stoltenberg’s rhetorical formula, would bring the Russians to their knees much more quickly. Press representatives had learnt of additional expenditure amounting to 100 billion dollars for the coming years. Stoltenberg avoided to give concrete figures, referring to the meeting of the heads of state and government in July.
  So, Dagmar Henn has explained how many victims the refusal of the NATO states to end the war quickly has cost so far. And Jens Stoltenberg has explained why he wants to escalate the war further – with even more casualties. But war “to the last Ukrainian”? Stoltenberg’s myth: Only an escalation of the war can end the war more quickly.

NATO myths

The official NATO “historiography” is full of myths.
  A few examples:

• The founding of NATO in 1949 was a defensive reaction to a communist Soviet Union striving for world domination. Thus, NATO prevented the Soviet Union from taking control of the rest of Europe after the Sovietisation of the Eastern and Central European states occupied by the Red Army after the war, and secured peace in Europe. In doing so, NATO had always orientated itself on international law and the UN Charter. It has always been committed to protecting the law and the rule of law.

• After the end of the Cold War, the NATO states had shown the best will to create a peaceful and just “new world order” that now encompassed all states in the world. Only the ill will of others (terrorists; the “axis of evil” including countries such as North Korea, Iraq, and Iran; Russia and China) had stood in the way. This was the only reason why, soon after 1991, NATO’s tasks were expanded to include global missions, the term “defence” was redefined (“The security of the Federal Republic of Germany will also be defended in the Hindu Kush.”) and it participated in the wars waged by the USA.

• Thus, for example the NATO war of aggression against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999 was a “humanitarian intervention”, preventing further genocide and seeking to pacify former Yugoslavia which had disintegrated into several states.

• The expansion of NATO to the east was primarily in response to the desire of the former Warsaw Pact states and peoples of Eastern and Central Europe to find protection from an aggressive Russia and finally belong to the West.

• In the Ukraine war, NATO is defending the freedom of the whole of Europe. NATO must therefore do everything in its power to prevent a Russian victory in the Ukraine war. If Ukraine were to lose the war, Russia would also attack the other European states to implement its imperial plans.

• In the global struggle of democracies against the autocracies of the world, NATO stands on the side of freedom, justice, and democracy.

Sapere aude!

All these myths can be refuted with an unbiased view and with an eye to the political and historical facts and contexts, and have already been thoroughly refuted, also in this newspaper. But these refutations find almost no access to the mainstream media in the NATO states – instead, the myths are cultivated and nurtured and regurgitated daily in the most diverse forms – mostly accompanied by unverifiable horror stories about the “others”.
  More than 200 years ago, Immanuel Kant wrote: “Sapere aude! Have courage to use your own reason!”. This appeal has lost none of its topicality. Resolute opposition is necessary when the basis of constructive human coexistence, namely honesty in our dealings with one another, good faith in public life, is in danger of getting lost entirely. Today, when the citizens of the NATO states are once again being driven into a major war with a potential for escalation that threatens humanity, it has become vital to debunk the dangerous NATO myths and get to the bottom of things.  •