Granma International
by Fidel Castro Ruz
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; is NATO prepared to remain there for all that time? Would the very citizens of each one of the governments meeting there allow that? 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.
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