by Fidel Castro Ruz
November 23, 2010
from
GlobalResearch Website
Havana
Many people feel sickened on hearing the name of
that organization.
On Friday, November 19, 2010 in Lisbon, Portugal, the 28 members of that
bellicose institution engendered by the United States, decided to create
what they cynically describe as "the new NATO."
The institution emerged after World War II as an instrument of the Cold War
unleashed by imperialism on the Soviet Union, the country which paid for the
victory over Nazism with tens of millions of lives and colossal destruction.
The United States mobilized against the USSR, together with a healthy part
of the European population, the extreme right and the Nazi-fascist scum of
Europe, full of hatred and prepared to squeeze every advantage out of the
errors committed by the very leaders of the USSR after the death of Lenin.
The Soviet people, with great sacrifice, were able to maintain nuclear
parity and support the national liberation struggles of many peoples against
the efforts of European states to maintain the colonial system imposed by
force throughout the centuries; states that were postwar allies of the
yankee empire, which assumed command of the counterrevolution worldwide.
In just 10 days - less than two weeks - world opinion has received three
great and unforgettable lessons: the G20, APEC and NATO meetings in Seoul,
Yokohama and Lisbon, in such a way that all upstanding people who can read
and write, and whose minds have not been mutilated by the conditioned
reflexes of imperialism’s media apparatus, can have a real idea of the
problems currently affecting humanity.
In Lisbon, not one word was uttered that could convey hope to the billions
of people enduring poverty, underdevelopment, insufficient food, housing,
health, education and employment.
On the contrary, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the vain character who
figures as secretary general of the NATO military mafia, declared in the
tone of a little Nazi fuehrer, that the "new strategic concept" was in order
"to act in any part of the world."
It was not for nothing that the government of Turkey was at the point of
vetoing his appointment when, in April 2009, Fogh Rasmussen - a neoliberal
Dane - in his position as prime minister of Denmark, and using the pretext
of freedom of the press, defended the authors of serious offenses to the
Prophet Mahoma, a figure respected by all Muslim believers.
More than a few people in the world can recall the close relations of
cooperation between the Danish government and the Nazi "invaders" during
World War II.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO),
a bird of prey hatched in the skirts of yankee imperialism, and moreover
equipped with tactical nuclear weapons many times more destructive than the
atom bomb that erased the city of Hiroshima, has been committed by the
United States to the genocidal Afghanistan war, even more complex than the
Kosovo adventure and the war on Serbia, where its forces massacred the city
of Belgrade and were at the point of suffering a disaster if the government
of that country had remained firm, instead of trusting in the institutions
of European justice in the Hague.
In one of its points, the inglorious Lisbon Declaration affirms in a vague
and abstract manner:
"In the strategically important Western
Balkans region, democratic values, regional cooperation and good
neighborly relations are important for lasting peace and stability."
"KFOR is moving towards a smaller, more flexible, deterrent presence."
Now?
Nor will Russia be able to forget it so easily: the real fact is that when
Yeltsin dismembered the USSR, the United States advanced NATO’s borders and
its nuclear attack bases to the heart of Russia from Europe and Asia.
Those new military installations also threatened the People’s Republic of
China and other Asian countries.
When that took place in 1991, hundreds of SS-19s, SS-20s and other powerful
Soviet weapons could reach U.S. and NATO bases in Europe in a matter of
seconds. No NATO secretary general would have dared to talk with the
arrogance of Rasmussen.
The first agreement on limiting nuclear weapons was signed as early as May
26, 1972, between President Richard Nixon of the United States and Leonid
Brezhnev, general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, with
the aim of limiting the number of anti-ballistic missiles (the ABM Treaty)
and to defend certain points against nuclear missiles.
In Vienna in 1979, Brezhnev and Carter signed new agreements known as SALT
II, but the U.S. Senate refused to ratify those agreements.
The new rearmament promoted by Reagan with the Strategic Defense Initiative
put en end to the SALT agreements.
The Siberian gas pipeline had already been blown up by the CIA.
Instead, a new agreement was signed in 1991 between Bush Sr. and Gorbachev,
five months before the collapse of the USSR. When that event took place, the
socialist bloc no longer existed. The countries that the Red Army had
liberated from Nazi occupation were not even capable of maintaining their
independence. Right-wing governments that came to power moved into NATO with
their arms and equipment and fell into the hands of the United States.
The German Democratic Republic, which had made a
great effort under the leadership of Erich Honecker, could not
overcome the ideological and consumerist offensive launched from the capital
itself, occupied by Western troops.
As the virtual master of the world, the United States increased its
adventurist and warmongering policy.
Due to a well manipulated process, the USSR disintegrated. The coup de grace
was dealt it by Boris Yeltsin on December 8, 1991 when, as president of the
Russian Federation, he declared that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist.
On the 25th of that month, the red hammer and sickle flag flying over the
Kremlin was lowered.
A third agreement on strategic weapons was subsequently signed between
George W.
Bush and Boris Yeltsin on January 3, 1993, prohibiting
the use of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM) with multiple
warheads. It was ratified by the U.S. Senate on January 26, 1993, by a
margin of 87 votes to 4.
Russia inherited the science and technology of the USSR - which in spite of
the war and enormous sacrifice was capable of creating a military power on a
level with that of the immense and rich yankee empire - the victory over
fascism, the traditions, the culture and the glories of the Russian people.
The war on Serbia, a Slavic nation, sunk its teeth hard into the security of
the Russian people, something that no government could afford itself the
luxury of ignoring.
The Russian Duma - angered by the first Iraq war and that of Kosovo in which
NATO massacred the Serb people - refused to ratify START II and did not sign
that agreement until the year 2000 and, in that case, in an attempt to save
the ABM treaty which, by that date, the yankees weren’t interested in
maintaining.
The United States is trying to use its enormous media resources to maintain,
deceive and confuse world public opinion.
The government of that country is going through a difficult stage as a
consequence of its military adventures. All the NATO countries without
exception are committed to the Afghanistan war, as are various others in the
world, whose peoples find odious and repugnant the butchery in which rich
and industrialized countries such as Japan and Australia, and other Third
World nations are involved in to a greater or lesser degree.
What is the essence of the agreement approved in April of this year by the
United States and Russia? Both parties have committed themselves to reducing
the number of the strategic nuclear missiles to 1,550.
Not one word is being said about the nuclear
missiles of France, the United Kingdom and Israel, all of them capable of
striking Russia. Not one word has been said either about tactical nuclear
weapons, some of them with far more power than that which erased the city of
Hiroshima.
There is no mention of the destructive and
lethal capacity of numerous conventional weapons, the radio-electric and
other weapons systems into which the United States is channeling its growing
military budget, superior to that of all the other nations of the world put
together.
Both governments know, as many others meeting
there do, that a third world war would be the last.
-
What kind of illusions can the NATO
members create?
-
What is the peace for humanity derived
from that meeting?
-
What benefit can possibly be expected
for the peoples of the Third World, and even for the international
economy?
They cannot even offer the hope that the world
economic crisis can be overcome, or how much longer any improvement would
last.
The total public debt of the United States, not
only that of central government, but the rest of the country’s public and
private institutions, has already risen to a figure that is equal to the
world GDP of 2009, which amounted to $58 trillion. Did those meeting in
Lisbon maybe think to ask themselves where those fabulous resources came
from?
Simply, from the economy of all the other
nations in the world, to which the United States handed over pieces of paper
converted into dollar bills which, for 40 years now, unilaterally ceased
having their backing in gold, and now that the value of that metal is 40
times superior.
That country still possesses its veto within the
International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Why wasn’t that discussed in
Portugal?
The hope of extracting U.S. troops, those of NATO and their allies from
Afghanistan, is an idyllic one. They will have to abandon that country
before the defeated hand over power to the Afghan resistance.
The United States’ own allies are beginning to
acknowledge that dozens of years could go by before that war is over.
Not to forget that a country with a very large
population, Pakistan, shares a border of colonial origin with Afghanistan
and a none-too insignificant percentage of its inhabitants.
I am not criticizing Medvedev, he is acting very well in trying to limit the
number of nuclear missiles pointing at his country.
Barack Obama cannot invent any
justification whatsoever for that. It would be laughable to imagine that
that colossal and costly deployment of the anti-missile nuclear shield is to
protect Europe and Russia from Iranian missiles proceeding from a
country which does not even possess a tactical nuclear weapon. Not even a
children’s story book could affirm that.
Obama has already admitted that his promise to withdraw U.S. soldiers from
Afghanistan could be delayed and that taxes from the wealthiest contributors
are to be immediately suspended. After the Nobel Prize one would have
to grant him the prize for the "greatest snake charmer" ever to have
existed.
Taking into account the
George W. Bush autobiography, which has already become a
bestseller, and which some intelligent editor drafted for him, why didn’t
they do him the honor of inviting him to Lisbon?
The extreme right, the "Tea Party" of Europe,
would doubtless have been happy.