N°26 juillet-aout 2022 The NATO summit held in Madrid from June 28 to 30 marks an acceleration in its offensive reinforcement, while this alliance seeks to present itself as purely defensive.
Let us recall the interventions in the countries of the former Yugoslavia and especially the war in Kosovo, against Serbia, where 600 NATO planes bombed Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo causing 10,000 deaths. It was on this occasion that NATO leaders coined the concept of "humanitarian warfare" and "surgical strikes". Then there were the interventions in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2015 resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths and finally the aggression against Libya in 2011 plunging this country into chaos.
The organization's thirty member states were joined by Australia, South Korea, Japan and New Zealand. The European Union was represented and Ukraine intervened through the voice of its president. The presence at this summit of the Indo-Pacific countries allied with the United States is obviously far from trivial; it reflects the importance that the United States attaches to this region and their desire to organize a military alliance to counter the rise of China. The Chinese government was not mistaken in condemning the United States' desire to build an Asian NATO whose clearly designated enemy is precisely China!
The focal point of the Madrid summit is the adoption of a new strategic concept for the next ten years. With the demise of the USSR and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, NATO lost its original objective of fighting the USSR. The signing in 1997 of the Founding Act on Mutual Security and Cooperation Relations led to a change in the perception of Russia as an ally, and cooperation was channeled through the Permanent Joint Council. Relations cooled after the Alliance's intervention in Kosovo and the Organization's gradual expansion to the East, which Russia considers to be aggressive and a threat to its existence. There were ups and downs, especially after the invasion of Georgia by Russian troops in 2007; but even at the NATO summit in Lisbon in 2010- attended by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev- a joint declaration was signed, heralding the start of a new era of cooperation through the creation of a common space of peace, security and stability in the Euro-Atlantic area. This phase was short-lived because, after the Maidan coup and the ousting of Viktor Yanukovych, Russia launched its offensive against Ukraine – which enshrined NATO membership in its constitution – through the annexation of Crimea, Russian support for the separatist forces in Donbass and the creation of the people's republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, and finally the invasion of Ukraine.
The Madrid summit was therefore marked by the war in Ukraine. So now, NATO explicitly considers in its eighth strategic concept Russia as: "the greatest and most direct threat to the security of the allies, to peace and stability in the Euro-Atlantic area".Statement that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov described as a return to the Cold War.
NATO’s new strategic concept, while it designates Russia as its enemy in Europe, points very clearly to the fact that the main adversary is indeed China: The novelty of the concept is the reference to China – which was not even mentioned in the previous Lisbon concept: "China uses a wide range of political, economic and military tools to increase its global presence and project its power, while remaining opaque about its military strategy, intentions and development. [... Its] malicious hybrid and cyber operations and its rhetoric of confrontation and misinformation are aimed at allies and undermine the security of the Alliance." NATO warns that Beijing is "looking to control key technological and industrial sectors, critical infrastructure, and strategic materials and supply chains. It uses its economic leverage to create strategic dependencies and increase its influence. It seeks to reverse the rules-based international order, particularly in the space, cyber and maritime domains. The deepening of the strategic partnership established between the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation, and their attempts to strengthen each other in order to undermine the rules-based international order, go against our values and interests'.
From this strategic conception derive the practical consequences of quantitative and qualitative reinforcement of the military means of the alliance.
• Reinforcement by doubling the permanent presence of NATO forces in the war region in Eastern Europe.
• Extension of the NATO alliance’s action – alone or with cooperating states – on the whole planet, as in the Indo-Pacific, which is becoming a region that occupies a special place in the rivalry between the United States and China.
• Promotion of NATO enlargement, with the accession in a first phase of Sweden and Finland, with the aim of further encircling Russia.
• Modernization of the conventional and nuclear arsenal, with new weapons programs, for which the peoples will be called to pay.
• Increase in the military budgets of all Member States.
The Madrid summit therefore sees the strengthening of the imperialist alliance that is NATO in a context of sharpening clashes within the global capitalist system. The war in Ukraine, which sees Euro-Atlantic imperialism dominated by the United States and the Russian Federation facing each other on the backs of the Ukrainian people, is the most current testimony of this.
The peoples have nothing to expect from these confrontations which are plunging Europe and the world into crises that can go as far as a general embrace. The struggle for socialism, the cooperation of nations and peoples liberated from capitalism is therefore the only possible path for a lasting and solid peace in Europe and in the world. In the immediate future, the war must end and the forces of peace must forcefully carry the need for disarmament, the dissolution of all military pacts and the construction of collective security for all nations.