NATO, a Brief History

Following the April 1949 signing of the Atlantic Pact and led by then-U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was founded by 12 member states in London on May 18th, 1950. Their purpose, as they claimed, was their dedication to "the preservation of peace" and to the defense of Western Europe against supposed military threats. Not only did the creation coincide with the heightened tensions of the Cold War and the political partitioning of Germany, but it also extended its invitation to West Germany to join the fold on May 9th, 1954 with the intent of re-arming it. This was a violation of the 1945 Potsdam agreement which posited that the partition of Germany was supposed to be temporary and that all of Germany was to be 'de-Nazified'; instead, we saw the development of West Germany into a Western puppet state. The Soviet Union saw the aforementioned invitation to West Germany and its re-arming as a provocation and, in the following year, established the Warsaw Pact in response.

Essentially, NATO was established as a Western military alliance against the Soviet Union. It is with the creation of NATO that we saw the notable development of U.S. imperialism's nuclear umbrella and military expansion on an increasingly aggressive and ever-growing global scale. And with that, the American Empire replaced the British Empire as the global hegemon.

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, NATO expanded Eastward and added the Baltic states, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary -- traditional enemies of the USSR that are geographically very close to Russian borders -- to its membership in addition to making them hosts to U.S. military bases. The goal was, and still is, to surround and contain Russia, as well as attacking other states that are not friendly towards U.S. global capital interests.

And although plans to dismantle Yugoslavia go as far back as 1984, it was not until much of the 1990's that NATO would begin openly intervening (with more naked aggression) by starting with the funding and support for secessionist paramilitary forces in Bosnia between 1994-1995. They would then go on to conduct the 1999 air raid bombing of Yugoslavia, and then sealed the destruction with the balkanization of the Serbian province of Kosovo. And thus, the "humanitarian" veneer for imperialism known as the "Responsibility to Protect" (R2P) doctrine was born and would later be officially adopted by the UN in 2002; it would also be used as a pretext for the U.S.-led proxy wars against Libya and Syria in 2011.

A direct military confrontation between the United States and Russia remains to be seen. However, the provocations against Russia continue as seen with the recent violations against Russian territorial waters made by Ukrainian naval vessels. Of course, it should go without saying that this expansionist body of the United States was never truly a defensive alliance and has consistently shown itself to be a provocateur throughout history.