by Editor @ Workers World, published July 20, 2023
To evaluate the NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, this July it helps to observe it in the framework of what this military alliance’s meeting really is: an international gathering of the heads of criminal gangs and some local stooges. If that argument seems to stretch reality, consider these points:
The major NATO countries, plus Japan, control world banking and the movement of funds. They dominate the media, the weapons and information; they bribe local leaders of poor countries to obtain resources at a steal and they punish those who resist by seizing funds and shutting down trade –Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, Russia.
NATO members use agents who disrupt and overthrow opponents, or try and fail (Belarus, Syria). They invade countries and murder leaders (Iraq, Libya, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan). The boss of bosses – U.S. imperialism – squeezes the others, who must provide money and troops and buy arms if they want a share of the loot stolen from the laboring people of the world. The main difference between them and civilian organized crime is that the latter has less destructive power at its disposal.
In the 1990s, without the Warsaw Pact, NATO grew from a North Atlantic operation into one in business worldwide. A big leap coincided with the 1999 war that destroyed Yugoslavia. That whipped all the local West European organized crime leaders into line behind Washington, perhaps with some reluctance. Regarding the proxy war the U.S. provoked in Ukraine, so far they have submitted.
If local leaders − for example, those in Berlin − started to look like they might make their own deal, they would be warned: Remember the explosion that took out the gas pipelines in the North Sea bringing German industry inexpensive gas from Russia. Berlin got the message.
To be part of the crime syndicate, the West European former colonialist powers, have to give in to the White House and the Pentagon. They get a cut, maybe smaller than they want, but it’s better than having their pipelines bombed.
The newer NATO members − the Baltic countries, those from the Balkans and Eastern Europe − only get enough to enrich a few of the top capitalists and government gangsters. They have to buy weapons from U.S. arms dealers, then sell their youth cheap to die in the wars.
And what happened at the summit? President Joe Biden promised to keep the proxy war in Ukraine going as long as the last Ukrainian youth kept fighting. He promised to send cluster bombs − illegal killers of civilians − and depleted uranium weapons that harm people and the environment. And this when the Ukrainian “counter-offensive” is collapsing and making the cost of the war itself a crime.
Biden is not only part of state-sponsored organized crime, he’s a war criminal!
Not satisfied with risking a major war with Russia, the NATO summit stated that People’s China was its strategic enemy. Thus it not only extended the proxy war against Russia, but started planning the next war against China.
Imperialism is worldwide crime. Very well-organized worldwide crime. And NATO is its business model.
*Featured Image: Downtown Cleveland, July 18, 2023. Credit: Don Bryant