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SUMMARY
After 1991
Afghanistan
Kosovo
Somalia
Iraq
GUAM
Israel
Recent developments
The evolution of the western strategic military apparatus – and the NATO in
particular – tries to meet the necessities of capitalism aiming to control the
markets and resources, namely energetic, in this phase of neo-liberal globalization
whose relevance is so paramount so as to disregard the geographically limited
acting frames.
At the peak of the Cold War, the USA tried to encircle the former USSR in hostile
military alliances in what was then a strategy set up by the state secretary George
Kennan. Besides the NATO, other organizations emerged such as the CENTO
(extinguished in 1979, with the Iranian revolution), the SEATO (extinguished in 1977,
soon after the American defeat in Vietnam) the ANZUS, the NORAD and still the
OAS-Organization of the American States - for the control of the Latin-American
yard.
• Its hard core is constituted by the USA armed forces themselves which,
outside their borders, hold 823 military bases, of which 287 in Germany, 130
• The NATO represents the main multilateral military organ on a world scale.
The recent inclusion of the majority of the central and eastern European
countries augmented its territorial and political relevance. Without having,
nonetheless, dropped its initial characteristic of opposition to the USSR,
(transferred to Russia), the NATO has enlarged its field of action to Central
and Southern Asia, as well as to the Indian Ocean;
• Within the logic of creating ties with other non integrated countries in the
western strategic military apparatus, in specific areas and situations, the
NATO created, in 1994, the so-called Partnership for Peace, which, in 1997,
became known as Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, aiming at military
cooperation and assistance. This partnership gathers almost all the NATO
countries together with Russia and Europe’s neutral countries. Within this
framework, cooperation institutions between the NATO and Ukraine, which
possess troops stationed in Kosovo and Afghanistan under the NATO
command, and between the NATO and Russia which acted likewise in the
naval mission in the Somali seas.
As a matter of fact, all the western military apparatus has the Pentagon at the
top. The power as well as the autonomy it possesses in the context of the
American government empowers it, for instance, with the capacity to make the
defence secretary, Robert Gates, move from the Bush to the Obama
From its creation in 1949, the NATO has never contributed to solve any of the
peoples’ problems; it has just added some more where there are already plenty
of them.
During its first years up to the dismantlement of the Warsaw Pact (its creation in
1955 having been subsequent to the NATO), the NATO was only able to expand
itself when Spain joined in, in 1977, in what was a Felipe Gonzalez’s PSOE initiative,
wishing to reinforce its European integration within the imperial apparatus led by
the USA. That liaison to the NATO follows the settlement of American military bases
in Spain, allowed by Franco, in need as he was of international acceptance for
his regime, at the end of World War two, within a bilateral framework and with the
most anti-communist feeling, common to both the American administrations and
the Spanish fascism.
The NATO was not much interested in the political regimes of its members, with
democracy or lack of it, the fate of their peoples was no concern, the most
important factor being the acceptance of the American military dominance.
Therefore, it was not the NATO that excluded Spain, waiting patiently for Franco
to step out, but rather Franco’s dictatorship that has placed itself out since the
Spanish dictator wished to maintain some distance vis-à-vis the USA, suspicious as
he was of the “American way of life”, very little adequate to his catholic
conservatism. The same feelings were shared by the Portuguese dictator Salazar,
in spite of having been forced to join the American apparatus due to the
importance of the Azores Islands during World War two, and later, as refilling scale
between the two sides of the Atlantic, in case an east-west conflict should arise. It
is still useful to recall that the NATO also helped and came to coexist in good
terms with the Greek colonels and with the Turkish military regimes, both of them
of an authoritarian and fascist character.
Until the end of the so-called Cold War, the NATO was the principal cover for
various strategic objectives of the western countries as a whole and of the USA,
particularly in what the USSR and the other Warsaw Pact countries were
concerned:
• To justify, under the cover of the military necessities to “detain” the “evil
empire”, the emphasis of the public investment on research, on innovation
and technologies dependent on the priorities materialized in the
development of weaponry, security and communications material (such is
the case of the internet, of the computers, of the spatial exploration);
Formally, and throughout the 1949 to 1991 period, the NATO did not participate in
military operations, thus allowing its members all acting freedom in territories not
After 1991
Bearing in mind that the NATO central objective was explicitly the defence of the
“free world” against the “soviet totalitarianism”, or “communism”, the
dismantlement of the Warsaw Pact, in 1991, after the fall of the USSR, the NATO
was momentarily void of objectives to justify its existence.
In the Rome Declaration, still in 1991, the NATO proclaimed that it was necessary
to be watchful in what concerned the risks born out of the economic, political
and social difficulties in Central and Eastern Europe. Those difficulties were
deliberate and methodically aggravated by the western support to the
uncontrolled dismantlement of their economic structures, by the wild intervention
of the financial capital, by the recycling of the former and corrupt “aparatchiks”
into corrupt neo-liberals, fervent defenders of democracy and market, by brutal
cuts in the social rights as well as the subjection of the workers to a massive
unemployment.
The objectives of this pressure for the enlargement of the NATO are led by the
USA, which delineates in its essential part, its contours and directions:
• To carry out, under the pretext of the 11th September, the passage from a
phase of armed intervention in pre-existing conflicts to a more aggressive
one, in order to start preemptive wars declared by its own and exclusive
initiative;
• To try and compensate the economic weakness of the USA and the dollar,
as well as the loss of political relevance in Europe, by means of military
power or its open display, in an intimidating way, to the new emerging
powers, with special relevance to China, Russia and India;
• To dispute, together with Russia, the channels for the energetic supplies of
Europe originating from the latter’s territory and also from Caucasus and
Central Asia, getting closer – as much as possible –to their original
exploration areas;
• To hinder Europe’s direct energetic supply links from Iran, but also encircling
the latter with the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan or the aero-navel
control of the Persian Gulf, to strategically dominate the vital supplies of oil
from China (60% of its necessities come from the Gulf) and from India, the
great rivals of the XXI century, and from Japan; or still agitating the
“international community” with a possible Iranian nuclear threat;
• To enlarge the military and civil supplying area for brainwashing in training
actions. In general, that brainwashing lies on the presumption of the
eternal superiority of capitalism, market economy, and private property
with an underlying racist and neocolonial prejudice before the other
peoples and Southern nations and respective forms of political and social
organization. As an example, the following sentence stated in the “Code
of Honour” of the Military Academy students (where the Portuguese Army
officers are trained) should be referred to: ‘The Military Academy student
devotedly loves his home land and founds his ideas in the respect and cult
of the great human and Christian values which in the past filled it with
glory’ (quoted by Mário Tomé, in “Novo Paradigma para a Defesa
Nacional” (New Paradigma for National Defence), September/2009;
• The political fundamentalism, i.e. all the forms of social organization which
do not fit in the western model of representative democracy and
economic liberalism, a unique and definite thought formula, where such
diverse elements as the Chavez’ Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, the
Hamas, the Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, etc. and still the left-wing political
movements, pacifists, ecologists or human rights movements. In this
concept of political fundamentalism partner countries do not fit, such is the
case of China or Israel;
• The organized crime, rhetoric which ignores the financial system where
benefits become respectable estate, hotel and financial investments,
often used to corrupt governments, political parties and local powers,
which exclude the financial fraud that, by its very dimension is the ultimate
generator of recession and unemployment, as has lately been witnessed,
which is an active user of “offshore” and of evasion and fiscal fraud; and
which is friendly interlinked with the military western apparatus in Colombia,
Afghanistan, Kosovo or Albania;
• The climate changes are a matter of preoccupation for the NATO and its
strategists, not because they may put the survival of life on earth in
question, but because they raise conflicts, for example, in what regards the
water control. Nonetheless, if Israel poisons or stuffs the Palestinian wells, or
if Coca-cola in India leaves thousands of peasants without water for
agriculture, they deserve all the indulgence of the world because they
belong to the “good” side. On the other hand, ecological and peasants’
movements can be classified as global threats if they prove to be an
obstacle to private investments (nuclear investments, those linked to water
damming up, to the destruction of the tropical forest, etc…) whose
prosecution is fundamental to generate wealth and employment;
• The same document makes it clear that the very military apparatus which
admits the use of nuclear weapons for such diverse reasons and so far
away from a real war scenario, as the ones named above, naturally, is the
same that does not restrain itself regarding questions related to human
rights violation applied to the enemy, regardless if it is dealing with a
vulnerable prisoner (Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo), or a poor and defenseless
civilian population (Iraq, Afghanistan), in what constitutes an open denial
of the noblest principles enunciated by Humanity and that the
governments of the NATO countries take delight in getting hold of in
exclusivity. On the contrary, the NATO has been carrying out in its actions
the most hateful principles and deviations ever witnessed in History, such as
genocide (Palestine), violence on civilian populations, indefinite detentions
or imprisonment without formal accusation or trial, being thus inserted in
the tradition of recent historical practices of sad memory;
The American invasion of the territory, in 2001, took place having as its goal the
struggle against terrorism and the capture of Mullah Omar and Bin Laden.
However, realism demands that it should be mentioned that these captures
would not be convenient since they would reduce the validity of the struggle
against terrorism as an argument for future action of the NATO or the Pentagon.
The NATO, on its turn, settled in Afghanistan, in August 2003, on the demand of the
Afghan government (previously put there by the USA) and the UNO, which
immediately bestowed the possibility of action outside Kabul, initial scenery of the
operations. Afghanistan has recently been chosen as top priority of the American
interventions after the start of Obama’s office.
In June 2009, 58 000 American soldiers were in Afghanistan besides those 74 000
hired for “services” (7), in what amounts to a whole of circa 100 000 western
military troops (8)
The NATO intervention, once the operations are over, aims to:
In practice and besides the propaganda, what has so far been achieved was:
• The maintenance of the territorial divide between the war lords and the
Taliban guerrilla, with the government authority operating nowhere else
but the cities where the protection of the NATO soldiers is more effective,
and that in a context of a varied and fickle local mixture of supports and
enmities, alliances and rivalries;
• The number of Afghan refugees in Iran and Pakistan is, respectively, 1.1 M
and 1.8 M (10), with all the suffering and violence caused by such situation;
• President Karzai’s ties to the Americans come from long ago, (he worked in
the Unocal, an oil enterprise that is constructing a gas pipeline in the
Caspian Sea) (14), which, to add to its dependency on the invaders,
makes himself a puppet. On the other hand, the fraudulent way in which
decisively the recent elections were held in order to benefit Karzai,
discredits both the latter as well as the invaders;
• The extension of the conflict to Pakistan, due to the ethnic and cultural
proximity of an important slice of its population (pashtuns) that belongs to
the major tribe in Afghanistan and, whose separation by means of an
artificial border was imposed by the Brits in the nineteenth century, after
having been defeated by the Afghans in attempts to expand their
territorial area;
Kosovo
The internal security has been for ten years secured by the NATO forces as well as
by other European countries (14000 soldiers at the moment) (17), and this situation
tends to be eternalized due to various reasons:
• The ethnical division imposed by the USA and the EU in the Balkans stresses
the antagonism and the mistrust between the Serbian and Albanese
communities, turning the proximity of both communities very difficult
without an external mediation;
• On the other hand, Kosovo being poor and of weak resources, the
presence of the NATO troops is an important factor of maintenance of a
certain economic encouragement;
The leadership of the NATO in these operations, which tends to perpetuate the
patrol of the Mediterranean and the surveillance of the Islamic world, is accepted
by other countries such as Russia (because of Chechnya or Dagestan), Israel
(enthusiastically), Ukraine and Georgia (in order to obtain the western favours,
and thus join the NATO) and Morocco (very linked to the USA and with a strong
internal opposition to the current regime). Circa 2000 soldiers are involved in the
region (19).
Somalia
The USA has disputed with the USSR the control of the African Horn until the 80’s, in
order to consolidate their role as suzerains in the Indian Ocean. After the first Iraqi
war in 1991, the Americans decided to intervene in Somalia, under the cover of
the UNO from the following year on, trying to disguise their objective of controlling
the oil routes with humanitarian preoccupations.
When the country became controlled by the Islamic Tribunals, the USA was
alarmed and, with their logistic support, had the Ethiopian Army sent in, and
subsequently seized the power for a period of a little over two years. As they seem
to have totally forgotten about the traditional antagonism between the two
peoples – Somalis and Ethiopians - the latter left and everything makes us believe
that the power will turn to the hands of the successors of the Islamic Tribunals, the
al-Shabaab.
Meanwhile, the Western countries have taken advantage of the Somali chaos:
• The enormous Somali coast, lacking any kind of surveillance since the 90’s,
has become a place where nuclear garbage, also composed of heavy
metals from the European industries and hospitals, is easily dropped. This
function is obviously secured by the Mafia, and on demand. Thus, diseases,
malformations in new-born babies as well as deaths in the population of the
coast which witnessed, with the 2005 tsunami, the arrival to their beaches of
cans with holes, till then submerged. But what does it matter to the great
media?
• Having to face the exhaustion of the fishing banks in general, as well as the
control of the existing fishing practice in the EU exclusive zones, the Somali
coast became object of predatory fishing of tuna, prawn and lobster, thus
limiting the Somali capacity; the latter lacking modern fishing equipment
while… possibly, supplying the European consumers with fish contaminated
by toxic products dropped in their seas by the European companies!
Maybe it is not by chance that Somalia is bordered by the Aden Gulf, close to the
Bab el Mandeb, the Red Sea southern entry. And it will be difficult to understand
how the small “Somali pirates’” boats are a reason to justify a circumnavigation of
the NATO vessels with stopovers in Karachi, Singapore and Perth, in Australia (22).
Iraq
In 2003, the George W. Bush’s USA, as known, together with Blair and Aznar, with
Durão Barroso playing the waiter, decided to invade Iraq, in order to find
Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction… which never existed. Such operation
was launched without the approval of the ONU, the same way that later the USA
decided about the reorganization of the country, appointed their leader and
conducted the military actions which followed the operation. The UNO
intervention, after the occupation, was very quickly over with the death of Sérgio
Vieira de Melo.
The war and the occupation of Iraq never had the label of a NATO operation, for
the simple reason that some of its principal members – Germany, France and
Canada - condemned the operation, while Turkey refused to let the troops cross
its territory.
Although the war and the occupation of Iraq are essentially of the USA and
England’s responsibility - without the NATO’s official seal - they totally fit in the
same strategic objectives which rule the organization, even if it is only because
the NATO is, like the Pentagon, one of the main devices of the western military
strategic apparatus. The question that either abbreviation is used in operations of
imperial self-assurance is just a matter of political and diplomatic convenience,
since from a restrictive view point of the military operations and destruction
capabilities, the Pentagon does not need its allies; it has means that allow it to act
on its own… Since 2004, in Iraq, the NATO has maintained only a group of
coaches, consisting of 140 troops, as a symbol of its insertion in the global
mechanism (23).
Besides a roaring global public opinion against the invasion of Iraq, the London
and Madrid attacks - by adding new elements of risk to the operation - were
decisive to the breach of the USA allies’ enthusiasm as far as their military
commitment in the operation was concerned.
The objectives of the western military strategic mechanism in Iraq are multifold,
but the control of the main resources of fossil fuels (in the Persian Gulf area are
situated 60% of the world oil and 41% of natural gas) is the prevailing one (24);
• The territorial occupation and the military control in the Gulf area allow the
USA to exert pressure/blackmail which is extended to its western allies,
largely dependent on the oil of this region for the transports and industry,
and whose substitution is nowhere near;
• The emergence of new natural ore deposits does not always happen in
areas dominated by the USA (Venezuela, Brazil and Turkmenistan), and,
generally, present exploration conditions much more costly than those in
the Middle East;
• The loss of control over Iran in 1979 and the subsequent humiliations
undergone by the USA have not been forgotten by the American
governments, which have therefore maintained a constant threat over the
country, victim as it were of a military putsch fabricated by the CIA in the
50’s and of Saddam’s Iraqi aggression for eight bloody years supported, at
all levels, by the western world. On the other hand, Iran possesses a
numerous population (66 million), 10, 9% of the world oil and 16% of the gas
resources; a geographical position close to Afghanistan and Pakistan (the
Pashtun have both language and writing close to the Farsi), to the former
Central Asia soviet republics (which have oil and gas) and the Caucasus;
and constitutes the eastern border of the Arab world besides possessing a
long coast line which goes through the strategic Ormuz strait.
• The American military presence in the region is a secure support to the Arab
monarchies, as far as the restraint to the democratic opening and the
economic development are concerned, and works as a close support to
Israel as well, to its genocide toward the Palestinians and the progressive
occupation of the latter’s territory;
• The American alliance with the Arab monarchies also aims at the use by
the latter of the dollar as exchange currency for the oil transactions, thus
In order to put in practice its aggressive plans directed “urbi et orbi”, the NATO
implemented and deepen its relations in the various areas of the globe by setting
in motion its net of bases, equipments, communications, information, and still
interferences in the design of political regimes.
Although only three NATO members possess nuclear weapons – USA, France and
GB – it was decided in 1999 that it is urgent the participation of all NATO countries
in the process of placing nuclear armament in their territory, even in peace time
(23).
To spread out nuclear weapons to countries which have signed the treaty of non-
proliferation of nuclear weapons (NPT) is expressly barred to countries holders of
those weapons (article I) while the non-holders commit themselves not to receive
them (article II) (27), what turns that objective into a primary non-accomplishment
and a step to the appearance of chain reactions in its proliferation. Worse than
that, it thus increases the possibility of a first use of nuclear weapons outside a self-
defense context in the presence of a situation of aggression.
In a separate context, the Incirlik base, in Turkey, where also nuclear weapons are
stored, should be referred. This base is located very closely to the Turkish port and
oil platform of Ceyhan, in the Iskenderum/Alexandretta Gulf, a terminal for
The goal of all these connections is to make energy reach the Mediterranean and
Europe through “safe” routes, outside the reach of the Russian interference
without crossing Syria or depending on its ports. Incirlik also works as a surveillance
point of the Oriental Mediterranean where, and not as a coincidence, the Israeli
ally is stuck.
On the 24th September, the UNO General Assembly, under a USA proposition,
approved the 1887 Resolution which aims at the creation of a nuclear weapon
free world. Taking into account that the USA are the main detainees of those
weapons, that together with the other nuclear powers have not approved
anything aiming at the destruction of their arsenals, and have so far not made
any advances as far as the reduction of the nuclear weapons is concerned; that
Israel, India and Pakistan, not having signed the NPT, are not referred to in the
Resolution, the latter is but an instrument of pressure over North Korea and Iran to
serve the USA, and also to have the pacific use of nuclear energy included in the
NPT revision due to 2010.
GUAM
• It is at this light that the NATO’s military threat was demonstrated (the
project Missile Defense Shield, meanwhile put aside by Obama, in 2009),
and the war (South Ossetia, Chechnya, or Dagestan) that, surely, has not
brought any benefit to their peoples, submitted as they were to these oil
disputes).
The most expedite action of the GUAM within that strategy was developed in the
beginnings of June 2008, when the presidents of those countries (except
Moldavia), with their homologues from Poland and Lithuania met precisely to
discuss the question of the pipelines and their transport routes, with the parallel
but discrete supervision of the American responsible person (David Merkel). Two
weeks later and up to the end of the same month, military maneuvers involving
American, Georgian, Ukrainian, Azeri and even Armenian soldiers were held
(“Immediate Response” operation). Certainly, and not by coincidence, on the 5th
of July, 8000 Russian soldiers were exercising close to the Georgian border.
On the 7th of August, the Georgian president believing he would count upon the
support of his allies tried an intervention in South Ossetia, secessionist stripe of
The Bush’s USA acted discretely as far as their protests were concerned, but some
days after their failure in Ossetia, on the 14th August, they signed an agreement
with Poland in order to have “interceptor missiles” installed in that country, a
project which had long been fought by their target country – Russia – and
meanwhile abandoned.
Israel
Israel is not a NATO member, but it deeply and clearly fits in the western strategic
military apparatus:
• The USA has, since its foundation, continually supplied it with military aid and
assistance. It has even been the privileged beneficiary of the American
military aid from 1976 to 2003, when it was… understandably overcome by
Iraq. Since 1985 Israel has been receiving subsidies from the USA amounting
to an average of $3000 M a year, according to Jeremy M. Sharp (30);
• It benefits from all the USA’s diplomatic support and infinite tolerance in all
its racist and genocide attitudes towards the Palestinians, and aggressive
behaviours towards the Muslim world in general;
• Politically, Israel founds its attitudes and its very existence in the search of a
correction for millenarian historical facts, based on a delirious thesis of
considering themselves as a chosen people by some kind of divinity. In fact,
in the USA it is still common to find those who feel that the nation has a
civilizing mission of the world, over inferior peoples, morally decadent,
which should be subordinate to the chosen nation;
• The western countries are able to reproach India for the possession of
nuclear weapons, for example, and launch media campaigns, threats and
sanctions against Iran without presenting any prove that the latter is
producing nuclear weapons, while ignoring that Israel possesses 150 of
those weapons and, for that matter, counted upon the support of France
for the development of its nuclear capabilities.
• The arrival at Ceyhan of oil and natural gas originating in the Caspian Sea
and Central Asia (since 2006) aims to make it available in the Eastern
Mediterranean (already supervised as it is by NATO vessels within the
framework of the "Active Endeavour" operation and by the Israeli military
forces) without Russia's interference. Other ways to secure the outlet of
those fossil fuel producers would depend upon the Arab States crossing
(Syria or Iraq) or Iran, since the use of Afghanistan or the Pakistani coast
seems to have become highly problematic. Ceyhan will tend to be turned
not only into a way of supplying Europe (an essential goal for the NATO) but
also to make hydrocarbons available to Israel, and, through the latter,
make them reach Eilat, in the Red Sea, where the Asian consumers would
have access, becoming thus dependent on the Western and NATO-Israel
whims for their supplies (32);
• It is not a matter of little importance that Turkey holds the main source of a
strategic resource – water, particularly scarce in the Middle East.
• The start of the BTC opens the way to the development of other phases of
the global project in which Israel plays an essential part. There are projects
for the construction of several underground links across the sea between
Ceyhan and Ashkelon for the oil, natural gas, water and electricity
transport, whose viability depends upon the crossing of Syrian and
Lebanese territorial waters. Maybe, those reasons justify Israel’s actions to try
and crash the Hezbollah; the USA has sent away the Syrian troops from
Lebanon and maintains a tense relationship with Damascus. New conflicts
are probably to be expected for which the strategic alliance between the
NATO and Israel will be a key element. (28)
Recent developments
However, the changes show tactical alterations and do not make the strategy
which has laboriously been drawn since 1991 by the USA any different.
• In the global cut for 2010 ($17000 M), the American government has only
taken from the Pentagon around half of that amount, which corresponds to
a very slim slice of its expenditure on the defence ($ 663700 M). In that
• The American pressures for a greater involvement of the USA allies are
widely known (5) both in what concerns the military expenditure as well as
the supply of troops for the carrying out of their imperial wars. Germany, for
example, which for decades was self-excluded from sending troops
abroad, is present in Afghanistan (4000 soldiers), and has recently been
partaking in civil population massacres;
• Rasmussen himself has been flirting with Russia for its insertion in the NATO in
order to fight terrorism (at the same time there have been suicidal attacks
in the Russian Caucasus) and the proliferation of mass destruction
weapons; to help stabilization in Afghanistan; to integrate the western
missile apparatus to thwart the nuclear threats in Asia and in the Middle
East… and forget the Cold War times. Rasmussen has certainly wished to
prepare the isolation of North Korea and Iran, or even launch a certain
disturbance in the SCO – Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which since
2001 has joined together Russia, China and Central Asia countries, and has
amongst its observers such countries as Iran and India;
That amount of resources is rather exaggerated vis-à-vis the effective threats and
is socially useless… considering that the military expenditure has any social utility.
In almost all the NATO countries at distinct levels, and in spite of the high wealth
levels (very uneven) amongst its members, there are structural frailties in the
economic performance which the current crisis tends to aggravate. Thus,
• The military expenditure, the reinforcement of the role of the private sector,
the support to the banks, insurance companies and to the financial
speculation are, nonetheless, the great priorities of the governments’ public
expenditure. In the USA, the way to cover the risks of 46 million citizens has
been arduously debated, not the creation of a public and universal health
service, but a limited single insurance which enables public economies
without yet marginalizing the insurance industry; however, the debate is less
vivid regarding the F-35 planes whose cost amounts to $ 100 M per unit;
• As there is no such thing as peoples genetically cut out to make war and,
on the reverse, all human beings aspire to live in peace and well-being, in
security, to have access to health, housing facilities, work, food and
education, the whole of the Humanity is harmed by the manipulations of
the national leaders’ imperial power;
• The influence of the NATO and of the world military industries generate
military castes with specific interests - antagonistic to those of their fellow
citizens - ready to carry out putsches and perform repressive attitudes
against popular, unionist as well as pacifist movements. Those military
castes, often real states within the state, are always ready to be subject to
"lobbying" of the armament sellers thus enhancing the corrupt enrichment
of the generals;
• Too often that conservative logic also implies the maintenance or the
exacerbation of the preponderance of certain ethnic or religious groups
vis-à-vis others as well as the perpetuance of incompetent and corrupt
elites based on the military power or on faked or manipulated suffrages,
poor and disastrous replicas of the western patterns.
The role of the NATO in what the world military expenditure is concerned has the
following and over-measured representation
2007 Millions of US $
The comparison between the military expenditure in 2008 and its evolution since
1991 (extinction of the USSR) concerning the main NATO countries and its allies, or
preferential enemies, reveals clamorous aspects in what the aggressive features
of the organization are concerned;
% of the
1991 2008 Growth Per Capita
GDP
(a) (a) (%) 2008 (b)
(2007)
• The former colonial powers England and France occupy the 3rd and 4th
place respectively in the world ranking of military expenditure, a clearly
exaggerated position vis-à-vis the threats pending on those countries, but
which reveal the importance of their military industries and pretensions to
return to an imperial past;
• It is widely known the Iranian "preparations" to attack Israel, but the facts
reveal that the Israeli total defence expenditure is the double of that from
Iran, that each Iranian has as average expenditure of $ 93 while each
Israeli spends $ 1704, and that the latter country, whose military
In the Cold War era, the Portuguese Territory of the Azores was of paramount
importance for the NATO apparatus, but somehow it lost its value due to the
reduction of the perspectives of a generalized conflict. There are no regional
conflicts which threaten or involve Portugal, the closest one being in DSR (Western
Sahara), besides the internal instability in Morocco or in Algeria. Portugal has
recently performed its role as a USA subject by allowing the CIA flights with
prisoners to/from Guantanamo after having hosted the Iraq invasion decision
makers, in 2003.
In relative terms, these exorbitant military costs are due to three factors:
In short, Portugal offers a clear example of the NATO misdeeds. In the first place,
because it involves a small, poor and pacific people in an aggressive alliance in
whose actions it subserviently participates, with no possibility whatsoever to exert
influence in the decision making, and secondly because the public expenses on
defence matters contrast with the various needs in what health, education,
housing, and other fields are concerned.
The incapacity to face the conflict resolution by using means other than the
military ones, thus deciding upon the military occupation of the territory,
enunciates the difficulties to implement economic development and generate
wealth, to fight poverty and disease in a large part of the globe. Step by step,
security lines are being established so that the intervention areas are enlarged,
hence creating conflicting zones for the control of the resources, or raising
conflicts which end in the looting of those very resources. All in all, the importance
allowed to the military or paramilitary options results from the smallness and
scarcity of the planet Earth in order to satisfy the greed and the covetousness of
the economic and political elites.
• That technological incorporation has as its objective not only the creation
of decisive advantages in what concerns the detection, neutralization and
• The reduction of casualties in the battle field does not come from any
humanitarian concern or from the strong sensitivity of the high military ranks
before the loss of lives or human suffering. On the contrary, it comes from
the search of a high asymmetry in the war casualties so as to minimize the
war time;
- In this philosophy there are implicit racist contents, the only thing for it is
that among the victims the predominance be that of Arabs, Muslims,
blacks or Asians.
• The absence of conscripts in the military service turns the military deeds
into something afar from the population, which this way feels its youth is
less threatened, less worried about what is going on in the war, the
privileged stage for real war lords, thus more neutral before a professional
use of inhuman or forbidden behaviours by the humanitarian conventions,
such is the case of the phosphorous bombs, depleted uranium, anti-
personal mines, coward actions on defenceless civilians;
The NATO possesses numerous fragilities which its military potential tends to
conceal. Its capacity to start a war is enormous but it is unfit to solve the problems
the peoples are confronted with. What follows next is the enumeration of the
factors that stimulate the peoples’ struggles of its member countries against the
organization:
• Generally, the NATO enjoys the local or regional unpopularity in the areas
its main actions take place and whose populations are far from receiving
the western soldiers as messengers of freedom, peace or well-being;
• The subordination of the UNO itself to the interests of the NATO or the
Pentagon damages the former’s reputation and may lead to important
reforms in its structure, namely, the extinction of the Security Council if the
failure of the NATO or the Pentagon is to take place, i.e. of the western
strategic military apparatus;
• The enlargement of the number of the NATO members has in its essence
the natural difficulties inherent to the growth of its adversity. Those
difficulties may manifest themselves in the lack of cohesion and in the
recrudescence of internal conflicts and antagonisms;
The struggle against the NATO and militarism carried out by the peoples of its
respective member countries may involve several fronts:
Countries such as England, France or Germany may leave the NATO or refuse to
participate in a particular intervention of the organization, if they so decide. Due
to their political and economic power, the cohesion which the NATO is so in need
of might even be shaken. The same does not apply to smaller countries, which
are the great majority of the NATO countries. And that for two reasons:
• The first, of a political nature, which has to do with the fact that the USA
does not easily admit an exit without retaliation. Desertions within their
closest sphere of suzerainty are not to be accepted, regardless of the fact
they be performed by smaller countries whose contribution is irrelevant in
terms of military capacity of the NATO intervention;
In this context, the isolate attitudes carried out at a national level by any country
aiming at unilaterally leaving the NATO tend to be superficial as well as ineffective
(General de Gaulle’s France left the NATO, but it has recently joined in again).
In order to be effective and genuine, the movements against the NATO must
necessarily have two goals:
• They must focus on the end of the NATO, the only way to solve the problem
and create a global peace environment;
September, 2009
http://antinatoportugal.wordpress.com/
antinatoportugal@gmail.com
http://www.scribd.com/doc/20691174/Nato
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(1) http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/folha/mundo/ult94u562129.shtml
(2) http://www.cebraspo.com/boletim-86-13-de-agosto-de-2008/29-antagonismos-imperialistas-
bases-militares-norte-americanas-e-o-movimento-contra-elas.html
(3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_intervention_in_Bosnia
(4) http://www.democracynow.org/es/2009/9/8/titulares#11
(5) http://www.wri-irg.org/node/6573
(6) http://oglobo.globo.com/mundo/mat/2008/05/26/israel_tem_pelo_menos_150_armas_nucl
eares_diz_jimmy_carter-546507073.asp
(7) http://www.democracynow.org/es/2009/8/24/titulares#7
(8)
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iHBo8Es8WQf_5TjH25T5vQ9RyaJQ
(9) http://www.nato.int/cps/fr/SID-FE182CC1-6818B95A/natolive/topics_8189.htm#evolution
(10) http://www.bbc.co.uk/portuguese/noticias/2002/020827_refugiadosg.shtml
(11) http://www.hojeemdia.com.br/v2/index.php?sessao=17&ver=1¬icia=34220
(13) http://www.democracynow.org/es/2009/8/18/titulares
(14) http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamid_Karzai
(15) http://www.wri-irg.org/node/8664
(16) http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosovo#Economia
(17) http://www.nato.int/kfor/structur/nations/placemap/kfor_placemat
(18) http://www.nato.int/issues/active_endeavour/#evolution
(19)
http://www.afsouth.nato.int/JFCN_Operations/ActiveEndeavour/Endeavour.htm
(20) http://noticias.uol.com.br/ultnot/afp/2007/01/09/ult34u172141.jhtm
(21)
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-you-are-being-
lied-to-about-pirates-1225817.html
(22)
http://pt.wikinews.org/wiki/Frota_mar%C3%ADtima_da_OTAN_liderado_pelo_Portugal_chega_
%C3%A0_costa_da_Som%C3%A1lia
(24) http://www.bp.com/productlanding.do?categoryId=6929&contentId=7044622
(25) http://haroldovilhena.multiply.com/journal/item/121
(26) http://noticias.uol.com.br/ultnot/2007/12/08/ult35u56735.jhtm
(27) http://www.onu-brasil.org.br/doc_armas_nucleares.php
(28) http://www.adufrj.org.br/site/imprimir.php?id=527
(29) http://resistir.info/chossudovsky/geopolitica_pipelines_p.html
(30) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_%25E2%2580%2593_United_States_military_relations&
prev=/translate_s%3Fhl%3Dpt-
PT%26q%3Dajuda%2Bmilitar%2Bamericana%2Bisrael%26tq%3DU.S.%2Bmilitary%2Baid%2B
israel%26sl%3Dpt%26tl%3Den
(32) http://resistir.info/chossudovsky/pipeline_btc.html
(33) http://www.cienciaefe.org.br/JORNAL/e70/mt06.htm
(34) http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/folha/mundo/ult94u562129.shtml
(35) http://www.aereo.jor.br/?p=11831
(36)
http://www.redebrasilatual.com.br/temas/internacional/g-8-termina-com-promessa-de-
combate-a-fome-e-de-formalizar-g-14
The messianic hopes regarding Obama fade away as the time goes by.
Obama’s subordination to the Pentagon or his pragmatic subalternity when
including Hilary Clinton in his government is obvious. H. Clinton lost the
democrat nomination for Obama when running for the candidacy , and is
now responsible for the USA foreign policy. Obama seems to be the most
successful case where Franz Fanon thesis in his 1952 book “Peau Noire,
Masques Blancs” can be applied, following the attempts made with Collin
Powel and Condoleza Rice. A question seems to be pertinent: Is President
Obama a ‘powerpoint’?
(38) http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anexo:Lista_de_pa%C3%ADses_por_gastos_militares
(39) http://engforum.pravda.ru/showthread.php?p=2941945