This week, the heads of the NATO countries have been meeting in London to “celebrate” the 70th anniversary of the military alliance. The main news coverage coming out of the gathering revolves around Trump demanding that the members up their contributions to the alliance piggy bank, tales of how leaders of many countries are gossiping about the behaviors of the American president, and Donald Trump’s description of the Canadian prime minister as “two-faced.”
The so-called liberal media, reflected by MSNBC, goes a bit further in its commentary, but, unfortunately, it too parrots the false description of NATO as the long-time guarantor of democracy and peace in Europe and around the world. In the eagerness to lampoon whatever Trump says or does, the knee-jerk response for some in the media is to support or praise anything the president might criticize.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, as an instrument of U.S. foreign policy for seven decades, has never been the good-guy guardian of world peace and progress. Instead, it has been the instrument by which U.S. and transnational corporations can dominate the planet through military, economic, and political means.
When the situation called for it—whether in Iraq, Serbia, Croatia, Libya, Syria, or Afghanistan—NATO could be counted on to step forward in full support of U.S. foreign policy. Today it plays that role by planning, under the leadership of the U.S., war games on the borders of Russia that involve hundreds of thousands of troops and weapons and by backing up U.S. military operations in the Middle East.
NATO policy, like most of U.S. foreign policy over the last 70 years, has resulted not in peace and democracy but in war, massive human suffering, displacement of millions of refugees, and, not least, incredible numbers of deaths....
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