It’s happening in schools and homes. And while Modi’s BJP might gain, generations of India’s Hindus will lose.

• Apoorvanand, Aljazeera, published On 15 Sep 202315 Sep 2023

A Muslim friend from a town in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh recently called, seeking counsel.

His young daughter had told him the previous day that her friends refused to play with her any more – after they were warned by other children to stay away from her because of her religion.

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This is an experience most Muslims have gone through while growing up in India. They are familiar with anti-Muslim slurs and cuss words used against them. But something new is happening which is radically different from earlier times.

While the Indian media and politicians have long harped on the supposed dangers of radicalisation among Muslim youth, or of the threat of far-left propaganda, we are now witnessing the turbocharged expression of a reality the country has never confronted: the radicalisation of Hindu youth.

It is an everyday radicalisation of young men and women who appear very normal, until they decide to target Indian Muslims and Christians.

They are part of public, over-ground groups like the Akhil Bhartiya Vidyaarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS); and the Bajrang Dal, the militant youth wing of the RSS. All of them are affiliates of the ruling Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), which gives them political clout and a veneer of respectability.

Members of the ABVP and the Bajrang Dal have been involved in numerous cases of physical violence against students and teachers, especially Muslims and Christians. Yet earlier this year, when the Congress party – the principal national opposition – declared that it would consider banning the Bajrang Dal if it came to power in the southern state of Karnataka, no less than Prime Minister Narendra Modi raised slogans in defence of the militant outfit.

Recently, a video surfaced in India and went viral in which a young Hindu girl is seen singing “Desh ke gaddaron ko Goli maro …” (shoot the traitors of the country). She is surrounded by elders who are clapping and encouraging her.

This slogan was made popular by a minister in the Modi government who was targeting Muslim women and men for protesting against the controversial new citizenship law passed in 2020 that discriminates against Muslim asylum seekers. The slogan has since been used in rallies and videos to target Muslims.

This video encapsulates a reality that Hindus do not want to talk about. Another video of a school teacher asking her students to slap their Muslim classmate who had not done his homework made national news. Students came up one by one and hit the Muslim boy, as the teacher commented against his religion.

We don’t know what impact this has had on the student who was struck and on his classmates, exposed to bigotry by their teacher at a young age. But we do know that there is an impact, more broadly, on the atmosphere that dominates today’s India.

The principal of a prestigious school in New Delhi told me that some students raised the slogan “Jai Shri Ram” in their class. This slogan is used by the RSS to proclaim Hindu dominance. Their parents were called and counselled.

Some students from another class went out to a park on Valentine’s Day and tried to bully couples sitting there. The celebration of Valentine’s Day is resented by Hindu supremacist groups. They threaten, harass, and beat up couples celebrating the day. It was disturbing for the teachers of this progressive, liberal school to find their students turning into volunteers of this radical ideology.

Talking to teachers and principals, one realises that the radicalisation of young Hindus, while an ongoing process, has acquired dangerous proportions in recent years, fuelled by hate-mongering TV channels, internet platforms and WhatsApp groups that have been relentlessly spreading anti-Muslim propaganda. Sadly, in many cases, what these children hear at home and in their families reinforces the bigotry they are fed by their television and phone screens.

Worried teachers struggle to deal with this phenomenon. For they too are vulnerable.

A fact-finding report released by a recently formed group in Maharashtra called Women Protest For Peace found multiple instances where external groups were intervening in the state’s educational institutions to incite students “to deliberately target teachers on religious grounds”.

Sadly, none of this is a surprise. In the last decade, it has become common to see adolescents, even children, brandishing swords and other weapons, raising hateful slogans targeting Muslims, and even vandalising mosques and Islamic shrines. Teenagers are seen in rallies organised by the Bajrang Dal.

These young Hindus see that violence against Muslims and Christians is often celebrated or at least tolerated, sometimes approvingly, in their families and society. They observe that people who provoke and lead violence gain social and political respectability and get elected to state legislatures and parliament. They see that far from suffering consequences for hate speech and hate crimes, anti-Muslim and anti-Christian acts help those who carry them out.

A major source of this hatred towards Muslims and Christians is the chain of educational institutions run by organisations affiliated with the RSS. Studies have been done examining the curriculum and activities of these institutions, and they reveal that they inculcate ‘nationalism’ in young minds, which is synonymous with anti-Muslim and anti-Christian hatred.

Children are told that India has been the land of Hindus, which was infiltrated by Muslims and Christians. That Hindus have been the best in all aspects; that it was Muslim rule that degraded them and turned them into slaves; that the only way to reclaim the country’s past glory is by teaching Muslims and Christians a lesson.

Tangible tasks are presented to Hindu youth as what they need to do to defend their faith. They are told that they must save cows from the cruelty of Muslims and Christians, establish Hindu dominance over Muslim neighbourhoods, and ‘save’ girls from ‘love jihad’ – a conspiracy theory that claims Muslim men are out to trap Hindu women in relationships with the aim of converting them to Islam.

Scores of vigilante groups have mushroomed all over India, indulging in violence against Muslims under the pretext of protecting cows and Hindu women.

Unfortunately, the radicalisation of Hindu youth often goes unnoticed as it is approved by their families, whom they see indulging in a range of aggressions against Muslims: It could be something as bizarre as protesting against their Muslim neighbours praying in their own houses.

Once hatred is normalised, violence follows naturally.

Yet while the BJP might benefit politically, the long-term consequences of this project will be borne by India’s Hindus, too. With homes and schools as the cradles of this radicalisation, a generation of Hindu children is being turned into unknowing criminals.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

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• ApoorvanandApoorvanand teaches Hindi at the University of Delhi. He writes literary and cultural criticism.

U.S. actions intensify the danger of nuclear war in the Asia-Pacific.

By Marjorie Cohn , Truthout, Published August 31, 2023

The United States is gunning for war with China. By cozying up to Taiwan and arming it to the teeth, President Joe Biden is undermining the “One China” policy which has been the cornerstone of U.S.-China relations since 1979. The Biden administration is enlisting South Korea and Japan to encircle China. The U.S. military is conducting provocative military maneuvers that exacerbate the conflict in the South China Sea. Biden is escalating tensions with China and intensifying the danger of nuclear war in the Asia-Pacific. And Republican presidential candidates are also fanning the flames of war with China.

In March, U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines called China the “leading and most consequential threat to U.S. national security.” Chinese President Xi Jinping stated, “Western countries — led by the U.S. — have implemented all-round containment, encirclement and suppression against us.”

The Biden administration has “doubled down on the most insanely bellicose aspects of Trump administration policies, especially over Taiwan, which the U.S. had long recognized as part of China,” Peter Kuznick, professor of history and director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University, told Truthout.

More than 90 percent of the most advanced microchips in the world are manufactured in Taiwan. The chips are used to power our smartphones, train artificial intelligence systems and guide missiles. The Trump administration imposed heavy tariffs on Chinese imports to cut off China’s access to the software technology and equipment required to build the advanced chips.

Biden has maintained and dramatically expanded Trump’s coercive economic measures and imposed a blockade on advanced semiconductors. “Official U.S. policy is to make a nation of almost a billion and a half people poorer,” David Brooks wrote in The New York Times.

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Trump’s Harsh Sanctions Lead to Iran-China Partnership

The new strategic partnership between Iran and China is the result of Trump’s punishing sanctions against Iran. By Marjorie Cohn , Truthout

July 13, 2020

In 1979, the United States declared that the government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was “the sole legal Government of China.” That policy was consistent with UN General Assembly Resolution 2758, which recognized the PRC as the only legitimate government of China and one of the five permanent members of the Security Council.

“But now the ‘One China’ policy seems a relic of a foregone era and the U.S. seems hellbent on militarizing the Pacific in order to contain China,” Kuznick, who is coauthor with Oliver Stone of the New York Times best-selling book and documentary film series The Untold History of the United States, said. “This reckless policy will, if we are lucky, lead to a new Cold War. If we are unlucky, it portends a third world war — one that our species might not survive.”

Biden has repeatedly stated that the United States would use military force to defend Taiwan if it is attacked by China. The Biden administration has provided Taiwan with $619 million worth of high-tech arms.

Then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August 2022, angering China, which staged extensive war games around Taiwan in response.

In April, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen met with a bipartisan U.S. congressional delegation in Simi Valley, California, the most high-profile meeting between U.S. and Taiwanese leaders on U.S. soil since 1979. The Chinese Embassy called the encounter a “serious mistake.” The foreign ministry responded by pledging to “take resolute and forceful measures” to defend its territorial integrity.

At the G20 summit in Indonesia in November 2022, Xi told Biden in no uncertain terms: “The Taiwan question is at the very core of China’s core interests, the bedrock of the political foundation of China-U.S. relations, and the first red line that must not be crossed.”

The U.S. Is the “Most War-Making Country” in the World

Speaking on a panel at the Veterans For Peace (VFP) annual convention on August 25, Kuznick remarked that China has not been at war with any country since 1979. By contrast, the United States has had only 16 years of peace in its 247 years. “The U.S. is the most war-making country” in the world, Kuznick said.

K.J. Noh, an activist scholar who writes about the geopolitics of the Asian continent, also spoke on the VFP panel. Noh described South Korea as key to the U.S.’s escalating war on China. “The United States has operational control over South Korean troops,” Noh said. The U.S. is also “weaponizing Taiwan into an imperial outpost for war.”

The third panelist was Simone Chun, a researcher and activist specializing in inter-Korean relations and U.S. foreign policy on the Korean Peninsula. She echoed Noh’s comments, calling South Korea a “pawn in Washington’s march to war against China.” South Korea, Chun said, is a “subcontractor in the new Cold War.”

In an article for Truthout in March, Chun characterized “[t]he U.S. military encirclement of China” as threatening “to escalate into an Asia-Pacific war, with the Korean Peninsula at the focal point of this dangerous path.” South Korea has 30,000 combat-ready U.S. troops on 73 U.S. military bases in the small country.

Since the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia” in 2012, 60 percent of U.S. naval forces have been transferred to the Asia-Pacific, and 400 of the 800 U.S. military bases worldwide and 130,000 troops “are now circling China,” Chun wrote. The U.S.’s “goal is to force China’s hand by triggering and escalating a hybrid war on multiple fronts, including military, technology, economy, information and media.”

South Korea and Japan are encircling China from the north, and Australia and Indonesia are surrounding China from the south. South Korea’s right-wing president, Yoon Suk-yeol, welcomes the deployment of U.S. tactical weapons to South Korea and intends to arm his country with nuclear weapons, according to Chun.

The U.S., U.K. and Australia (“AUKUS”) announced in March that Australia would buy three nuclear-powered submarines by the “early 2030s.” The Chinese mission to the UN condemned the deal, tweeting, “The irony of AUKUS is that two nuclear weapons states who claim to uphold the highest nuclear non-proliferation standard are transferring tons of weapons-grade enriched uranium to a non-nuclear-weapon state, clearly violating the object and purpose of the NPT [Non-Proliferation Treaty].”

In October 2022, the U.S. announced it would deploy as many as six nuclear-capable B-52 bombers to northern Australia, within striking range of China.

U.S. Promotes Expansion of NATO Into the Asia-Pacific

The United States is promoting the expansion of NATO into the Asia-Pacific “to close the military circle around China,” Chun writes. The U.S. seeks to extend the influence of NATO to Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.

Chun identifies three significant aspects of the U.S. strategy: 1) stepped-up remilitarization of Japan; 2) “revitalization of extremist hardline North Korea policies” in Washington and Seoul and 3) escalation of “belligerent wargames targeted at China and North Korea.”

After World War II, the United States imposed a “peace constitution” on Japan but later pushed aggressively for Japanese rearmament to further the U.S.’s strategy to dominate the Asia-Pacific. The United States considers the remilitarization of Japan “the linchpin of U.S. security interests in Asia,” Chun notes.

The U.S. policy on North Korea is aimed at magnifying the purported “North Korea threat” and using it as a pretext to enlist South Korea and Japan in its scheme to contain China. Moreover, the joint military exercises between the U.S. and South Korea are dress rehearsals for an attack on and occupation of North Korea and the “decapitation” of its leadership — a “plan for regime collapse and occupation,” Chun writes.

The South China Sea Is a Flashpoint

There are competing claims of sovereignty over bodies of land and their contiguous waters in the South China Sea. Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei oppose China’s historical claim to 90 percent of the South China Sea. This has led to tensions that have been exacerbated by U.S. military maneuvers in the sea.

The South China Sea is one of the busiest maritime shipping routes, connecting it with China, Japan, South Korea, Russia, Singapore, the Strait of Malacca and the Pacific Coast of the U.S. In 2016, more than 21 percent of global trade, totaling $3.37 trillion, transited through the South China Sea.

In July 2016, the Arbitral Tribunal in The Hague ruled for the Philippines in its case against China. The tribunal determined that China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea and its actions toward the Philippines did not comply with international law. China refused to abide by the ruling.

“American warships regularly move around the restricted area of China’s major islands under the range of Chinese guns, and at any time, due to some incident, military conflict between the two powerful superpowers could explode,” Professor Dmitri Valentinovic Mosiakov wrote in the International Review of Contemporary Law of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. “US military expeditions, which are supposed to demonstrate the US commitment to the defense of freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, in fact only reinforce and justify such activities of China’s military preparation.”

Mosiakov added that in July 2022, “the United States decided that it was necessary to remind the People’s Republic of China who was to determine the rules of navigation in the South China Sea. Another US destroyer sailed into waters where China had declared a ban for military ships.”

The U.S. military does not belong in the South China Sea and its provocative actions compound the danger of an already tense situation.

“The greatest threat to peace and stability in northeast Asia is the U.S. Indo-Pacific military encirclement of China,” Chun wrote.

Likewise, Kuznick told Truthout, “U.S. policy makers seem so terrified by China’s extraordinary growth and challenge to U.S. hegemony in the Pacific that they are willing to risk nuclear annihilation to prevent it.”

We must heed Daniel Ellsberg’s admonition shortly before he died. He implored us to pursue “the urgent goal of working with others to avert nuclear war in Ukraine or Taiwan (or anywhere else).”

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Marjorie Cohn

Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, and a member of the national advisory boards of Assange Defense and Veterans For Peace, and the bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. She is founding dean of the People’s Academy of International Law and the U.S. representative to the continental advisory council of the Association of American Jurists. Her books include Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral and Geopolitical Issues. She is co-host of “Law and Disorder” Radio.

Rod Such The Electronic Intifada 12 July 2023

Boycott Theory and the Struggle for Palestine: Universities, Intellectualism and Liberation by Nick Riemer, Rowman & Littlefield (2023)

Australian scholar Nick Riemer explains the focus of his new in-depth study of the academic boycott of Israel by saying that “almost everything in the politics and culture of higher education works against academics boycotting Israel.”

Indeed, the obstacles presented by that culture are what’s mainly addressed in Boycott Theory and the Struggle for Palestine: Universities, Intellectualism and Liberation as he delves into the history of the academic boycott.

Academics, especially in the United States, have been denied work or tenure because of their advocacy for Palestine, a story presented in We Will Not Be Silenced: The Academic Repression of Israel’s Critics – an anthology of testimonials from repressed scholars published in 2017 but still relevant today.

Riemer describes the origins and early successes of the academic boycott, predating the 2005 Palestinian civil society call for BDS with the formation of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) a year earlier.

Even earlier, in 2002, Riemer notes, “several hundred European academics and researchers called for a moratorium on European funding of Israeli cultural and research institutions.” By year’s end, the University of Paris 6, now part of the Sorbonne, called for cutting off the European Union’s research agreement with Israel.

Other victories followed, including the University of Johannesburg in South Africa severing ties with Israel’s Ben-Gurion University in 2011. Numerous academic associations adopted pro-BDS resolutions in solidarity with the Palestinian people.

Ideology of the academy

But unlike the BDS movement against apartheid South Africa, which resulted in many US universities actually divesting from companies doing business with the country, nearly all Western universities and colleges have resisted calls from faculty and students to cut ties with Israel.

Riemer locates many of the reasons why, including university links to the military-industrial complex. But he reserves most of his critique for the dominant ideological narrative of “academic freedom” and the “civility” and “collegiality” reasons given for maintaining ties with Israeli academic institutions.

Riemer notes that from its beginning, PACBI called for the boycott of Israeli institutions, not individual Israeli scholars.

This provision, recognizing Israeli academics who oppose the occupation, differed from the academic boycott call issued in 1958 by the African National Congress – a blanket boycott of both institutions and individuals. Objections were rarely raised about the issue of “academic freedom” when it came to boycotting apartheid South Africa.

Riemer documents numerous examples of academic freedom being denied to Palestinian scholars, rarely acknowledged by hypocritical Western academic institutions.

Israeli troops routinely impose checkpoints outside university entrances, raid Palestinian campuses and arrest and imprison students. Movement restrictions prevent many Palestinian students from studying or teaching abroad or even in other parts of Palestine, and international scholars are restricted from teaching in the West Bank and Gaza.

As of 2022, Israel announced that it would vet all applications from foreign academics to teach at West Bank universities after a long history of limiting the number of foreign academics and refusing entry and re-entry. Israel’s numerous bombing campaigns in Gaza have not only disrupted education for long periods but have often targeted university campuses and buildings.

Outside Palestine, examples abound of “academic freedom” being denied to scholars who lost their positions due to their advocacy for Palestinian rights, such as Norman Finkelstein, Steven Salaita and Cornel West, to name only a few.

More recently, the effort by Israel and its proxies to impose the highly flawed IHRA definition of anti-Semitism on campuses – conflating criticism of Israel and Zionism with anti-Jewish bigotry – has resulted in numerous cancellations of scheduled talks, courses and film screenings in direct contradiction to most notions of academic freedom.

Riemer goes beyond the issue of censorship by asking why academic culture values not just civility and collegiality but actually negates the boycott by elevating thinking above acting. In contrast to the famous quote from Karl Marx, Riemer seems to be saying that for most academics, the point is to just interpret the world, not to change it.

The later chapters of Boycott Theory delve into this and related questions, such as those related to free speech and the right, both morally and politically, to disrupt hate speech aimed at reinforcing “the murderous practices of Israeli apartheid.” Riemer also discusses the role of intellectuals, asking can there be theory without practice, and what are the differences between solitary and collective intelligence.

Riemer couches some of these ideas in provocative phrases, such as the need for “groupthink” and “anti-intellectualism.”

Unfortunately, as intriguing as some of his ideas are, the author fails to convey them in an expository way by explaining the concept in detail, presenting the evidence for it and disrupting contrary claims. As a result, the reader is left unconvinced.

Tactic vs. strategy

Is there a need for a “theory of boycott,” as implied by the book’s title?

There is, but the author’s frequent description of the boycott as a tactic neglects its chief importance as a strategy.

The African National Congress regarded boycott, divestment and sanctions as one of the “four pillars” of South Africa’s liberation struggle, giving it a place of importance equal to its other strategic methods: armed struggle, political mass struggle and clandestine underground struggle.

The BDS movement has become a strategic component of the Palestinian liberation struggle not only because it has united Palestinians (polls show that more than 80 percent of Palestinians support BDS), but also because it has given people around the world a way to support that liberation struggle on a global scale.

It has also been the chief vehicle for changing the once-dominant belief that Israel is a democracy deserving of support, to an insurgent narrative that Israel is an apartheid state and that apartheid must end.

It is an idea that has become a material force. After all, ideas – once they’re grasped by a mass of people – can become a force in their own right.

Rod Such is a former editor for World Book and Encarta encyclopedias. He lives in Portland, Oregon, where he is active in the Demilitarize Portland2Palestine campaign.

The Judge chats with former CIA Intel Officer, Ray McGovern as we remember 9/11.

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ABC News reports that the US is likely to arm Ukraine with ATACMS, which have a range of up to 190 miles

by Dave DeCamp, Antiwar. com, September 11, 2023

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Sunday that it was up to Ukraine whether or not to target Russian territory with US-provided weapons, a policy that brings the US and Russia closer to a direct clash.

Blinken made the comments after ABC News reported that it’s likely the Biden administration will soon arm Ukraine with Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS), which have a range of up to 190 miles.

While appearing on ABC’s ‘This Week,’ Blinken was asked if he was OK with Ukraine using ATACMS to hit targets deep inside Russian territory. “In terms of their targeting decisions, it’s their decision, not ours,” Blinken replied.

When asked about the increasing Ukrainian drone attacks inside Russia, Blinken claimed the US does not “encourage” or “enable” the operations. However, The Economist recently reported that Ukrainian drone attacks on Russia frequently use intelligence gathered by Kyiv’s Western backers.

As the war has dragged on, the Biden administration has been less and less concerned about the risk of Ukrainian attacks inside Russia escalating the war. The administration previously feared that Russia could respond to such attacks by targeting a NATO country.

The US has also brushed off Russian warnings against providing Ukraine with longer-range missiles, as Moscow has previously called them a “red line.” According to a US official speaking to ABC, the ATACMS “are coming.”

Destructive US efforts to control its ‘back yard’ continue to this day.

• John Kirk. John Kirk is Professor Emeritus of Latin American Studies at Dalhousie University, Canada
• Stephen Kimber. Professor of journalism at the University of King’s College

ALJAZEERA, 11 Sep 2023

Today is the 50th anniversary of a devastating military coup in Chile which gave way to one of the most brutal dictatorships in Latin American history.

On September 11, 1973, a military junta, led by General Augusto Pinochet, overthrew the democratically elected government of President Salvador Allende. What followed was a 17-year dictatorship which tortured 40,000, killed more than 3000 and “disappeared” more than a thousand others. Hundreds of thousands were forced into exile.

The Nixon administration in the United States encouraged and supported the coup that paved the way for these atrocities.

Since former US President James Monroe effectively announced a protectorate over the Western Hemisphere in December 1823, known as the Monroe Doctrine, the US has been interfering in nations across Latin America, often in pursuit of its own interests, but always under the guise of protecting democracy and human rights in its “backyard”.

The 1973 coup in Chile was one such intervention.

Official documents and telephone call transcripts that were declassified and made public over the years paint a clear picture of how Washington worked to ensure Allende’s downfall ever since he scored a narrow victory in the September 8, 1970, presidential election.

According to handwritten notes of then CIA Director Richard Helms, just more than a week after Allende’s victory, on September 15, 1970, President Richard Nixon ordered him to “make the economy scream” in Chile to “prevent Allende from coming to power or to unseat him”. Three days earlier, in a phone call to Helms that he recorded, Nixon’s national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, had already confirmed the administration’s intention to overthrow Allende, noting “We will not let Chile go down the drain.”

And on September 16, 1973, just six days after Pinochet’s bloody putsch, Nixon called his national security adviser to ask whether the US “hand” in the coup would show. According to declassified call transcripts, Kissinger admitted that “we helped them” and that “[deleted reference] created conditions as great as possible.”

The US did not end its destructive meddling in Chile’s affairs after successfully instigating a coup against its democratically elected leader either.

Three years into Pinochet’s murderous rule, in June 1976, Kissinger personally visited the Chilean capital, Santiago, to reaffirm Washington’s support for the dictator. According to a declassified transcript of their one-on-one conversation, Kissinger advised Pinochet on how to improve his image in the international arena and dismissed all criticism of his regime’s human rights record as “leftist propaganda”. “In the United States, as you know, we are sympathetic with what you are trying to do here,” Kissinger told Pinochet, who had by then already killed and disappeared thousands of his regime’s detractors “We want to help, not undermine you,” he added.  “You did a great service to the West in overthrowing Allende.”

—Nasir Khan

The Afghan Mujahideen (Islamist fighters) of the 1980s who took power in Afghanistan as Taliban in the 1990s were the creation of the United States and some of the US allies in the Middle East and Pakistan. That’s history. No need for me to repeat what has happened since the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. We know how the Afghans after taking Kabul on August 15, 2021 showed human decency to allow the defeated US army to get out of Afghanistan safely.

by Ted Galen Carpenter, FFF, August 31, 2023

 Western leaders have long fostered the self-serving myth that NATO is an organization solely for the mutual defense of its members. The corollary is that other nations therefore have no legitimate reason to fear the most powerful military alliance in history. After all, it is an association of peace-loving democracies.NATO is not a purely defensive alliance, and its members are not peace-loving democracies.
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The operational expression of the myth is most evident regarding relations with Russia.  According to the dominant narrative (that a sycophantic news media obediently circulate) is that NATO’s addition of new members in Eastern Europe during the post-Cold War era posed no threat to Russia’s security. Even the extensive efforts to turn Ukraine into an alliance military asset supposedly did not constitute dangerous provocations. Those actions included multiple weapons sales to Kyiv, the training of Ukrainian military forces, joint NATO-Ukraine war games, and apparently joint cyberwarfare operations against Russian targets.

All of these moves occurred against the background of Washington’s withdrawal from both the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty and the Open Skies Agreement, even though the preservation of both measures was a high priority for the Kremlin. Despite that long pattern of belligerent behavior, Western officials continued to insist not only that Ukraine has every right under international law to join NATO, but that Moscow would have no reason to consider such a move a menace to Russia’s security.

Washington is trying to foster a similar narrative with respect to policy toward the People’s Republic of China (PRC). During the last two NATO summits, much of the discussion has focused on how to deal with China. That orientation might seem a bit odd for an alliance whose official name is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. However, the United States clearly is pushing its European allies to enlist in an increasingly hardline policy toward Beijing. It is a transparent effort to include NATO as a player in an anti-PRC containment policy, including a willingness to help defend Taiwan.

Even if one ignores those most recent moves, the assertion that NATO is a defensive alliance is absurd. NATO conducted an air war against Bosnian Serbs in 1995 and against Serbia itself in 1999, even though neither entity had attacked or even threatened any NATO member.  The alliance similarly launched air and missile strikes against Libya in 2011 to help oust Muammar Qaddafi from power. Even though NATO justified using military force in Afghanistan as a response to the 9-11 terrorist attacks on an alliance member, it was a great stretch of logic to justify the subsequent two-decade-long occupation of Afghanistan as a defensive mission.

In addition to NATO’s official missions that clearly were not defensive in nature, there have been other warlike actions involving some or most members of the Alliance. Both the 1991 Persian Gulf War and the 2003 Iraq War fit that description.  In both conflicts, the vast majority of the anti-Iraqi forces came from NATO countries, mostly from the United States and Great Britain. Those offensive operations were Alliance missions under U.S. control in all but name.

Most foreign governments and populations also are unlikely to believe the related mythology that NATO members are peace-loving democracies. Indeed, even the alliance’s democratic credentials have failed to live up to that standard on several occasions. Portugal, one of NATO’s founding members in 1949, was a fascistic dictatorship. The military junta that took power in Greece in 1967 ruled that country for seven years. Turkey has maintained a democratic façade throughout most of NATO’s history, but the military and other authoritarian players have held sway most of the time. That is certainly the case with respect to the current government.

Finally, there have been the acts of flagrant aggression that individual NATO members have committed over the decades. Washington’s war in Vietnam may be the largest and best-known example, but it is hardly the only one. The U.S. military interventions in Lebanon, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, and Panama also belong in that category.

Nor is the United States the only NATO member to engage in flagrant aggression. France has intervened in Chad and its other former colonies in Africa on several occasions. Indeed, Paris is threatening to support a new mission to overthrow the junta now ruling Niger. Turkey invaded Cyprus in 1974 and seized nearly 40 percent of the island. Ankara’s forces routinely operate in both Iraq and Syria despite the objections of the governments in those countries.

The West’s twin propaganda images should be greeted with derisive laughter. NATO is not a purely defensive alliance, and its members are not peace-loving democracies. NATO is an aggressively offensive alliance looking for new opportunities around the world.

Category: Foreign Policy & War

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This post was written by: Ted Galen Carpenter

Ted Galen Carpenter is a policy advisor for The Future of Freedom Foundation. He is also a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute and a senior fellow at the Libertarian Institute and served in various policy positions during a 37-year career at the Cato Institute. Dr. Carpenter is the author of 13 books and more than 1,200 articles on international affairs. His latest book is Unreliable Watchdog: The News Media and U.S. Foreign Policy (2022).

by Connor Freeman, The Libertarian Institute,  Sep 5, 2023

As the proxy war in Ukraine continues raging, people are being killed and wounded by cluster bombs at a higher rate than anywhere else in the world including Syria, according to the Cluster Munition Coalition.

The coalition – which is a network of non-governmental organizations that support banning the controversial weapons – released an annual report showing 2022 was the deadliest year on record globally for cluster bomb related killings.

Cluster bombs open up in the air and scatter scores of small bomblets and submunitions across large target areas, these often kill non-combatants for decades prior to the conclusion of conflicts where the arms are used. More than 120 countries have signed on to a United Nations convention prohibiting the munitions which kill indiscriminately. However, Washington, Kiev, and Moscow are not signatories.

Both Kiev and Moscow have been firing the weapons during the war. In July, the White House announced the US would be providing Ukrainian forces with cluster bombs, even though evidence already existed that Kiev had used the munitions to kill civilians before and after the Kremlin launched its invasion.

Alex Hiniker, an independent expert with the Forum on the Arms Trade, complained that he and other researchers are “baffled by the fact that [Washington] is sending totally outdated weapons that the majority of the world has banned because they disproportionately kill civilians.”

Over 300 people were killed, and in excess of 600 were wounded, by these bombs in Ukraine last year per the coalition’s report. In Syria, which was until recently the site of the most yearly cluster bomb casualties, saw 15 people killed and 75 wounded. In Iraq, where the US military has used cluster bombs during the Gulf War and the 2003 invasion, 15 people were killed and 25 were wounded.

In Yemen, where Riyadh has used US provided cluster bombs to kill civilians during its genocidal war against northern Yemen’s Houthis, there were five deaths and 90 people wounded by the bomblets last year. In 2022, there were no cluster bomb attacks reported in either Iraq or Yemen.

The primary victims of the unexploded, so-called duds – bomblets which look like metal balls – are children who pick them up to play with them unaware of what they actually are. The submunitions also often shepherds and scrap metal collectors – a not uncommon post-war source of income –  explains Laura Persi, an editor of the coalition’s annual report.

During the Vietnam War, US forces dropped hundreds of millions of cluster bomblets on Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. People still die in Laos on a yearly basis as a result of the tens of millions of unexploded ordinances left behind after US bombing campaigns.

Sen. Romney recently called the proxy war the ‘the best national defense spending’ the US has ever done

by Dave DeCamp, Antiwar. com, August 30, 2023

Fresh from a trip to Kyiv, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) is arguing that the US is getting its “money’s worth” in Ukraine because Russia is taking losses and no Americans are dying, showing a lack of concern for Ukrainian lives.

“Even Americans who have no particular interest in freedom and independence in democracies worldwide, should be satisfied that we’re getting our money’s worth on our Ukraine investment,” Blumenthal wrote in the Connecticut Post.

“For less than 3 percent of our nation’s military budget, we’ve enabled Ukraine to degrade Russia’s military strength by half … All without a single American service woman or man injured or lost,” he added.

The argument has become a common talking point among hawks in Washington who want the US to keep fueling the proxy war against Russia. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) recently called the conflict “the best national defense spending I think we’ve ever done.”

“We’re losing no lives in Ukraine, and the Ukrainians are fighting heroically against Russia,” Romney said. “We’re diminishing and devastating the Russian military for a very small amount of money … a weakened Russia is a good thing.”

The hawkish senators’ comments came amid Ukraine’s faltering counteroffensive. Despite the lack of success on the battlefield, the Biden administration and most members of Congress want to keep funding the war, which they acknowledge would not continue without US support.

“As Zelensky is frank and forthcoming to say, Ukraine could not have survived without America and our allies,” Blumenthal said. “But his counteroffensive is far from an assured success. In the end, the only way he loses is if America pulls the plug.”