CEPRID

NATO, the Most Terrifying Military Alliance in History, Threatens Latin America

Wednesday 16 January 2013 by CEPRID

CEPRID – The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is the most terrifying military alliance, with the most destructive power, ever conceived in the history of mankind. Today, it is a serious threat to Latin America and the Caribbean.

The United States and its European allies created it in the context of the Cold War with the intention of confronting the Soviet Union and its allies, compelled to answer the Western challenge, created the Warsaw Pact.

The collapse of the Soviet Union put an end to the Warsaw Pact and now, without the specter of communism, the dreadful NATO should be laid to rest in the museum of the biggest blunders and outrages of humanity. But no, the U.S. Empire, the uncontested final arbiter, with the European Union as its faithful ally, with similar intentions of domination, decided to not only maintain NATO, but to reinforce it with planes, helicopters, submarines, warships and an air force, sea and land bases equipped with nuclear weapons capable of destroying life on earth seven times over. And as if that were not enough, NATO has chemical-bacteriological and military weapons equipped with state-of-the-art technology, including spy satellites. In addition, the security forces of the United States and Europe, the intelligence services and intelligence communities work in concert to provide all kinds of information to NATO commanders while defining strategies and setting objectives under direction from the president of the United States and the presidents or heads of government of “natoized” Europe.

The Latin American and Caribbean countries are unaware of the terrible threat that NATO represents for the survival of our people. Even our leaders seem to believe that NATO, since it is based in Europe, is far from our sub-region and thus does not pose a real threat to peace in the subcontinent. They often forget that Latin America and the Caribbean were declared to be zones free of nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction (chemical, bacteriological) and they also forget that every U.S. military base installed in our countries is potentially a NATO military base. This is a real danger that threatens the lives of our peoples.

NATO is already in Latin America and the Caribbean; and now, the U.S., Britain and NATO are installing a huge and sophisticated base in the Malvinas Islands (Falklands) to intimidate Argentina and its decision to claim sovereignty over the islands, arrogantly and abusively seized by the UK, which does not want to shed its savage colonial past. The NATO military base in the Malvinas Islands, in Argentina, is a direct threat to the sovereignty and peace of Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil, Chile. The Southern Cone of our America is in danger, under constant threat of bombings, invasions and imperial armed intervention and interference of every kind. And worse, with the complicity of some governments, some of our countries have allowed the continuation of military cooperation agreements and the installation of new military bases by the United States, with clumsy pretexts about providing humanitarian aid to victims of natural disasters and controlling international organized crime, when in fact they are bases for political, military and economic control, in order to achieve a definitive neocolonial domination.

But increasingly our people are beginning to wake up from neocolonial lethargy and becoming aware of the dangers that lurk. Latin America and the Caribbean are beginning to play an outstanding leading role in a series of campaigns to reject the presence of NATO while calling upon the U.S. and its allies to abolish NATO. This was made clear in Dublin, Ireland, during the Third Congress of the International Network for No to NATO, No to War, which recognized the incontrovertible fact that for Latin Americans and Caribbeans, NATO is like a dangerous neighbor and a sly and surreptitious invader, as stated by analyst Luis Gutiérrez Esparza.

Since that campaign, there have been others, and one of the largest public demonstrations of opposition to the imperial war machine occurred in Chicago, at the in Against NATO Summit held last May. Luis Gutiérrez Esparza is right in pointing out that the over-three-thousand-mile border between Mexico and the United States is, at once, the Latin American border with NATO, and beyond that, the U.S. military bases on Latin American territory are potentially foundations of the NATO alliance. The Palanquero Base, Colombia, has been specifically designed for military flights between South America and Africa (a fact that acquired a special significance in the context of NATO’s aggression against Libya), and British military bases in the Malvinas and South Georgia are part of the global network of the very same bellicose alliance.

It is well known, and yet no less reprehensible, that wherever there is a U.S. military base, there is an inexorable danger for repression and provocations against civilians and progressive governments that generally end in coups.

The Latin Americans and Caribbeans cannot forget that the U.S. base of Palmerola, Honduras, was the conduit of U.S. support for the coup that overthrew President Zelaya; and they should not forget that the Pentagon and the CIA were involved in the planning and execution of the fast-track coup that deposed President Lugo in Paraguay. And now we know that one of the reasons was the imperial need to have a military base in Estigarribia, “to control the Triple Border.” We must not forget that “the Tocumen Panama International Airport is used by U.S. reconnaissance aircraft E-3 AWACS, which continuously monitor Central American airspace, that there has been a growing presence of U.S. warships at the former Radman base, next to the exit from the Panama Canal to the Pacific; or that the United States plans to place E-3 AWACS aircraft, P-3 Orion and cargo transport C-17, in the Palanquero base in Colombia.” The presence of U.S. bases in Colombia has been justified under the pretext of combating terrorism and drug trafficking, but actually represents a part of the U.S. global military war machine that sponsors a unilateral military approach to these problems, thereby impeding local (regional) social, political, autonomous, and multilateral solutions. Unilateral militarization involves regional destabilization and its presence in Colombia and in the border areas has aggravated the humanitarian, environmental and social crisis in vast regions.

“One possible consequence is that countries that feel directly threatened by this U.S. policy will find the means to strengthen their security, resulting in a new arms race in the region, caused by the U.S. Additionally, Washington’s growing military presence in Latin America follows the pattern of the globalization strategy of NATO, the only transnational military alliance, which aims to displace the United Nations Organization (UN) as the main global forum and largest supranational organization.

The U.S. Southern Command, responsible for planning, coordinating and implementing U.S. military activities in Latin America and the Caribbean, has installed military bases with airports in Aruba-Curacao, in the Dutch Antilles; in Palmerola, Honduras; and in Comalapa, El Salvador, as well as those negotiated in Colombia; and has plans to install others in Argentina, Paraguay, Peru, the Dominican Republic, and even Brazil and Argentina.

At the global level, says Gutiérrez Esparza, but also in Latin America and the Caribbean, the dissolution and dismantling of NATO are indispensable in order to contribute to international security, regional and national stability, democracy and peace. NATO means more wars. It has never been, nor ever will be, an organization for protection and safety. It is only a military alliance created to impose the will of Western elites.

NATO is an offensive pact

The same analyst, referring to the last NATO Summit held on 21 and 22 May this year, at the McCormick Place complex in Chicago, says that today more than ever it is important to know, or remember, that NATO is not an international security provider, nor a reliable partner for the United Nations, which it has overshadowed and maimed, or for any other international organization, global or regional. Even less does it play the role of an “alliance of democracies….NATO is an offensive pact, lawless and murderous, a threat to humanity; and Latin America confronts it directly: the three-thousand-mile border between Mexico and the United States is the Latin American border with NATO,” reiterates the analyst.

Washington’s increasing military presence in Latin America follows the pattern of the globalization strategy of NATO. It is therefore very important for Latin Americans to know what NATO is and what its goals are. But the rest of the world faces the same danger. We have had NATO under our noses and we have done nothing about it. We quietly, perhaps out of ignorance or perhaps because some believe, fatally, that nothing can be done, accepting that it is the order established by world power and that no human power can overthrow it. That coincides with the absurd position “I don’t give a damn” or, worse, a betrayal of one’s own conscience and one’s people.

Faced with the reality of moral miseries, other voices emerge throughout the world and especially in our Latin America, to spread the new thinking and denounce such organizations as NATO that mean expansionism, neocolonialism, destruction and death. These voices, identified with rebel and patriotic thinking, are not afraid to denounce the empire and its crimes, NATO and its atrocities. Among these voices are Luis Gutiérrez Esparza, Francisco Ramirez, Ernesto Velit Granda, Cesar Zubelet, as well as social, popular and intellectual organizations such as the Tribunal: Dignity, Sovereignty and Peace against War, the Independence and Sovereignty Committee for Latin America (CISPAL) and the International Network of No to NATO, No to War.

Francisco Rodriguez, wrote: International politics is a minefield of strategies that send signals sometimes clear, sometimes not so. Among these were the G8 meeting at Camp David and the G-20 in Chicago, which had as their focus the nightmare of recession that continues to threaten the position of developed countries. Then, the 25th NATO Summit addressed the coalition’s military commitments in Afghanistan, Iraq, and as can be supposed, for other hidden agendas, such as the coalescing of positions against Syria and their paranoia over Iranian nuclear development. After the Summit, documents were signed to define a common position on Afghanistan beyond 2014, a joint line on terrorism and collective defense tasks.

The aim of restoring the architecture of world domination remains. While one hand weaves an iron-clad concentrated international economic and financial global order, the other hand closes a fist and seals, with blood and fire, a hegemonic global military policy with planetary outreach. What does not go unnoticed is the fact that NATO has met on American soil, or that the UN participated in the Summit, since NATO seeks legitimacy as the armed wing of the Security Council. Until now the NATO scenario has been primarily European. In the United States in 1978, NATO met and advanced a program of long-term defense and met again in 1999 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the organization. The Washington Consensus and neoliberal policies became dominant back then.

Thirteen years later, the scenario changed. The Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) are changing the approach to regional geopolitics with their own security and defense policies. Likewise, the political and ideological spectrum has become complex: strong and organized social movements in all countries; right-leaning governments like in Chile; progressive governments as in Argentina or Ecuador; and socialist transitions, as in Venezuela and Cuba. The same applies to foreign relations, which are guided by the principles of sovereign autonomy and multipolarity that strengthen South-South relations, as in the case of Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, opening doors to China or Russia, actors that are U.S. competitors. Not to mention the exchange with Iran that causes resentment in the West and comes close to getting us on the list of so-called “terrorist states.”

The NATO summit in Chicago, which did not include our region on its agenda, sends a warning about potential deployments and interventions in any geostrategic space in the world. NATO uses the potential for terrorist threats as one of its pretexts for justifying its self-defense or collective defense.

Our Latin America and Caribbean region must oppose NATO military diplomacy and shape the region into a zone of peace, while strengthening the People’s Diplomacy that transcends state bureaucracies and can act as a firewall. We also have to promote development of the UNASUR Defense Council and a regional collective defense doctrine, as well as promote the ALBA Defense Council recently proposed by President Hugo Chavez. By showing a clear unity of interests and common positions, despite any differences, it will be possible to contain the clouds and storms sighted in the distance. For Ernesto Velit Granda, NATO is at best, a costly and outdated multinational and supranational institution. At worst, it is the main threat to stability, peace and the survival of the world and mankind. He maintains that NATO—receiving more and more financial, technological, human resources, and not facing a specific enemy, as the Warsaw Pact disappeared with the Soviet Union and the Eastern European socialist community—functions as a military alliance in the service of the United States and its main allies in Western Europe; carries out invincible global expansion; and in the plans of its leaders and strategists, is to replace the United Nations as the primary–and possibly only–international organization.

Velit Granda added that to understand what NATO is and the danger it represents, one must go into its increasingly large and complicated structure. Not only has it created the first global army capable of immediate reaction, always in the shadow of U.S. military power, but virtually expands its presence worldwide, far beyond the limits of the North Atlantic, imposed by its constitutive norm, the Washington Treaty, signed on 4 April 1949.

In Latin America, NATO acts indirectly, through the United States, or directly, through associations, military and special-status relationships, such as that conferred on Argentina in 1998 as a special non-NATO ally. With this dubious privilege, Argentina participated in the NATO contingent in Kosovo under a singular UN mandate.

In 1977, Argentina’s military dictatorship immersed itself, along with other repressive governments of the Southern Cone, in talks with South Africa—then subjected to the ultra-right apartheid regime— about the creation of a military alliance for the defense of the South Atlantic, which would include Brazil, Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay. Two possibilities were considered: an extension of NATO to the south, by incorporating the Atlantic alliance of Argentina, Brazil and South Africa, or the emergence of a new military pact, essentially based on these three countries, that in the planning desks in Buenos Aires and Washington already had a name: Atlantic Treaty Organization South (OTAS).

The OTAS disappeared even as a concept around the time of the Malvinas war, but NATO expansion into Latin America and the rest of the world, is a reality. The European Union is increasingly subordinated to NATO. It is clearly stated that the EU can use the military structure of the alliance for peace missions. Something similar applies to the United Nations Organization. Under Article III of the North Atlantic Treaty, NATO’s founding charter, “the parties, acting jointly and continuously and effectively by providing their own means and supporting each other, maintain and enhance their ability, individually and collectively, to resist armed attack,” recalled Velit Granda; i.e., their military structures are always intertwined, and a base of any member of the alliance is potentially a base of the superpower military alliance.

Latin American military maneuvers with NATO

NATO is increasingly closer to Latin America and the Caribbean. Did you know that Chile, Brazil, Colombia, Peru, the Dominican Republic and Uruguay, and Mexico, in an unexpected and intimidating show of force, participated in naval exercises with the U.S. military and some of its NATO allies such as Germany and Canada ?

The case of Mexico is daunting. It participated in the first major anti-terrorist tactical exercise of multinational forces on U.S. soil. On the other hand, Velit Granda also denounced the installing of 10 bases “anti-crime” bases in Mexico, product of a secret bilateral deal with the U.S. which represents a threat to Mexican national security and that of other Latin American countries, since they may become so many U.S. military bases. This information, leaked by the U.S. Embassy itself, provided a document sent by President Barack Obama to Congress in which he announces that the Mexican Public Safety Secretariat is building these bases and will “soon” begin operating three of them.

In this context, the trade publication Jane’s Intelligence Weekly, reported that “the first initiative announced by Carlos Pascual, the new ambassador of the United States, involves a pilot extension of the E-Trace in Mexico in mid-September, with plans to cover the entire country by late 2009.” E-Trace uses digital technology to track the origin of weapons seized from Mexican drug cartels, and identify routes for arms trafficking

The International No to War, No to NATO movement agreed in Berlin to report to civil society worldwide promptly about the risks and dangers of global militarization conducted by the Atlantic alliance with Washington as conductor.

The strategy adopted by conference attendees includes conferences, meetings, seminars, public information and outreach, demonstrations, lobbying work with legislators and rulers and parallel events scheduled around summits and bilateral or multilateral meetings.

We must not lose sight of the fact that the heart of NATO’s strategic projections center on the natural resources of Latin America, not only oil and strategic minerals, but also those related to the very survival of humanity, such as water and biodiversity.

Simultaneously, Washington will establish naval bases in Panama: Bahia Piña, Darien province, bordering Colombia and in Punta Coca, south of the western province of Veraguas.

Moreover, the Pentagon was negotiating with the government of Alan Garcia in Peru, to restore a military base in Pichari, in the province of Ayacucho, although the State Department insists on denying the information. However, it could not deny that the United States will help the Peruvian government to modernize the facilities. In fact, they moved to Pichari some teams that were in Manta, Ecuador.

The Latin American Circle of International Studies, believes that the globalization of NATO is a growing reality, and this strategic vision, advocated by the U.S., is not only dragging along Western Europe but also casts its interventionist shadow over Latin America, which by virtue of having the Mexico-U.S. border, also has a border with the Alliance. In Latin America, the goal is to create a military siege against countries that do not abide by the geopolitical and geostrategic guidelines of the U.S. Governments, politicians and, above all, civil society, are increasingly clear about the intended role of NATO in the world today and in the future.

In the geostrategic conception of senior officials of U.S. foreign policy, NATO should replace the UN as the international peace keeper. The supranational governing body should be, according to this vision, a military structure that subordinates political interests to the major geostrategic decisions made in the highest circles of the White House and the Pentagon.

In all Latin American capitals it is widely known that in addition to strengthening the military structure of NATO, its members, led by the U.S., seek to establish closer links with and major international agencies, which in turn will be mined and co-opted, and even with non-governmental organizations at global, regional and national levels, which they hope to convince of the benefits of the Alliance’s side programs, such as the Partnership for Peace, a euphemistic name that disguises the incorporation of second- level countries as allies. The process of developing a new strategic concept for global NATO will cause sharp political disputes, not only among members of the alliance, but in the rest of the world. For example, currently perceived threats to NATO are no longer located in a specific geographical area like the one that was occupied by the former Soviet Union and the community of socialist nations of Central and Eastern Europe.

How will NATO combine the duties and responsibilities of its collective defense and organize a powerful and effective rapid deployment force, capable of moving in a short time to the most remote corner of the planet? These expeditionary missions are considered more and more important not only by the U.S. and NATO, but also by the leading UN bureaucracy.

NATO strategists busily working on a set of guidelines to define the conditions for carrying out military interventionist “acts of solidarity” against “failed states,” which in this case is nothing but a euphemism for governments or inconvenient regimes, especially those that do not accept the dictates of Washington and its European allies. Rulers, political actors and civil society in Latin America must be convinced of the urgency of a categorical refusal to subordinate the goals of all international bodies, including the UN and, of course, the Organization of American States, to the plans and objectives of NATO. And worldwide civil society must take strong action against this dangerous residue of the Cold War to ensure that it disappears once and for all and forever. Cesar Zubelet, in a special analysis for Popular Flurry, stated that the installation of U.S. military bases in strategic areas of Central America and the Caribbean had its origins in the ownership of the Panama Canal, now returned to that Nation, where the operations center for the entire region of the Southern Command of the United States was established.

He added that in Latin America, U.S. strategy includes the installation of new military bases, strengthening the existing foundations, military training of Latin American forces, arms sales, installation of surveillance and intelligence systems, and support for mega-projects in energy and infrastructure for the exploitation of natural resources. The goal of U.S. foreign policy is to defend the interests of big business and ensure its control over mainly oil, water and biodiversity.

A string of military bases

In Central America from the Caribbean region, control is exercised from established military bases in Panama, where the U.S. Defense Department signed an agreement with the Panamanian government to build 11 air-naval bases on the two coasts of that country. Two of these will be installed in Bahia Piña, Darien Province, on the border with Colombia, and in Punta Coca, in the province of Veraguas. Furthermore, the Panamanian administration announced that air and naval bases in the Pacific will be installed on the islands of Galera, Mensabe in Los Santos, Quebrada de Piedra in Chiriqui Grande, and on Isla Colon, in Bocas del Toro, Sherman in Colon, El Porvenir and Puerto Obaldia in Kuna Yala.

In Honduras, the Palmerola base area, in the city of Comayagua, is where President Manuel Zelaya was taken after he was ousted in a coup, on June 28, 2009. There is also a military base in Soto Cano, located 97 kilometers from the capital: from here the “Contra” terrorists launched their attacks, with death squads and special missions to Nicaragua and El Salvador. Now, Honduras plans to install a new military base in the Bay Islands.

In El Salvador, the Comalapa military base is a small platform used for satellite monitoring and in support of the largest bases in the region (such as that operated in Ecuador). In Costa Rica, there is the Liberia Military Base. It is worth remembering that the Costa Rican government signed an agreement with the U.S. Army for “security cooperation and vigilance against terrorism and drug trafficking.” The first frigate to arrive in this country is named The Iwo Jima, the same name as the Japanese island regained by the U.S. In World War II. Queen Beatrix is the base on the island of Aruba, in the Lesser Antilles, 25 kilometers north of the Paraguaná Peninsula, northwest of Venezuela and south of the Caribbean Sea, just west of the island of Curacao . This is an autonomous country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

The Hato military base, on the island of Curacao, is another autonomous country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, in the southern Caribbean, about 50 miles from the western coast of Venezuela. On the territory of the Republic of Cuba, in Guantanamo Bay, in 2002, the U.S. government illegally established a high-security detention camp for alleged terrorists that the empire arrests in Middle Eastern countries, especially Afghanistan. Also brought here are detainees from the CIA’s secret prisons around the world. In Colombia, as part of Plan Colombia, the bases of Three Corners, Toleimada, Apiay Palanquero, Bahía Málaga, Malambo and Cartagena were installed. Peru has two military bases: Nanay and Iquitos. These bases belong to the Peruvian armed forces, but they were built by and are used by U.S. troops operating in the Nanay River area in the Peruvian Amazon. In Paraguay, at least two military installations for distinct uses and magnitudes where foreign troops are stationed. One is a detachment of the DEA, in the town of Pedro Juan Caballero, located northwest of Asuncion, on the border with Brazil. The other is the Mariscal Estigarribia Base, in the Paraguayan Chaco, 250 kilometers from the border with Bolivia.

It should be remembered that until July 16, 2009 Ecuador was host country to the Manta Military Base, the Pentagon’s main center with satellite technology for electronic espionage, from where U.S. Navy spy planes were launched daily. It is believed that the aircraft that killed Raul Reyes also departed from here, since his clandestine base was in Angostura, Ecuador.

It is no secret that NATO has a military fortress in the Malvinas, since the UK has 1,700 men, six fighter jets, a fleet of helicopters, a radar station and a missile battery deployed there.

In this regard, Jan Cheek, a member of the Legislative Assembly of the Malvinas, said, “We have a large enough force to deter Argentina from any attempted invasion,” a statement made when the Rockhopper Exploration Company announced that it had found good quality crude oil in the basin north of the archipelago.

The Monte Agradable Air Base, 70 kilometers southwest of Puerto Argentino, is a military base of the air branch of the British Armed Forces, installed on Isla Soledad. It has 4 to 6 Eurofighter Typhoon fighter jets, a Vickers VC 10 for in-flight refueling of aircraft, a Hercules C13011 and two EH-101 helicopters for search and rescue, and 4 other Chinook helicopters for transport.

The Royal Navy is the oldest British military corps here, with a large ship, a logistics ship and a nuclear submarine patrolling the area. It is worth remembering that Monte Agradable is where British troops were trained prior to their deployment to Afghanistan and Iraq. Another important issue is the military bases of the European Union in our region: according to Rina Bertancini, president of the Movement for Peace and Solidarity between Peoples, “Great Britain has, on Ascension Island, located in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, one of the facilities that act as posts for service and logistical support to allied forces in the area, as was proven during the Malvinas War, when both Ascension and in British military base in Gibraltar (Spain) enabled the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force to get to the South Atlantic faster and with less need for fuel tankers to supply equipment to the front line.”

Another small British unit is in Belize, a country in the Caribbean Sea that borders Mexico to the north and Guatemala to the west and south. Although the British government terminated its presence in that nation in 1994, it still has troops there conducting training for tropical war. Martinique is a French overseas department located north of Santa Lucia, in the Caribbean Sea, where the French army has 150 troops, including the 33rd Infantry Regiment, based in the capital, Fort de France, and where the Navy has 500 personnel, with 4 boats, helicopters and maritime surveillance aircraft. In Guadeloupe, a small archipelago of the Antilles, in the Caribbean Sea, is the Department of Overseas France, 600 miles north of the coast of South America and southeast of the Dominican Republic. In this territory is the 41st Marine Infantry Battalion. At the same time, the fleet is reinforced by an Air Force plane and 200 personnel based in Lamentin, in the Raizet Military Zone, and includes 3 airplanes and helicopters. French forces in the West Indies are complemented by 400 civilians, a police force of 1,250 and 1,050 military police.

Similarly, French Guiana is host to 1,300 overseas military troops, including the 9th Marine Regiment and the 3rd Infantry Regiment. The Navy, too, has 180 people and has a naval station in Degrad des Cannes, with two patrol vessels and two speedboats for coastal surveillance, operated by the police. The Air Force also has a base in Cayenne and Saint-Jean du Maroni, and the police force has 750 personnel in five mobile squads. Thus we see that France, a member of NATO, has a permanent military force concentrated in North and South America and in the Caribbean Sea, with at least 8,000 troops scattered at various air, land and naval bases in three locations in the region surrounding Venezuela to the east and north. All of these forces, in addition to the reactivation of the Fourth Fleet and the creation of new U.S. bases, are used to intimidate and curb social processes that are developing in Latin America.

Thus we see how plans are carried out to destabilize the member countries of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas, as in the case of Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia and Cuba, along with the coup in Honduras. Each NATO military base in our America is not only a terrible threat to the region, but is an attack on the dignity of the people and the sovereignty of states.

The process of militarization of the continent has generated an increase in human rights violations, repression of social movements, displacement and forced migration of millions of people, and the destruction of the environment. That is why the militarization must be stopped, as rightly stated by internationalist Cesar Zubelet. In every war there is death, murder, mayhem, destruction; and it is the innocent blood of men, women and children that spills in torrents. In a nuclear attack, humanity will disappear. The United States and NATO have enough bombs to destroy all life on earth more than seven times. And if few are left after the carnage, World War IV will be fought with sticks, stones or bows and arrows, to paraphrase the 20th century genius Albert Einstein. The United States and Europe know the pain of loss of life of their precious and irreplaceable soldiers, whether of Anglo, Caucasian or any other ethnicity, who have served their colonial interests and neocolonial domination. But what bothers these Western powers the most is the compensation costs for life and disability insurance; that is why the U.S. and NATO prefer to privatize the wars they unleash against poor people, in “failed” and “inferior” Third World states. The current wars have been privatized and involve mercenaries “without God or law;” and in Latin America what happened in the Malvinas Islands and Colombia with the famous Dyncorp is a clear example of what this has wrought. The mercenaries of the empire have the final word.

Now is the commitment: The International Network No to War – No to NATO, the Latin American Circle for International Studies (Mexico) and the Permanent Assembly for Human Rights (Argentina), have organized a conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the Intercontinental Conference “Peace, Disarmament and Social Alternatives – Against Global NATO,” on the 13 and 14 December 2012, which will focus on NATO’s global policies and strategies and its implications for the Global South, especially in Latin America, as well as the alternative political, social and human policies offered by the Global South for peace, security and the environment.

The Tribunal Court, “Dignity, Sovereignty and Peace Against War” and “Independence and Sovereignty Committee for Latin America” (CISPAL) join that call in Latin America, for peace and life.

Originally posted, in Spanish, 11/17/2012, on CEPRID (Center of Political Studies for International Relations and Development). Source: http://www.nodo50.org/ceprid/spip.php?article1556

Translated into English by Bonnie Weiss


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