Reflections by Comrade Fidel

NATO, THE WORLD POLICE FORCE

Many people feel nauseous when they hear the name of that organization.

On Friday, November 19 in Lisbon, Portugal, the 28 members of that aggressive institution, engendered by the United States, decided to create something that they cynically call “the new NATO”.

NATO was born after WW II as an instrument of the Cold War unleashed by imperialism against the USSR, the country that paid for the victory over Nazism with tens of millions of lives and colossal destruction.

Against the USSR, the United States mobilized, along with a goodly portion of the European population, the far right and all the neo-fascist dregs of Europe, brimming with hatred and ready to gain the upper hand for the errors committed by the very leaders of the USSR after the death of Lenin.

With enormous sacrifice, the Soviet people were able to keep nuclear parity and to support the struggle for the national liberation of numerous peoples against the efforts of the European states to maintain the colonial system which had been imposed by force throughout the centuries; states that, in the post-war period, became allies of the Yankees who assumed command of the counter-revolution in the world.

In just 10 days –less than two weeks –world opinion has received three great and unforgettable lessons: G-20, APEC and NATO, in Seoul, Yokohama and Lisbon, in such a way that all honest persons who can read and write and whose minds haven’t been warped by the conditioned reflexes of the imperialist mass media machine, can have a true idea about the problems affecting humankind today.

In Lisbon, not one world was said that was capable of transmitting hope to billions of persons suffering from poverty, under-development, shortages of food, housing, health, education and jobs.

Quite the opposite: the vainglorious character who is the head of the NATO military mafia, Anders Fogh Rasmussen declared, in tones reminiscent of a little Nazi Fuhrer, that the “new strategic concept” was to “act anywhere in the world”. Not in vain was the Turkish government about to veto his appointment when the Danish neo-liberal Fogh Rasmussen, as premier of Denmark, using the excuse of freedom of the press, defended, in April of 2009, the authors of serious offences against the prophet Mohammed, a figure much respected by all Muslim faithful.

There are quite a few in the world who remember the close relations of cooperation between the Danish government and the Nazi “invaders” during WW II.

NATO, a bird of prey sitting in the lap of the Yankee empire, even endowed with tactical nuclear weapons that could be up to many times more destructive that the one that obliterated the city of Hiroshima , has been committed by the United States in the genocidal Afghanistan war, something even more complex than the Kosovo exploit and the war against Serbia where they massacred the city of Belgrade and were about to suffer a disaster if the government of that country had held its ground, instead of trusting in the European justice institutions in The Hague.

The ignominious declaration from Lisbon, vaguely and abstractly states in one of its points:

“I support regional stability, democratic values, the security and integration of the Euro-Atlantic space in the Balkans.”

“The Kosovo mission is oriented towards a lesser and more flexible presence.”

Now?

Even Russia cannot forget it so easily: the actual fact is that when Yeltsin broke up the USSR, the United States moved NATO boundaries and its nuclear attack bases forward from Europe and Asia to the heart of Russia.

Those new military installations were also threatening the Peoples’ Republic of China and other Asian countries.

When that happened in 1991, hundreds of SS-19, SS-20 and other powerful Soviet weapons were able to reach, in a matter of minutes, the US and NATO military bases in Europe. No NATO Secretary General would have dared to speak with the arrogance of Rasmussen.

The first agreement on nuclear weapons limitations was signed as early as May 26, 1972 between President Richard Nixon of the United States and Communist Party Secretary General Leonid Brezhnev of the USSR with the aim of limiting the number of antiballistic missiles (ABM Treaty) and to defend certain points against missiles having nuclear payloads.

Brezhnev and Carter signed new agreements in Vienna, known as SALT II in 1979, but the US Senate refused to ratify those agreements.

The new rearmament promoted by Reagan, with the Strategic Defence Initiative, ended the SALT agreements.

The Siberian gas pipeline had been blown up already by the CIA.

A new agreement, on the other hand, was signed in 1991 between Bush Sr. and Gorbachev, five months before the collapse of the USSR. When that happened, the socialist bloc no longer existed. The countries that the Red Army had liberated from Nazi occupation were not even able to maintain independence. Right-wing governments that came to power moved over to NATO with weapons and baggage and fell into the hands of the US. The GDR which, under the leadership of Erich Honecker had made a great effort, was unable to overcome the ideological and consumerist offensive launched from the same capital that had been occupied by the Western troops.

As the virtual master of the world, the United States increased its mercenary and warmongering policy.

Due to a well-manipulated process, the USSR fell apart. The coup de grâce was dealt by Boris Yeltsin on December 8, 1991 when, in his capacity of president of the Russian federation, he declared that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist. On the 25^th of that same month and year, the red flag bearing the hammer and sickle was lowered from the Kremlin.

A third agreement about strategic weapons was then signed by George H. W. Bush and Boris Yeltsin, on January 3, 1993, that prohibited the use of multiple-warhead Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (the IBMs). It was passed by the US Senate on January 26, 1993 with a margin of votes of 87 to 4.

Russia was the heir to USSR science and technology – which, in spite of the war and the enormous sacrifices, it was able to bring its power up to the level of the immense and wealthy Yankee empire – the victory over fascism, the traditions, the culture and the glories of the Russian people.

The war in Serbia, a Slavic country and people, had severely sunk its fangs into the security of the Russian people, something no government could allow itself to ignore.

The Russian Duma – outraged by the first Iraq war and the war in Kosovo where NATO had massacred the Serbian people – refused to ratify START II and didn’t sign that agreement until 2000 and in that case it was to try to save the ABM Treaty that the Yankees were not interested in keeping by that date.

The US tries to use its enormous media resources to maintain, dupe and confuse world public opinion.

The government of that country is going through a difficult phase as the result of its war exploits. In the Afghanistan war, all the NATO countries, with no exception, are committed along with several others in the world, whose people find hateful and repugnant the carnage that rich industrialized countries such as Japan and Australia and others in the Third World are involved in to greater or lesser degrees.

What is the essence of the agreement approved in April of this year by the US and Russia? Both parties commit to reduce the number of strategic nuclear warheads to 1,550. About the nuclear warheads in France, the United Kingdom and Israel, all capable of striking Russia, not one word is spoken. About the tactical nuclear weapons, some of them much more powerful than the one that obliterated the city of Hiroshima, nothing. They do not mention the destructive and lethal capacity of numerous conventional weapons, the radio-electric and other systems of weapons to which the US dedicates its growing military budget, greater than those of all the other nations together. Both governments are aware, and perhaps many of them that met there also, that a third world war would be the last war. What kind of delusions can the NATO members be having? What is the tranquility that humankind can derive from that meeting? What benefit for the countries of the Third World, or even for the international economy, can we possibly hope for?

They cannot even offer the hope that the world economic crisis will be overcome, nor for how long that improvement would last. The US total public debt, not only of the central government but of all the rest of the public and private institutions in that country, now totals a figure equal to the world GDP of 2009, totalling 58 trillion dollars. Have the persons meeting in Lisbon even wondered about where those fantastic resources would be coming from? Simply, about the economies of all the rest of the peoples of the world, to whom the US handed over pieces of paper transformed into currency that over the last 40 years, unilaterally, ceased to be backed by gold and now the value of that metal is 40 times as much. That country still has veto power in the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Why didn’t they discuss that in Portugal?

The hope of pulling out US, NATO and their allies’ troops from Afghanistan is idyllic. They will have to leave that country before they hand over the power to the Afghan resistance, in defeat. The self-same US allies are beginning to acknowledge now what could happen decades before the end of that war; would NATO be prepared to stay there all that time? Would the very citizens of each of the governments meeting there allow that?

Not to be forgotten that a vastly populated country, Pakistan, shares a border of colonial origin with Afghanistan, as well as quite a large percentage of its inhabitants.

I do not criticize Medvedev; he is very correctly trying to limit the number of nuclear warheads that are pointing at his country. Barack Obama can make up absolutely no justification. It would be a joke to imagine that the colossal and costly deployment of the anti-nuclear missile shield is to protect Europe and Russia from Iranian rockets, coming from a country that doesn’t even own any tactical nuclear devices. Not even a children’s comic book can make such a statement.

Obama already admitted that his promise to withdraw US soldiers from Afghanistan may be postponed, and the taxes for the richest contributors suspended right away. After the Nobel Prize, we would have to award him with the prize for “the best snake charmer” that has ever existed.

Taking into consideration the W. Bush autobiography now on the best seller list and that some smart editor pulled together for him, why didn’t they give him the honour of being a guest in Lisbon? Surely the far right, the “Tea Party” of Europe would be happy.

Fidel Castro Ruz

November 21, 2010

8:36 p.m.