Dissolve
NATO: an alliance for war
On November 3, 2010, the highly respected
pacifist organization War Resisters’ International issued a call to dissolve the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
WRI’s statement, said, in part:
NATO was founded ostensibly to defend the “free” West against Soviet expansion.
Why then did not NATO dissolve when the
Soviet Union disintegrated and Warsaw Pact dissolved?
The reason is quite simple:
because it had become the main vehicle
for the coordination of Western military strategy.
What follows is a call for peace
activists to commit ourselves to raise the demand for the dissolution of NATO.
You can read the one-page statement and
circulate a petition. See
http://wri-irg.org/node/11629
Since then NATO has escalated its militarism to
include conducting an illegal war against Libya.
Now WRI, the War Resisters League, and many
other organizations – including the national Fellowship of Reconciliation – are
persisting with a campaign leading up to a May 2012 meeting of NATO in Chicago.
Now is the time to educate the public and pressure our governments.
See the following information:
NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is
holding a summit meeting in Chicago, May 2012. We, peace and justice activists,
will gather at a counter summit to voice a new vision of global security and
peace.
Join us in Chicago May 18 & 19, 2012
for a counter-summit conference to conceive and help build a more peaceful,
economically secure and environmentally sustainable world.
As the majority of the U.S. people know, it’s
long past time to end the U.S./NATO war in Afghanistan, bring home all U.S. and
NATO troops from Afghanistan, Iraq and around the world, to end the attacks on
Libya and to begin to rid the world of weapons of mass destruction and redirect
monies from wars and weapons back to our communities.
Despite its claims, NATO was never a defensive
alliance, and since the end of the Cold War has been transformed into a global
alliance structured to wage “out of area” wars in Asia, the Middle East and
North Africa, as well as to “contain” China. NATO’s creed is aggressive,
expansionist, militarist and undemocratic.
From Yugoslavia to Afghanistan and Libya the US has used NATO to enhance
and extend its military, economic and political aims that ensure U.S. and
European dominance of the resources, markets and labor of the Global South.
It has spread the cost of these
adventures to its NATO partners.
While ignoring human needs here at home, the
U.S. has spent more than a trillion dollars on the Afghanistan and Iraq wars,
and tens of billions of dollars more each year to maintain hundreds of military
bases and nuclear weapons across Europe. Instead of wasting money on NATO, our
tax dollars should be used to provide real security by creating green jobs and
investing in infrastructure modernization for the 21st century, clean water,
education, housing and health care for all.
The crisis of everyday life in countries around
the globe demands international cooperation based on respect for international
law, and national sovereignty, not wars and an escalating global arms race--an
arms race of one, driven by the US.
The NATO summit provides an opportunity to join
in solidarity with our international counterparts to mount an education campaign
to help people across the United States and in other NATO nations understand the
true nature of NATO and mobilize to abolish it.
By joining together, we can visibly and
nonviolently demonstrate how NATO undermines people’s real security in every
dimension of life. As we discuss and demand alternative and life-affirming
foreign policies, we will help to build the worldwide movement that opposes NATO
and its wars and create a world of peace and justice.
Diplomacy, international law, national
sovereignty, international collaborations, and nonviolent conflict resolution
are the foundations of real, global security.
Help us mobilize activists to come to Chicago to
participate in an international conference.
We demand:
• Complete withdrawal of all U.S. and NATO
troops from Afghanistan.
• Withdrawal of all foreign deployed U.S.
troops, bases, nuclear weapons and “missile defenses,”
• Substantial reductions in U.S. and NATO
military spending to fund our communities and to meet human needs.
• Restitution of the UN Charter and
International Law as means of resolving international disputes.
• Retire NATO!
*Network for a NATO-Free World: Global Peace and Justice
(List in formation):
American Friends Service
Committee-Peace and Economic Security Program, CODEPINK, Fellowship of
Reconciliation, Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, Maryknoll Office of
Concerns, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Peace Action, United for Peace and
Justice, US Labor Against the War, US Peace Council, War Resisters League.
Chicago:
American Friends Service Committee-Chicago, CODEPINK, Chicago Area Peace Action,
New New Deal, US Labor Against the War.
For more information and to sign onto this call
contact Judith Le Blanc
jleblanc@peace-action.org
or Joseph Gerson
JGerson@afsc.org
or
Kimber Heinz at
kimber@warresisters.org.
You can reach Kimber at (212) 228-0450
ext. 12.
