| Source: Democracy Now! |
The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s (NATO) Washington Summit, held from 9th to 11th July 2024, marked the 75th anniversary of this nuclear armed military alliance which was founded on 4th April 1949 with the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty in Washington D.C.
Mainstream reporting
Mainstream reporting on the summit hardly rose above the level of propaganda.
Coverage by the commercial media, as well as the public broadcaster, the ABC, predominantly entailed the broadcast of NATO myths propagated by the military alliance’s leaders and the US administration.
Assertions made in statements by Deputy PM and Defence Minister Richard Marles, who attended the summit in place of PM Anthony Albanese, went entirely unchallenged and proved to be nothing more than a megaphone for the Labor Party’s backing of NATO, US policy on Ukraine and AUKUS.
While the mainstream media eschewed any questioning of the United States’ and NATO’s objectives in Europe, in Ukraine, and now in the Indo-Pacific, it also failed to report on the anti-NATO protest that took place in Washington D.C. during the course of the summit. Apparently, key messages associated with this protest were deemed to be of no interest to the Australian public.
Military support for Ukraine
The three-day summit mainly focused on bolstering military support for Ukraine. Overall, representatives of NATO’s 32 member states agreed to supply Ukraine with a range of military equipment and training amounting to at least 40 billion euros ($64.3 billion) over the next year.
Australia’s military package, announced by Defence Minister Marles at the summit, totalled $250 million. This represents the single largest package of military assistance provided by the Australian government since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24th February 2022.
This package includes guided and air defence missiles, anti-tank weapons, ammunition, plus a shipment of boots. It also involves a commitment to become an “operational partner” of NATO’s new Security Assistance and Training for Ukraine (NSATU). A group of Australian personnel who are already stationed in Europe will be transferred to this 700-strong defence and training command initiative.
In total, this latest package brings the value of Australia’s support to $1.3 billion. This includes $1.1 billion for Ukraine’s military.
Maintenance of the ‘global rule-based order’
In an interview with RN Breakfast on 12th July 2024, Defence Minister Marles stated that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was very welcoming of Australia’s latest package and was keen to expand relations with countries in the Indo-Pacific. Marles said that the Albanese government supported this ambition and would stand by Ukraine in the long term.
Marles also stated that “the sense of resolve amongst NATO members, and other countries including ourselves, Japan, (South) Korea and New Zealand, was manifest.”1
Marles emphasised that while Ukraine was obviously fighting for its own country, “in so many ways it is really on the front line on behalf of all of us in fighting for the maintenance of the global rule-based order and that’s an order which is very much in the interests of a country like Australia.”2
Such a debatable claim went unchallenged by both the commercial media, as well as the public broadcaster. Apparently, as far as the mainstream media is concerned, querying such a claim, or even having it fact checked, is beyond the pale.
Some clarification is required here. The term ‘global rule-based order’ or alternatively the US-led ‘rule-based international order’, is not synonymous with the UN ‘rule-based international order’ which the US opposes. The ‘global rule-based order’ that Defence Minister Marles refers to, is a model of international relations in which the US sets the rules. In contrast, the US does not have a controlling influence over the UN ‘rule-based international order’, hence its opposition to this model.3
Questioning NATO’s legitimacy
NATO’s legitimacy, however, has been called into question by critics, journalists and academics alike. This relates to both its historical role, as well as its role in recent times. In particular, NATO’s expressed interest in having Ukraine eventually join the alliance has not only been adamantly rejected by Russia for decades, but it has also been opposed by critics and analysts in the West.
An example of such a critic is Sevim Dağdelen, a member of the German Bundestag, the lower chamber of the German federal parliament and member of the parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs. Sevim Dağdelen addressed the anti-NATO protest in Washington D.C. As well, while in the US, she was interviewed by Democracy Now!, an independent TV, radio, and Internet news program based in Manhattan.4
NATO’s three myths
A number of points that Sevim Dağdelen made during this interview are worth highlighting.
At the start of the interview, the history of NATO was described as the “history of denial”. It was argued that this history of denial was underpinned by “three great myths”.
The first myth portrays NATO as a defensive alliance. On the contrary, Sevim Dağdelen argued that NATO is demonstrably a war alliance. To substantiate this claim, reference was made to a number of NATO’s acts of aggression including the following:
- aerial bombing campaign of targets in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in breach of international law which lasted from 24 March to 10 June 1999, a period of 79 days;5
- involvement in the war in Afghanistan by US-led forces between 2001 and 2021, an intervention period lasting for 20 years;
- support for the war in Iraq between 2003 and 2011 which began with the invasion by US-led coalition forces;
- military intervention in Libya which started on 19 March 2011 and involved a multi-state NATO-led coalition.
The second myth portrays NATO as a collective of democratic states opposed to authoritarian regimes. This myth also contradicts its history. For example, one of NATO’s founding members was Portugal that was ruled at the time by the Salazar dictatorship. Another example mentioned was the Pact of Madrid, signed on 23 September 1953 by the US government and the Spanish fascist dictatorship led by General Franco. These examples, it was argued, indicate that the US and its NATO allies have never had a problem with authoritarian regimes.
The third myth portrays NATO as a defender of human rights. However this is incompatible with the following grave breaches of human rights by the US and its NATO allies:
- the existence of Guantanamo Bay and the extensive use of torture;
- the long prosecution and cruel treatment of a journalist like Julian Assange whose ‘crime’ was to expose war atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan by the US and its NATO allies;
- research undertaken by the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University in the United States showing that over the last 20 years, wars involving the US have killed more than 4.5 million people.6
Ukraine’s proxy war
As well, Sevim Dağdelen argued that the US policy, supported by its NATO allies, of promoting a proxy war in Ukraine against Russia and opposing any attempt to bring about a negotiated settlement to hostilities, is incompatible with the first myth of portraying NATO as a defensive collective rather than an expansionist war alliance.
Israel’s war on Gaza
It was also argued by Sevim Dağdelen that the United States’ and NATO’s complicity with Israel’s war on Gaza is incompatible with viewing NATO as a defensive alliance and supporter of human rights. She claims that the death and destruction wrought by Israel’s genocidal war is totally at odds with a legitimate self-defence strategy, let alone compliance with humanitarian international law.
She also claimed that the implication of such complicity is that even if the US and NATO had a residual amount of integrity, their support for Israel’s war on Gaza has resulted in the loss of all moral integrity, especially as far as the global South is concerned.
Reckoning with NATO’s history
Given the above examples of NATO’s military aggression, together with its complicity with Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza over the last nine months, it is Sevim Dağdelen’s view that time at the Washington Summit would have been better spent undertaking a reckoning of its criminal history.
Refer to the video above for the full interview with Sevim Dağdelen by Democracy Now!
Notes
1. ABC RN Breakfast, ‘This is a moment where the world stands with Ukraine’, interview with Deputy PM and Minister for Defence Richard Marles MP, Jul 12, 2024. (Audio duration 13:33 mins). A transcript of the interview can accessed here.
2. Ibid.
3. For an informative discussion of the origins and content of the US dominated ‘rule-based international order’, refer to Michael T. Klare, ‘Biden’s “Rule-Based International Order” Is Broken’, The Nation, Nov 7, 2023.
4. Democracy Now!, ‘“Peace, Not NATO”: German MP Decries NATO’s 75 Years of War & Hypocrisy’, Jul 11, 2024.
5. Noam Chomsky, ‘On the NATO Bombing of Yugoslavia’, interviewed by Danilo Mandic, RTS Online, April 25, 2006.
6. Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Costs of War, website accessed Jul 12, 2024.
Additional information
Sevim Dağdelen, ’75 Years of NATO = 75 Years of Denial’, Consortium News, Jul 6, 2024. Abridged version of speech to ‘No to NATO – Yes to Peace’ symposium held in Washington D.C. on Jul 6, 2024.
Sevim Dağdelen, ‘NATO Charts a New Course: Will NATO encircle China next?’, The Nation, Jul 12, 2024.
Sevim Dağdelen, NATO: A Reckoning with the Atlantic Alliance, LeftWord Books, New Delhi, 2024.