CONSIDERING the importance of Nato in international affairs, it feels like there is a real lack of analysis and critique of the US-led military alliance.

Nato: What You Need To Know, the new book co-authored by US anti-war activists Medea Benjamin and David Swanson, therefore fills an important knowledge gap in understanding the now 75-year-old organisation — described by Professor Jeffrey D Sachs in the preface as “a clear and present danger to world peace, a war machine run amok.”

Ian Sinclair asked Benjamin and Swanson about Nato’s founding purpose, the lack of democracy at its heart and the impact of Nato’s intervention in Kosovo on subsequent Western foreign policy.

You note Nato claims it was created to deter Soviet expansionism and the revival of nationalist militarism in Europe, and to encourage European political integration. What is your take on why Nato was established?

Nato’s first secretary-general Lord Ismay was more straightforward. Nato, he said, was created “to keep the Soviets out, the Americas in, and the Germans down.” It was created with an eye toward doing that for 20 years and then possibly dissolving, with the Soviets effectively out and the Europeans aligned with the US but ready to take responsibility for their own militarism and military spending.

Of course, the creation of Nato, and the exclusion of the Soviets from it, intensified and institutionalised the cold war and the arms race as the Soviets created their own military alliance, the Warsaw Pact. The US grew attached to its permanent bases in Europe, as well as its permanent belief that more, not less, direct US involvement and weapons were needed. So Nato passed the 20-year mark without a pause, and the 1991 dissolution of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact without any serious thought of shutting down.

One of Nato’s real purposes was to stifle the growth of communism within war-torn western Europe itself. In many western European countries, communists and socialists had led the resistance to German and Italian occupation during WWII. So after the war, leftist parties were quite popular and naturally expected to play important roles in government. They won elections to national parliaments, regional and city councils, and were allied with powerful unions, especially in Italy and France.

The US began funding, arming and training reactionary forces that would wage a long and hidden war against Europe’s thriving socialist and communist movements. These initiatives were institutionalised under Nato, which became a bulwark against communism throughout Europe and beyond. Instead of promoting the “shared values of democracy,” Nato actually helped destroy popular movements and narrow democratic choices.

From the US perspective, Nato provided a vehicle for imposing US leadership over Western nations. It tied Europe to US military, geopolitical and economic interests. It also prevented France, Germany and their partners in what became the European Union from developing a truly independent counterweight to US power in the Western world. And of course it established a major international institution that effectively declared itself above compliance with the UN Charter.

Speaking in 2016, Clive Lewis MP, considered to be on the left of the British Labour Party, said: “The values that underpin Nato are social democratic values: liberty, democracy, freedom of expression.” In contrast, I was interested to read what you say about democracy and Nato, specifically the “democratic deficit” when it comes to decision-making within the organisation, and also the lack of interest in democracy when it comes to membership and its continual expansion. Could you explain more for Morning Star readers?

Nato has expanded in great part through the corruption of weapons dealers promising membership to nations if they would buy weapons, and then insisting that elected officials whose campaigns they had funded support those nations’ memberships. Nations are also pressured to privatise their economies to become Nato members.

Nato members, and Nato partners, need not even pretend to be democratic. Nato’s first additions were undemocratic Greece and Turkey, and their nations’ subsequent coups had no impact on their membership.

Nato sends an unelected “secretary-general” around the world to tell governments to move money from human and environmental needs to weapons, but Nato has no human constituency, makes decisions at odds with its member governments, and wages wars in violation of international law.

Nato partners with and arranges weapons deals for such undemocratic governments as Israel, Azerbaijan, Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Nato’s preference has always been for governments that agree with Nato over governments that agree with their people.

Internally, despite a commitment to rule by “consensus,” Nato is really ruled by the US. And on those occasions where Nato members take opposing positions, Nato uses carrots and sticks to achieve “consensus.” For example, when Turkey objected to Anders Fogh Rasmussen as secretary-general in 2009, Turkey backed down after a deal was made to shut down a Kurdish international television network disliked by the Turkish government (Roj TV). When Hungary objected to Sweden’s bid to join Nato, it relented once Sweden agreed to sell Hungary some fighter jets.

You write that Nato’s military intervention in Kosovo in 1999 “established the template that US leaders have used to plunge our country and the world into endless war ever since.” How so?

Nato had been in danger of lacking any excuse to exist, after the dismantling of the USSR. It manufactured a reason to exist as a rogue global police force.

Nato’s 1999 military intervention was an act of aggression. It was not authorised by the UN and was therefore illegal under international law. Nato used all kinds of pretexts, from claims of “humanitarian intervention” to fake news, to give itself the right to attack a sovereign member of the UN. So Nato’s bombing of Kosovo set the stage for Nato countries — and other nations — to openly violate international law. Nato effectively developed the ability to authorise its own wars.

Nato bombing also violated the rules of international humanitarian law. Nato destroyed its list of military targets in Serbia in the first three days, but continued bombing civilian infrastructure in Serbia and Montenegro for 78 days, probably killing thousands of civilians as it bombed hospitals, schools, bridges, passenger trains and buses, residential neighbourhoods, power stations, the national TV broadcaster, the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, and other diplomatic sites. No Nato leaders were held responsible for these violations.

Nato’s impunity in the former Yugoslavia opened the doors for Nato interventions in various ways in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, and its involvement in military conflicts from Ukraine to Palestine. All these wars have been the same in their lawlessness, their murderous destructiveness and their counterproductive results. Nato’s illegal use of force has also paved the way for other nation’s illegal invasions, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Only once — in the case of Afghanistan — has Nato even pretended that one of its members was waging war in defence. Although every Nato member has experienced foreign terrorism, when the US did, a war on an impoverished distant land — already begun by the US alone — was made into a Nato war.

Most western European nations, including Britain, are members of Nato. Like the Morning Star, I presume you would like Nato to be dismantled? If so, what alternatives, if any, would you propose?

Nato has eviscerated the most important tools in conflict resolution: diplomacy and international law. If you look at two of the wars raging today in Ukraine and the Middle East, Nato countries have fuelled these catastrophic wars and prevented diplomatic solutions — both by vetoing UN resolutions and sabotaging peace talks.

So the real alternatives to Nato are not new military alliances, but a return to diplomacy and the rule of law. We need compliance with the UN Charter, upholding the rulings of the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, and compliance with treaties such as the treaty on nuclear non-proliferation. And as we see the world careening closer and closer to nuclear war, we need nuclear nations to join the UN nuclear ban treaty to finally rid the world of the existential threat of a nuclear apocalypse.

We also need the democratisation and universalisation of global institutions, including — first and foremost — through the elimination of the veto in the UN security council. So Nato should be abolished and not replaced with other military alliances. If humanity is to survive, we need to rid ourselves of military alliances — indeed, of militarism itself — and turn instead to the rule of law and disarmament.

Nato: What You Need To Know is published by O/R Books, priced £13.38 (ORbooks.com).