Demonizing Russian President Vladimir Putin, an Anglo-American pastime, seems even more childish when one considers that any president of the Russian Federation would act in exactly the same manner to protect the interests of his country in the face of NATO aggression.
When Putin attended the Bucharest summit in 2008 to sign an agreement that there would be no invitations extended by NATO to Ukraine and Georgia to join the alliance, little did he know that promises signed in English do not mean much.
The former Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, NATO’s salesman for neo-conservative invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, finds no task set by his Atlanticist masters too daunting. Implementing a scorched earth policy in both countries, Rasmussen has now scrapped the Bucharest agreement to create tension in Eastern Europe, inflaming the region with hostile rhetoric and permanent military bases.
As NATO expands eastward in order to surround Russia on all borders, Rasmussen has come across yet another obstacle that might be worth his while to ignore: Article 10 of the NATO Charter.
Article 10 stipulates that NATO membership is only open to European States: “The Parties [NATO Treaty signatories] may, by unanimous agreement, invite any other European State in a position to further the principles of this Treaty and to contribute to the security of the North Atlantic area to accede to this treaty. Any State so invited may become a Party to the Treaty by depositing its instrument of accession with the Government of the United States of America.”
The US does not consider the Russian Federation as “European”. Kiev, Tbilisi, Sofia certainly qualified as “North Atlantic” back in the Cold War era as little as they qualify today. Calls for NATO to ignore Article 10 and expand far beyond the North Atlantic and Europe, are abundant however.
NATO meanwhile has invented new ways of getting around this obstacle. “Membership Action Plan” and “Intensified Dialogue” are NATO-speak for fast-track membership into the military alliance.
One of the first moves in Georgia after the Soros-initiated Rose Revolution of 2003, was to sign up for NATO’s Membership Action Plan (MAP). However, Georgia claims ownership of two independent republics, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Fearful of the latest attempt by NATO to absorb Georgia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia recently announced the creation of a “Unified Defense Space” to counter Georgia’s and NATO’s total onslaught.
Similarly, after President Viktor Yushchenko and his Soros and American allies prevented the elected president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych from being sworn in as president after the so-called “Orange Revolution” of 2004, one of Yushchenko’s first actions as president was to sign Ukraine up for NATO’s “Intensified Dialogue” program.
After Yanukovych was ousted in the so-called “Euromaidan” revolution earlier this year, the new Kiev coalition of World Bank technocrats and neo-fascists called for fast track membership for Ukraine in NATO.
The wounded Kiev regime is fumbling along towards NATO membership even though a 2009 poll revealed that 57 percent of Ukrainians opposed NATO membership for their country. In Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine, which has declared independence from Kiev, a poll showed 74 percent opposed to NATO membership.
Yet NATO seems reluctant to accept a very existential problem with regards to its expansionist strategy. NATO planners, working with neocon clones in Sweden, Finland, Austria, Ireland, Switzerland, and Malta remain deaf to sound warnings of their constituents. And while these countries are all “European”, their voters are not interested in membership of the War Club.
President Obama said in Estonia that NATO is an alliance of “democracies” even though most of these “democracies” are opposed to joining the alliance. Obama clearly believes that his definition of democracy does not include abiding by the wishes expressed by majorities.
Recent polls show 50 percent of Swedes opposed to NATO membership. Although Finland and NATO signed a Memorandum of Understanding in April 2014 that many believe permit NATO pre-positioning of military equipment near the Russian border, polls show 52 percent of Finns also opposed to NATO membership.
Former Finnish Presidents Tarja Halonen and Mauno Koivisto have warned that Finnish membership in NATO would irrevocably harm Finland’s relations with Russia. Switzerland, where opposition to NATO runs high in the historically neutral nation, former Swiss President Adolf Ogi has called for Switzerland’s membership of NATO.
NATO has also been trying to wean Ireland away from its traditional neutrality. Many observers believe that NATO has a secret agreement with Ireland to use Shannon Airport as a cargo and personnel transit hub. An Irish Defense Policy Green Paper released by Ireland’s Defense Minister Alan Shatter, released earlier this year however, calls for Ireland to pursue NATO membership.
NATO’s gambit has been to use the terrorist threat to lure Ireland into the alliance, warning that Ireland would be “safer from terrorism” inside NATO. David Cameron, British premier, has just tried the the same trick to stem the yes-tide in Scotland’s up-coming referendum on independence.
In May of this year, Austria inched closer to NATO membership when it became the first non-NATO country to join NATO’s Cooperative Cyber Defense Center of Excellence in Estonia, while polls clearly show a majority of Austrians being opposed to NATO membership.
Malta renewed its membership in NATO’s Partnership for Peace (PfP) program in 2008 without parliamentary approval, and in contravention of the neutrality article in Malta’s constitution.
A confidential NATO paper recently leaked to Der Spiegel calls for enhanced “interoperability” of the military forces of Armenia and Azerbaijan, as well as Moldova, with NATO, and proposes “smart defense” operations between the three nations and NATO. Moldova’s constitution prohibits the country from joining any military alliance, but that inconvenient fact has not deterred Moldovan Defense Minister Vitalie Marinuţa, another Soros clone, from calling for Moldova to join NATO.
NATO’s Long March east is a far cry from the agreement made between the George H W Bush administration and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev that in exchange for Moscow’s agreement on German reunification, NATO would not inch any further east. That agreement was scrapped by Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who eagerly welcomed her native Czech Republic, as well as Poland and Hungary as NATO members in 1997. Albright’s promises that NATO would not further expand came to naught.
Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania joined NATO in 2004 after membership negotiations began under Albright’s tutelage in 2000. Bulgaria, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Romania also joined NATO in 2004. Croatia and Albania followed in 2009.
Recent statements by NATO and the Obama administration represent an immense escalation of US and NATO military threats against Russia. Without any public discussion, and entirely over the heads of the little people in all these countries, the Obama administration has committed them to a war with the second largest nuclear power in the world.
“Article 5 is crystal clear. An attack on one is an attack on all. So if, in such a moment, you ever ask again, ‘who will come to help,’ you’ll know the answer — the NATO Alliance, including the Armed Forces of the United States of America, ‘right here, present, now!’ We’ll be here for Estonia. We will be here for Latvia. We will be here for Lithuania… Here in the Baltics… it would mean more US forces—including American boots on the ground continuously rotating through Estonia and Latvia and Lithuania,” Obama boomed.
The signatories will be sad fodder for the War Club. The willful recklessness of American foreign policy is obvious, as there will not be enough American “boots on the ground”. The dying will have to be done by the parties who signed on with NATO. Good luck to them.
