On August 4th, I wrote an article criticising a NATO video that purported to debunk two “myths” about the organisation. The video claimed that “NATO is a defensive alliance” and “NATO does not seek confrontation”. I described these claims as “false” on the grounds that NATO has carried out several offensive operations.
Logically, if an organisation has carried out offensive operations, it cannot be “defensive” – at least not wholly defensive, which is what “not seeking confrontation” implies.
Ian Rons has criticised my article. He begins by disputing that the invasion of Afghanistan was an offensive operation, noting that 9/11 was “the only time in NATO’s history when the mutual defense clause, Article 5, was invoked”.
What he fails to note is that NATO’s operation in Afghanistan was not based on the invocation of Article 5. The only two NATO operations based on the invocation of Article 5 were Operation Eagle Assist and Operation Active Endeavor – as explained on the organisation’s website. Having said that, it is true the US invasion of Afghanistan (and the subsequent NATO operation there) were launched in response to the 9/11 attacks.
Does this make them defensive? Arguably not. The 9/11 attacks were carried out by a transnational terrorist organisation, Al-Qaeda, not by the state of Afghanistan. (Neither Osama bin Laden nor any of the 9/11 hijackers were Afghans.) Invading and then occupying a foreign country where a terrorist organisation happens to be based is not “defensive”. The NATO airstrikes of June 2007 that killed at least 45 Afghan civilians plainly weren’t.
Note that prior to the invasion, the U.S. refused to negotiate with the Taliban. As the New York Times noted last year, “some former diplomats say that by repeatedly shutting the door to talks, the United States may have closed off its best chance of avoiding a prolonged and extremely costly war”.
However, even if the NATO operation in Afghanistan was defensive, the other two examples I cited clearly weren’t. Ian suggests they were “legitimate and morally just” but that is irrelevant. As I stated in my article, “you can argue those operations were justified, but you can’t argue they were defensive”. Neither Serbia nor Libya had attacked a NATO member.
I was therefore correct to describe the claims that “NATO is a defensive alliance” and “NATO does not seek confrontation” as false.
Next, Ian disputes my interpretation of a statement made by the U.S. concerning the recent security agreement between China and the Solomon Islands. And he accuses me of “quote-mining and distortion of reality in order to paint U.S. or NATO actions as sinister – or at least hypocritical”. While I don’t accept that I “distorted reality”, I was attempting to show that U.S. actions are hypocritical.
And the statement I quoted is only one rather minor example of this. There are numerous other examples I could have given, such as the invasion of Iraq, various foreign coups, or the Monroe Doctrine.
Ian then cites something Putin said about Kazakhstan in 2014 as if this has any relevance to my article. In any case, I don’t dispute that Putin is an imperialist.
Ian writes, “if Noah believes that Putin’s denial of Ukrainian statehood and the invasions since 2014 were really NATO’s fault, he should have an explanation of why Putin is so clearly unconcerned about Finland joining NATO”. This again is irrelevant to what I said in my article, although it is relevant to claims I have made elsewhere.
My view on exactly what is “NATO’s fault” is more complex than Ian suggests, and to avoid repeating myself I will direct him to an article I wrote back in June.
As to why Putin is less concerned about Finland joining NATO, I would say the following. This is not some startling new revelation. We’ve known since at least 2008 that the Russian elite considers NATO membership for Ukraine to be an absolute red line. As Ambassador William Burns wrote to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice:
Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all red lines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.
Burns also warned that bringing Ukraine into NATO would “create fertile soil for Russian meddling in Crimea and eastern Ukraine”.
Why the Russian elite would care more about NATO membership for Ukraine than for Finland is obvious: Ukraine’s border is less than 500km from Moscow; there are millions of ethnic Russians living in Ukraine; and Russia requires access to its naval base in Sevastopol. Note: I’m not saying these are valid reasons. I’m simply explaining why the Russian elite cares more about Ukraine.
In conclusion, neither of the main points I made in my article has been refuted. It is “mostly false” that NATO is not aggressive; and it is “highly debateable” that NATO made no promise that it wouldn’t expand.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Downtick if you’re with Ian.
Uptick if you’re with Noah.
No fence-sitting allowed.
Note: this poll is under no circumstances to be understood as an expression of allegiance to either “side” in this whole sorry affair. My twopenny worth is that they’re all b*stards – because an eternal truth is that good guys just don’t want power over people.
When you save a man from falling on his own sword you enslave him.
That’s a nice saying. But the reality is such that good and bad are ultimatively moral categories associated with monotheistic religions which define good as What our god wants and bad as What our god doesn’t want. This simple dichotomy is ill-suited to describe the complex system of human society: Outside of James Bond movies (and similar pieces of fiction), everybody is always motivated by something he considers to be a good cause and his opponents always disagree with that.
Agreed. But I mean “good guys” as those who trouble no-one, keep themselves to themselves and seek not to raise themselves above others. They may be better, but they use their skills for their own ends alone and anyone who chooses to come along (and anyone they bring into the world).
I owe society nothing, save not to be a burden upon it, and not to bring anyone into the world who is a burden upon it.
All manner of terrible things done by one man to another have been justified on the altar of “good”.
Leave people well alone, I say. But that’s not gonna happen, because there are always people who think that people need to be “saved” and that if only everyone did as they say, the world would be rainbows and butterflies.
Jesus (the real bloke who was killed and that was that), if he were alive today, would be dismayed at how his words have been twisted.
Embrace the hopeless emptiness and see that the only light is that which you control, that which comes from within you.
That was precisely the point I intended to dispute: The people you refer to as good are those who lack nothing and have no justifiable grievances against anyone. Basically, the descendents of those who conquered the world (or believe to have done so) and who now want to be left in peace with the spoils of victory. That’s a very lop-sided idea. If the Americans (for it is them) want to dismantle their state because they believe they don’t need it anymore and nothing ‘good’ can ever come from anything but anarchy my opinion would be Let them. The European tradition (as well as that of pretty much all of the rest of the world) is different.
Is it unreasonable for me to desire that I be simply left alone, regardless of whether anyone considers me victim or victor?
Generally, yes, and in addition to that, it’s also very improbable. The specifics depend on who you are, what you want to be left alone with and what your precisely mean by being left alone.
I think most people understand being left alone to mean something along the lines of having other people mind their own business.
For most people this means being allowed to keep what they earn by the sweat of their own brows, and not have other people spend their own money for them, on what other people tell them are other people’s problems.
The “pandemic” would never have happened were it not for people being sick on big government.
My opinion is that most of what you believe your problems to be are not caused by big government – whatever that’s specifically supposed to be – but by wrong government, starting with the inane ideas that whatever happens to be most popular with a group of largely un- or undereducated people at the moment must be done and that uprooting everything every five years in order to run into a different direction makes any sense.
OTOH, I really don’t care about US domestic politics. Insofar, I’m concerned, you can have big government, small government, no government, transexual genderqueer climate changing abortion government or any combination thereof, with an exciting new house of cards being errected every five years after the boring old house of cards has been torn down and consigned the scrapheap of yesterweeks political soap operas. I just (ideally) don’t ever want to hear anything about this again. Rather recover and recultivate some of the large areas of wilderness in eastern Europe the Russians have dutifully created and left there.
all being equal, Noah is certainly more courageous than Ian. Especially when you know what happened to a british citizen Graham Phillips who’s been reporting inconvenient facts from Ukraine…
The ‘invasion’ of Afghanistan by NATO was quite odd — there might well have been a case for UN involvement (details are murky), but not NATO.
Wasn’t it the BBC led by John Simpson that invaded Afghanistan?
The country at the head of NATO is the only country to have used nuclear weapons. Was it defensive?
We are told/taught that it was retaliation. Is that defensive or offensive? It gets soooo grey, doesn’t it….
looking at it now, it’s nothing short of barbaric. indiscriminate bombing of civilians.
I hope the world has changed.
It’s the logical conclusion of the strategic air war doctrine which became prominent during the so-called interwar years (eg, Douhet). The idea behind that is that the ability to make war of an industrialized state ultimatively rests on its industry and its workers. Bombers where seen as game-changers because the could invade enemy territory pretty much regardless of ground forces. While they weren’t suitable for or occupying or conquering anything, it was conjectured they’d be suitable destroying everything they could reach. Hence, war could be dramatically shorted by simply destroying the enemy’s industrial facilities and demoralizing its workers to the point of revolt by air bombardement. That’s a theory all major combatants of the second world war subscribed to to some degree, although it would be for the British to turn the destruction of cities by nightly firebombing into an applied science and for the Americans to invent the ultimate city-and-population-destroying weapon, the nuclear bomb.
For pre-WWII standard, this was indeed barbaric or rather, nothing but a war crime due to attacking non-combattants. But such considerations tend to be brushed aside when they really start to get in the way and in the end, the war criminals are those who lost the war as the winners form the juries determining this. Thankfully – despite persistent myths to the contrary – strategic air war proved to be nothing but an expensive (both in terms of cost and manpower) failure. The last real strategic bombing campaign was conducted as part of the Vietnam war in the 1970s. While it accomplished large scale devastation and cilivian mass deaths, it did nothing to stop the North-Vietnamese ground forces from winning the war.
Well observed.
I can’t claim any credit for that. That’s just the outcome of reading a few serious books on the topic with an open mind.
Likewise our (along with our allies) carpet/fire bombing of Germany cities. I’m not saying you could never make an argument for it, just don’t claim the moral high ground. It was an evil act – end of.
And the punchline is?
There has been no NATO expansion for 18 years and prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there wasn’t even a planned expansion. This Putinbabble starts to become pretty tiresome. The apparent purpose of this Russian invasion is to bite off another chunk of Ukrainian territory. There’s a plethora of justifications for that to keep people who believe in the omnipotence of paper decrees entertained. But nothing of this changes one iota of the situation: Russia is presently conducting a war of conquest against Ukraine because the Russian government seeks conquest and believes to have the military means to achieve it.
Nicht durch Reden und Majoritätsbeschlüsse werden die großen Fragen der Zeit entschieden, sondern durch Eisen und Blut.
Fans of talks and majority decisions already considered that ridiculously obsolete when it was a new statement. They were proven wrong back then. They were proven wrong in Syria. They are being proven wrong right now in Ukraine. They will continue to be proven wrong in future.
There has been no NATO expansion for 18 years and prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there wasn’t even a planned expansion.
are you sure about that? have you checked the facts before posting?
Apart from that Ukraine putting the aim of joining NATO into their constitution and that it was a preferred partner going on joint missions together. remember all these embarrassing photos of Ukrainian solders with nazi symbols posing with NATO generals? If you struggle to find a solder clear of svastikas to do a photo op with NATO operative than something tells me you have a nazi problem…
If you feel like believing Putin is the selfless saviour of a defenceless world from some unspeakable evil, be my guest. I don’t.
I prefer your argument Noah as it is prepared to criticise Western propaganda however you are both wrong as 9/11 was obviously a false flag operation.
There are too many give aways that a deep state operation actively sought to attack the twin towers and, ostensibly the pentagon.
So you guys are both arguing within the deep states preferred window of mass delusion.
Deffo.
The old false binary will get you every time.
Exactly.
“You are either with us or against us!”
What an effing con…
The only binary I see in the world is that it’s populated by those who THINK and those who FOLLOW RULES.
Whatever the rights and wrongs, what has been disastrous has been the West’s response. We used to understand that to get at Russia, you flood the oil market to lower the oil price. That hasn’t happened, and that tells me all I need to know about the credibility of Western governments and media, shedding crocodile tears as Ukrainians are used as cannon fodder.
It’s climate change stupid.
The strategy is to deprive particularly Western Countries of fossil fuels so everyone will buy electric cars and use electricity from wind and solar, and save the Planet, and to do that requires that the fossil fuel industry be driven out of business – under way in the USA.
But Russia doesn’t buy into the Climate doom and has no intention of shutting down its fossil fuel industry which has oodles of the lovely stuff.
USA/NATO action against Russia was intended to crush its economy, and stem the flow of its fossil fuels. It did the latter but only to NATO Countries, Russia merely increased its exports to the other Countries not joined in the US led madness.
Nothing to do with ‘plucky’ Ukraine, everything to do with the globalist agenda.
Historically NATO and it’s southern counterpart SEATO were meant to be defensive from the perceived threat from the USSR and Soviet bloc that formed the Warsaw Pact.
Some of the original members of the alliance, the Federal Republic of Germany and the Republic of Italy were forbidden to undertake anything other than a defensive role. The FRG was literally the front line as it bordered Poland, the German Democratic Republic, Czechoslovakia and other Warsaw Pact countries.
Neither the Korean War or Vietnam were NATO operations despite being fought by NATO/SEATO members.
The Gulf Wars were not NATO led.
If a NATO country is attacked and if it subsequently invokes article 5 of the NATO charter then the whole of NATO responds as if it had been attacked. If memory serves the USA invoked article 5 after the 11th September attacks.
From the treaty
”The Treaty committed each member to share the risk, responsibilities and benefits of collective defence – a concept at the very heart of the Alliance. In 1949, the primary aim of the Treaty was to create a pact of mutual assistance to counter the risk that the Soviet Union would seek to extend its control of Eastern Europe to other parts of the continent. The Treaty also required members not to enter into any international commitments that conflicted with the Treaty and committed them to the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations (UN). Moreover, it stated that NATO members formed a unique community of values committed to the principles of individual liberty, democracy, human rights and the rule of law.”
https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_17120.htm
And the Falklands War was not a NATO action despite British territory being attacked and invaded.
We didn’t invoke article 5.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southeast_Asia_Treaty_Organization
Noah lost me when when he didn’t slam the door on the facile claim that the Afghan invasion was a defensive action. As for his assertion that Al-Qaeda carried out 9/11, what is that actually based on?
It’s a tricky one. Raising questions about the authorship of 9/11 results in immediate discredit in many people’s eyes and anything you say about anything else is dismissed.
Yes it’s tricky for some, but nevertheless it’s a fair question. What was the evidence to support this claim? From memory, we were told immediately who did it, but these same “authorities” also claimed no early foreknowledge of the event.
I also have to wonder why people are on this site if they still believe everything the “authorities” deem to tell them.
Al Qaeda translates as ‘base’ if I understand correctly. It was not an organisation so much as a franchise. This makes holding a particular Sovereign Nation responsible for terrorists activity associated with Al Qaeda groundless.
Is Biden ready to cut Zelensky loose?
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/is-biden-ready-to-cut-zelensky-loose/
Donald Forbes
Yellow Boards By The Road BUILD BACK FREEDOM …
Monday 8th August 11am to 12pm
Yellow Boards
Junction A329 London Road &
Fernbank Rd, Winkfield Row
Ascot SL5 8ED
Stand in the Park Sundays 10.30am to 11.30am – make friends & keep sane
Wokingham
Howard Palmer Gardens Sturges Rd RG40 2HD
Bracknell
South Hill Park, Rear Lawn, RG12 7PA
Telegram http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell
Do none of you realise that 9/11 was a false flag event and nothing to do with Al Quaeda? It was an excuse to bring in more stringent anti-terrorist laws, which greatly affected us all (all those extra rules in airports), giving the powers that be yet more control over us. I’m of camp James Delingpole!! Please don’t shower me with adverse comments!!