North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)

Victory in Afghanistan

August 2011
Ross Eventon

Debate over the 10-year-plus war in Afghanistan tends to focus on how and when it "can be won," obscuring the fundamental question of whether it was morally acceptable in the first place. Now as the US gets closer to consolidating its imperial presence in the region for decades to come, the high cost to the Afghani people continues to be ignored.

The Emerging Geo-Strategic Landscape in Central Asia

June 2011
Ross Eventon

Recent developments in Afghanistan suggest the New Great Game is intensifying in Central Asia.

The Wikileaks Afghan War Diary: More Evidence of a Failed Mission

August 2010
Phyllis Bennis

The leaks just fill in details of what we already knew: that the Afghan War is too costly to continue.

Democracy at Work: Croatia's accession to NATO

April 2009
TNI
Viktor Ivancic
Croatia's accession to NATO is an example of local elites' subservience to global powers at the expense of their own citizens.

Q: Why didn’t the government of Croatia organise a referendum on the country's accession to NATO?
A: So that the nation wouldn’t commit treason.

The joke made up by this author is intended to make it easier to understand the frightening decision by the Croatian parliament last week. It is frightening, because it was adopted with such consensual decisiveness that it must have frozen the blood of every free spirited observer.

The NATO axiom: 2 + 2 = 5

May 2008
Saul Landau

One of many relevant questions the ABC moderators neglected to ask Hillary and Obama in the mid April televised debate: Why does NATO continue to exist after the Soviet Union collapsed? Indeed, the entire media accepts NATO as one of the several military axioms that remain from Cold War days.

For those who don’t remember, in April 1949, Washington initiated a military alliance, supposedly to counter Soviet military power, which bound the United States to defend Western Europe against a supposedly imminent Soviet invasion.

Tres actos y un desenlace

April 2008
TNI
Pere Vilanova
Las incoherencias procedentes de la cumbre de OTAN muestran la necesitad de que el uso de la fuerza en la escena internacional respete los principios de legalidad y de legitimidad.

Vista en perspectiva, la reciente cumbre de la OTAN ha seguido un guión relativamente previsible y, como buena obra de teatro, ha tenido tres actos y un desenlace más o menos sorprendente. Y preocupante.

Green With NATO Envy

April 2008
Boris Kagarlitsky
In the face of NATO expansion, Moscow should seek allies in the West, including those from the anti-war movement and be prepared to do its own self-critiques.

"How interesting!"

These were the words of an airport security officer as he lifted a folder from my suitcase printed with the name of a conference titled, "Fascism: Familiar Enemy or New Threat?" He opened the folder, hoping to read its contents, but he was a bit disappointed to learn that I was only using the folder to hold miscellaneous papers.

"What do you think -- is there really a fascist threat?" he asked me.

Italian soap-opera

February 2007
TNI
Tariq Ali

The phantom of the orange revolution and bureaucratic ignorance

October 2006
Boris Kagarlitsky