The Significance of the Establishment of the NATO-Russia Council

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The Significance of the Establishment of the NATO-Russia Council

Protests against NATO at Rome Summit

Russia and the 19 NATO member states signed the Rome Declaration on May 28, establishing a new mechanism of co-operation between Russia and the transatlantic alliance, the Russia-NATO Council. "The significance of this meeting is difficult to overestimate," President Vladimir Putin said. However, he cautioned that the "Rome Declaration ... is only a beginning," according to Associated Press. "We must remember that relations between Russia and the North Atlantic alliance have been historically far from straightforward," Putin said.

The new council of 20 will give Russia a stronger voice in NATO affairs than it had in the ''19 plus-one'' Permanent Joint Council established in 1997 as an effort to console Russia for the NATO expansion that later brought Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary into the NATO alliance. The current council gives Russia a voice in specific areas, including crisis management, peacekeeping, air defence, search-and-rescue operations and joint exercises. But the new agreement does not give Russia a veto over independent NATO action, nor does it include Russia in the Article 5 principle that an attack on one member is considered an attack on all.

Founded in 1949 as an alliance with the immediate objective of the "containment of communism", NATO was based on the racist premise, elaborated by Churchill in his notorious Fulton "Iron Curtain" speech, that the English-speaking nations must civilise all of Europe and the world. With this objective, it set out to divide up the world’s people, and under cover of the "containment of communism", of the defence of "freedom" and "democracy", pursued the aim of US imperialism, the British government and other western powers to realise what Hitler had failed to achieve in his dream of world conquest.

Especially since the collapse of the bipolar division of the world, and given a boost in the wake of the events of September 11, 2001, NATO has been reshaping its world-wide strategy in pursuit of this aim and the establishment of the "New World Order". At the time of the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, Soviet leaders were given hollow assurances that NATO would not take advantage by expanding eastwards. But these assurances were short-lived, and in 1994 NATO set up its so-called "Partnership for Peace", which involves countries from Central Europe to Central Asia in becoming "NATO compatible". In 1995, NATO forces entered Bosnia in which they still remain, and in 1999 NATO launched a war of aggression against Yugoslavia.

Shortly after it elaborated its "new strategic concept" of acting on the periphery of the "Euro-Atlantic" region, as well as areas laying outside the NATO countries’ territories and surrounding seas. What was "new" about this concept was the open declaration that the founding treaty’s doctrine of using armed force only in "self-defence" was being jettisoned. Thus in today’s world, the doctrine of the "containment of communism" has been replaced with waging wars to deal with the "threat of terrorism" and defending "Euro-Atlantic security".

Vladimir Putin, for his part in establishing the NATO-Russia Council, is subscribing to this doctrine of the US-led "war on terrorism". He is arguing that the NATO-Russia Council ''brings Russia back into the fold of civilised nations''.

No sooner has the ink dried on the Rome Declaration, than the British and Spanish Prime Ministers have issued a further call for the transformation of NATO, that it should create a new role for itself, and that its assets and forces should be "used flexibly wherever they are needed". This, they say, should be underpinned by a renewed effort to improve the military capabilities of all NATO members.

In a joint letter to NATO Secretary General George Robertson, Blair and Jose Maria Aznar said that NATO must develop a complementary partnership with the EU to ensure stability and security.

"The attacks of September 11 demonstrated the new threats posed to our societies by terrorism and weapons of mass destruction," they wrote in the letter released by Downing Street, ahead of a meeting of NATO defence ministers in Brussels on Thursday and Friday. "These and other possible threats pose now for all of us the challenge of adapting our institutions in response, preserving their values while keeping them effective in a radically different world."

At the Brussels meeting this week, NATO defence ministers are to kick-start plans for a new "military concept" which they say is appropriate to security challenges that may lie far beyond the European borders it guarded during the Cold War. The package of measures is to be agreed at a summit in Prague next November. Thus no sooner has the NATO-Russia partnership been consolidated than the "new strategic concept" is being widened as a "new military concept".

Blair and Aznar are elaborating this concept on behalf of the US, urging that NATO must increase its preparedness to "fight terrorism and weapons of mass destruction" and work with the EU to further militarise it and act as a proxy for NATO and the US under the pretext of the widening remit of "Euro-Atlantic security". Blair and Aznar say: "The Prague summit...presents us as Allied leaders with a unique opportunity to transform NATO, to make it as firm a guarantee of our security in the opening decade of the 21st Century as it was through the second half of the 20th." They add, "The British and Spanish governments have a shared vision of NATO revitalised at Prague to face threats, with new roles, new capabilities, new members and new relationships with Russia and with other partners to our east and south."

In this context, NATO Secretary General George Robertson challenged European allies ahead of the Brussels meeting to start spending more on defence or risk being marginalised by the military might and sophistication of the United States. "There is no way in which the safety and security of the population of Europe can be guaranteed unless the investment is made now," Robertson told the BBC. "That means spending wisely and it means spending more."

A senior NATO official warned that with US defence spending running at 3.3-3.4 percent of gross domestic product and the European average at just 1.8 percent, a "two-tier alliance" could emerge. US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will argue at this week's meeting for a refit of NATO, calling for time-bound commitments to acquiring new capabilities for "fighting terrorism and weapons of mass destruction".

NATO's new list of spending priorities will be more focused than those set out in its Defence Capabilities Initiative, which was launched in 1999 to deal with military capability shortfalls highlighted by the conflict in Kosova.

In the context of this "new military concept", it is now being suggested that this "fight against terrorism and weapons of mass destruction" will involve "non article-5" military action to so-called "defend" countries which are not members of NATO. Thus NATO is to consider further operating as a tool of the "New World Order" under the guise of "defending" non-member countries and "contributing to international coalitions".

Elaborating, a senior British MoD source is reported to have said, the day after the Rome summit, that NATO is shifting its attention away from northern Europe to the south, in a move reflecting its new relationship with Russia and emerging threats in the Mediterranean region.

New headquarters which would be responsible for mobilising troops at short notice are being set up in Milan, Madrid, and Istanbul. NATO's naval headquarters in Naples is also being strengthened.

The defence source said: "There is evidence of instability around the Mediterranean and concerns about the Horn of Africa, whereas in the north of Europe there is a reduction in the previous tension with Russia." He referred to north African countries and Somalia which, it is claimed, al-Qaida elements are using as a base. The potential threats cited also include Libya.

Britain is moving more than 60 senior military officers to the three new headquarters. About 30, including a general, are based at the new headquarters in Milan. Its geographical position made Italy a crucial country in the fight against international terrorism, the defence source said.

When Tony Blair and Geoff Hoon held talks in London with the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, on Wednesday, on the agenda were NATO issues, when they agreed on the need to develop these more "flexible" forces. In Brussels, Donald Rumsfeld said he would emphasise to fellow NATO defence ministers the importance of working to keep weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of anti-Western "terrorists".

These very recent developments show the extremely dangerous situation facing the world after the formation of the NATO-Russia Council, which has opened up further possibilities for aggression by the US-led NATO military alliance. They are a further extremely serious threat to the independence and democracy of peoples, and demand the most vigorous opposition from the working class and people on the world scale.

Protesters composed an array of torches to say "No NATO, No Bush" during an anti-NATO demonstration in Rome's Circus Maximus on Monday, May 27, ahead of the Rome Summit the following day. Police were deployed around the hillside. US President Bush arrived in Rome on Monday for the summit in the Pratica di Mare military base about 20 miles south of Rome.

The Italian government deployed 15,000 security forces including 2,200 air force personnel and 800 army troops. Among the army units were a nuclear, biological and chemical team and a unit specialised in finding and destroying explosive ordnance, a military official said. About a dozen aircraft, including MB339 jets mounted with 20mm cannons and helicopters outfitted with machine guns, circled the summit site. A Navy frigate backed by smaller boats patrolled the nearby sea, where beaches were closed to the public.

Roads were roped off on Monday and Tuesday in Rome and observation posts dotted the area around the base. The army and air force each mounted an anti-aircraft missile battery, an official said. Rome's second-largest airport, Ciampino, was closed on Monday and Tuesday to commercial flights. Activity at Rome's main airport, Leonardo da Vinci, which is also close to the summit site, was greatly reduced.

"We are working to make the entire area impregnable," Rome Prefect Emilio Del Mese, the government's representative in the capital, said in an interview with the La Stampa daily. "For the past 20 days, the entire zone has been under surveillance by helicopters and by foot and auto patrols, by police and Carabinieri," he said. Throughout the day, a NATO AWACS surveillance aeroplane circled overhead, providing images and information to NATO's command centre, according to Del Mese. He said was not too worried about protests "because all the big protests since September 11 have demonstrated a great sense of responsibility".

In Belgrade, during the NATO-Russia summit in Rome, several thousand demonstrators from all parts of the political spectrum protested in front of the British and US embassies. They also demanded end to the trial of Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic at The Hague. Embassies' representatives received a letter for their governments from the organiser of the demonstration, Citizen Association FREEDOM. Written by Belgrade law professors, the letter focused on numerous misuses of law and violations of international documents on protection of human rights, including the Hague Tribunal’s own Rules in the trial of Slobodan Milosevic and demands his release.

Demonstrators called for people's unity and broadening of protest actions against the present Belgrade regime, which they charged serves only foreign interests and has completely lost popular support. "Our only goal is freedom," said one of the speakers, Ratko Zecevic, chairman of the Association of War Veterans since 1990. Former famous basketball player for the Yugoslav national team and now known activist Ljubodrag Simonovic Duci blamed capitalist arrogance and aggression for global oppression.

The demonstrations were reported to have been supported by the Socialist Party of Serbia, Serbian Radical Party, Yugoslav Left, New Communist Party of Yugoslavia and other organisations from Serbia, Montenegro, Republic of Srpska, Macedonia as well as by organisations of those expelled from Kosova, Bosnia and Croatia.