The Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation Ltd.
Russell House, Bulwell Lane,
Nottingham NG6 0BT, England
MESSAGE
The leaders of 28 NATO member countries and others gather
for a summit meeting in Newport, the third city of Wales, on 4-5 September
2014. For days together, this small city has been besieged while fences, gates
and barricades are erected to protect those attending. The cost is substantial,
and there is considerable inconvenience to the people of Newport and to the
activists of the international peace movement who have organised a
counter-summit there. NATO’s uselessness is never more apparent than when it
rudely disrupts people’s lives in order to exult in 65 costly years of
existence.
It was with some foresight, in 1949, that the
distinguished Irish Foreign Minister, Seán MacBride, rejected an invitation,
sent through the American Ambassador in Dublin, to participate in a meeting to
discuss the formation of the North Atlantic Alliance. Later, MacBride gave
several reasons for his opposition:
‘First of all
I regarded NATO as being a rather dangerous military alliance that might well
involve Europe in another war at more or less the wish of the United States. I
could quite well see the American anti-communist view pushing NATO into a cold
war first, and then into an active war.’
How prescient MacBride was. Nowadays, Russia
may no longer be communist, but it remains the target of large-scale NATO
expansion; in the Baltics, in Poland and elsewhere in central Europe, in the
Balkans (Serbia included), around the Black Sea, especially in Georgia and
Ukraine. Ukraine shares a long border with Russia. Planned missile ‘defence’
installations in Poland and Romania underline the aggressive posture towards
Russia which the US maintains.
It should never be forgotten that the United
States runs NATO in its own interests. When the US wanted to go to war in
Afghanistan in 2001, immediately after 9/11, it spurned NATO’s offers of
assistance, made by the then Secretary-General, George Robertson. Only later, did
the US identify a useful, and expensive, role for NATO in that theatre of
operations.
Be that as it may, Ireland had a particularly
compelling reason not to join NATO, according to Mr MacBride:
‘… it was
completely illogical for us to enter into a military alliance with Britain
while a part of our country was still being occupied by British forces. We
would be condoning and accepting the British occupation of Northern Ireland by
entering a military alliance with Britain.’
The fundamentals of that situation endure,
notwithstanding the real achievements of the peace process in Ireland. MacBride
went on:
‘I can’t
think of any good reason why Ireland should join NATO, then or now. NATO is a
dangerous military alliance and I have noticed that there is a great deal of
hesitancy among many of the NATO countries. I am very glad that we didn’t join
and that we didn’t spend vast sums of money on quite unnecessary armament.’
There have been few statesmen with such clear
vision. Seán MacBride developed his critique of NATO when accepting the Nobel
Peace Prize in December 1974. He said:
‘ … It would be foolish to underrate the massive
influence of the organized lobbies of military-industrial complexes in the
United States and Western Europe. They constitute an unseen and unmentioned
powerful force operating silently in the corridors of NATO and of most Western
governments. Their resources are unlimited and their influence is great. This
constitutes a huge vested interest which works silently against General and
Complete Disarmament.’
The world is much in need of statesmen
with MacBride’s experience and vision. Are there any to be found in Newport
this week?
Tony
Simpson
Bertrand
Russell Peace Foundation
3
September 2014
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