As NATO celebrated its 75th anniversary in mid-July, all the speakers, including Joe Biden, Lloyd Austin (here), and Jens Stoltenberg (here) cunningly cast the alliance as a peaceful grouping that shields the freedom-loving, and democratic west from a violent world. Nothing can be further from the truth, as its members caused World War II and fanned WWI, (here) and have been responsible for many other wars and human suffering globally. Statement from speakers at the 2024 NATO summit shows that Western Europe and the US decided to combine their violence and project it to the rest of the world than correcting themselves.
Celebrating war on the World at 2024 NATO Summit
The 75th anniversary of the NATO became another platform for its leadership, including the outgoing secretary general and the US president, to bill the alliance as defending The West’s peace and freedom, to prevent the harrowing experiences of WWI and WWII. However, Austin (here), Biden, and Stoltenberg, (here) and other speakers omitted how countries that would later found NATO caused or fanned both World Wars through expansionism, irrational military alliances, and economic opportunism (greed). Therefore, the formation of NATO presented The West with an avenue for redirecting their greed and violence from each other, but instead combining it and using it against other parties in the rest of the world for theft and plunder. It’s no wonder Stoltenberg stated that NATO brings prosperity to Europe (here). Consequently, the alliance has always sought a party to direct its members’ greed, and violence against, despite claiming to abhor the scourge of war at home. This paper looks into how NATO members psychologically project their violence on the rest of the world instead of addressing their gluttony, and violence.
A Simple Lie Told Many Times…
While NATO blames Communists, Russians, Terrorists, China, or the weather as posing threats to the west, academic sources (Norwich University, Imperial War Museum, and National Bureau of Economic Research) reveal that causes of both World Wars was Europe’s imperialism, senseless military alliances, and economic opportunism, vices that Europeans and Americans could have addressed through other means than creating a larger expansionist, and economically opportunistic NATO. Most of the speeches commemorating NATO’s 75th anniversary featured a story line that the grouping’s founders convened after WWII, when leaders of the so called ‘democracies’ decided to unite against the scourge of war. The narrative is calculated to conceal the reality that both World Wars were started and fanned by Western European countries, which cannot accept responsibility. The audiences in the summit, representing the West’s elites, listened to a simplified, supremacist’s story of NATO being a white knight protecting the western societies from a violent world. This narrative as presented in Austin’s, (here) Biden’s, and Stoltenberg’s speeches (here) was kept simple because it is false, and needs to be memorized to gain some legitimacy. However, the reality is that NATO, in both constituent countries and the alliance, have been the leading causes of war and human suffering in the previous and the current centuries. Therefore, if its effort to prevent the scourge of war was genuine, it would have addressed the westerner’s cruelty, greed, and competition that created both world wars. However, it seems those convening in Washington, 75 years ago, decided that peace would entail them combining their violence and directing it at others for resources.
Noteworthy, NATO’s founding members held overseas colonies, which they oppressed and continued to murder, rob, and plunder despite forming an alliance to supposedly end the scourge of war. Afterwards’ the alliance’s members have singly, and collectively directed their violence against other regions in pursuit of resources to feed into their insatiable greed, which is now branded as their security, democracy, freedom, or human rights. Consequently, Austin, Biden, and Stoltenberg stated how NATO prevented war in Western Europe but could not mention how the same or its members have caused devastating wars in other regions with important resource or occupying geostrategic locations. These speakers’ praising the alliance’s decision to stand ‘one for all and all for one’ constitutes the West’s resolve to mete its violence on the rest of the world, and using nasty tags for its targets to hide its true nature.
NATO as a Justifications for Modern Imperialism
Through NATO, the Western Europe and the US found it convenient to officially direct their threats to communists throughout the Cold War, even while propagating colonial wars, and repression in Africa, Asia, and South America. Stoltenberg’s and Biden’s statements seen earlier are disingenuous, including assertions that NATO only responded to wars in Kosovo, Afghanistan, the Middle East, and North Africa. Also, the reality that speakers in the summit were only mentioning the above conflicts and not others constitutes lying by omission, noting that NATO members conducted many wars after the WWII, such as British colonial war in Kenya in the 1950s. The UK, the second most important NATO member, perpetrated a decade-long genocidal war on Kenya from 1952, while creating the Suez Canal crisis of 1956 against Egypt. Similarly, Portugal, another founding NATO member, conducted genocidal wars against civilians in its colonies in Angola, Cabo Verde, Mozambique, and Goa in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s (here). Equally, France, also a founding member, started prolonged wars in South East Asia (Indochina) in the 1950s which expanded with the support of the US to become the US-Vietnam war that continued to 1975. Additionally, US wars in the same period spun the globe starting from Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, DRC, and South America among others. Thus, NATO member’s history of wars seen above shows that they are violent, which disputes any notion that war is only brought to this peaceful group.
Lies and Contradictions
The lies of Speakers in the 2024 NATO summit above clearly shows how the alliance is not transparent in its motives. It is puzzling how they stated that the alliance intervened in Yugoslavia to ‘prevent ethnic cleansing’ in the 1990s, even when the same grouping is currently funding and protecting Israel to conduct ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Also, the NATO trying to justify its invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq using the terror threat reveals hypocrisy first because none of the participants in the September 11 bombing in the US came from Iraq, and second because al-Qaida formed directly from America’s activities in Afghanistan, and Middle East. Correspondingly, the NATO alliance continuing to assert that the security of the euro-Atlantic is linked with that of indo-pacific is indefensible noting how The West’s intervention in China and South East Asia in the past centuries only resulted in wars of plunder for instance in the Opium Wars on China, Korean and Vietnam wars among others. Still, none of the challenges that informed the formation of NATO originated from the Indo-Pacific. Evidently, the alliance is hell-bent on spreading violence across the world for colonialism, theft, and plunder using excuses that are easy to refute as seen in this article. Statements made in the summit shows how NATO alliance exists to assist Western Europe and the US to use violence to advance colonialism in modern times.
Simon Chege Ndiritu, is a political observer and research analyst from Africa, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.