NATO, More Militarism No Defense Against US Expansionists
Reprinted from Yves Engler’s website.
If you believe Donald Trump might invade you should be calling for Canada to withdraw from NATO. The alliance won’t defend Canada, has enabled US interference and gobbles up resources.
During a recent meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, US President Donald Trump questioned the border and Canadian sovereignty. He said, “if you look at a map, they drew an artificial line right through it, between Canada and the U.S. … somebody did it a long time ago, many many decades ago, and (it) makes no sense.” Trump also repeatedly said Canada should be a US state, noting “to be honest with you, Canada only works as a state.”
Sitting next to the US president, Rutte stayed silent. A bit later Trump suggested Rutte might assist him in taking part of NATO member Denmark, noting “I’m sitting with a man who could be very instrumental. You know Mark, we need that for international security.” Rutte replied, “when it comes to Greenland yes or not joining the U.S. I would leave that outside for me this discussion because I don’t want to drag NATO in that.”
Rutte doesn’t seem to want to commit even rhetorically to defending alliance members’ sovereignty. Even if Rutte had interrupted Trump and told the US president his comments were inappropriate the idea that NATO would defend Canada from a US invasion is ridiculous. Latvia and Estonia will not send troops to repel a US invasion. Nor will France or the UK.
Will Canada send troops to defend Greenland if Trump takes it from NATO member Denmark? Does anyone think that would that be a good idea?
Article 5 of the NATO Charter is not clear on what collective defence entails. It says an attack against one member “shall be considered an attack against them all.” But it doesn’t stipulate what the response should be, noting only that each member state must take “such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force.” Article 5 has only ever been invoked after the September 11, 2001, attacks in the US.
In the past NATO has undercut Canadian sovereignty. Unbeknownst to most Canadians, NATO was employed by Washington to topple a government in Ottawa. When Prime Minister John Diefenbaker didn’t provide unconditional support during the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, US President John F. Kennedy used NATO as part of a multifaceted effort to precipitate the downfall of his minority Conservative government. On January 3, 1963, the outgoing commander of NATO, US General Lauris Norstad, came to Ottawa on an unplanned visit in which he claimed Canada would not be fulfilling her commitments to the alliance if the country did not acquire nuclear warheads. It was part of a series of moves by the Kennedy administration to weaken Diefenbaker, which led to the fall of his government. During the subsequent election campaign, Kennedy’s top pollster, Lou Harris, helped longtime external affairs official Lester Pearson defeat Diefenbaker.
NATO continues to undercut Canadian sovereignty. It’s used to justify purchasing expensive offensive kit (think F-35s and surface combatant warships) that are a drag on resources. The alliance also undermines Canadian defense since it promotes a forward military posture. In recent years Canada has participated in NATO maritime operations in the Baltic and Black seas. In 2018 Canada took charge of NATO Mission Iraq. About 200 Canadian troops were deployed there.
For the past eight years Canada has led a NATO battlegroup in Latvia. About 700 Canadian soldiers are stationed on Russia’s border. There are also Canadian troops elsewhere in Eastern Europe as part of NATO aligned deployments.
NATO has entangled Canada in, what former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson labelled, a “proxy war” that has devastated Ukraine. Ottawa has donated over $4 billion in military assistance and $6 billion in other types of assistance in a bid to continue the fight until the last Ukrainian. While Russian violence is condemnable, NATO provoked the war through its interventionist, antidemocratic, moves.
When NATO promoted Ukraine’s accession to the alliance in 2008 most Ukrainians opposed joining. Subsequently, NATO countries supported the ouster of elected President Viktor Yanukovych who passed legislation codifying Ukrainian neutrality. As John Mearsheimer warned in 2015, NATO was “leading Ukraine down the primrose path and the end result is that Ukraine is going to get wrecked.”
Pro-NATO commentators generally ignore the alliance’s provocations. They oppose Donald Trump’s – who often says the quiet part out loud – bid to end the conflict in Ukraine. Simultaneously they’ve been upended by Trump’s crass attacks on Canada and have suddenly become wary of US power. While they’ve begun criticizing Canada’s military dependence on the US, they continue to support militarism and imperialism.
In a sign of the crisis faced by militarists the opinion section of last Saturday’s Globe and Mail published a long article headlined “WANTED: NEW ALLIES: Successive Canadian governments have leveraged our close relationship with Washington to get the most out of our low defense spending. This long-standing approach cannot continue.” Next to it the paper published Thomas Homer Dixon’s “If you want peace, prepare for war” and a column by a Royal Military College professor headlined “Canada needs to develop its own nuclear program”.
The militarists/imperialists can’t see an option outside of militarism and global hierarchy. Their calls to establish a NATO without the US is an excuse for more militarism and prolonging the conflict in Ukraine. It would do little to protect Canada.
While there may be an argument for developing a guerrilla type defense structure, membership in NATO undercuts this country’s moral standing. Canada’s best defense against an invasion is making sure hundreds of millions of people in the US and elsewhere know this country is not their enemy.
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Yves Engler is the author of Stand on Guard for Whom? A People’s History of the Canadian Military and twelve other books.
NATO is Breaking apart
On April 2, Reuters headlined “US officials object to European push to buy weapons locally,” which means that Trump’s demand for Europe to increase greatly its ‘defense’ spending is, indeed, part of his plan to keep the boom in the U.S. stock markets going. This needs to be understood in the relevant context:
Though none of the mainstream press reported the fact in 2017, Trump started his Presidency in 2017 by making the biggest armaments-sale in history: $400 billion in U.S.-made weapons to Saudi Arabia over the next ten years, which would keep the by-far-most profitable segment of the U.S. stock markets — the ‘defense’ sector — booming, and therefore keep American billionaires (whom those corporations benefit enormously in every possible way) continuing to grow their personal fortunes at a much faster clip than the U.S. economy itself grows (which has been quite sluggish — below the global average for all countries); and, this way, the fortunes of billionaires will continue to thrive even if the U.S. economy doesn’t (as has been the case now for at least the past 25 years).
Right now, Trump is promising to stop America’s apparently ceaseless creation of, and participation (such as in Ukraine) in, foreign wars, but he isn’t reducing — and is instead actually increasing — America’s ‘defense’ (aggression) expenditures while cutting virtually everything else (the federal expenditures that don’t help billionaires); and, in order to do this beyond the 2027 end-date of his $400 billion weapons-sale to the Sauds, he is trying to get America’s colonies (‘allies’), such as Europe, Japan, South Korea, etc., to increase their armaments-purchases from American firms such as Lockheed Martin — the firms whose sales-volumes are especially important to America’s billionaires, the people who control the U.S. Government. This is why he doesn’t want Europeans to grow their own ‘defense’ industries.
If a European nation will allow foreign (especially American) billionaires to benefit from its sharp increase in armaments-purchases, this won’t hurt ONLY their own domestic billionaires, but it will ALSO be sending those manufacturing jobs to America and thereby boost America’s economy at the expense of the local economy. For Trump to be requesting them to do that is to insult not only that country’s billionaires but also its residents.
This is not the only reason why NATO might soon break apart. For example: Trump is determined to take Greenland for the U.S. Government — to expand the U.S. to include Greenland. However, polls show that around 85% of Greenlanders are opposed to that, and Trump is also saying that if they won’t willingly comply, then he will do it militarily. Greenland is a Danish colony, and Denmark is a part of NATO. If the U.S. invades Greenland, then how will other countries in NATO feel about that? It would present the U.S. blatantly as aggressor against a NATO member-nation — the very nation that had previously been supposedly their chief protector. What would this do to NATO?
The U.S. Congress is, according to the U.S. Constitution, supposed to be the ultimate determinant of whether or not U.S. military forces invade another country; but, so far, there has been prevailing silence from Congress about Trump’s threat against Greenlanders and even Danes — not the outrage that would prevail if America were still governed under its Constitution.
We are entering the twilight zone. Will it turn out to be the end of the U.S. empire — the end of the largest empire in all of world history? It could — especially if Congress remains silent about what has been happening. The longer this silence continues, the deeper into it we are getting.
This is certainly a weird moment in world history. Of course, ultimately, NATO will end, but the question is when and how. NATO had started on 25 July 1945 as a sentiment and resulting decision by Truman, and was then born in 1949, but is probably near its end now, and the public don’t know it because lots of ‘history’ that has been told in The West is false.
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