NATO: A Virus as Deadly as COVID-19

By Adrien Welsh

Cet article est également disponible en français

The death toll from COVID-19 exceeds 40,000 and the number of people infected by this pandemic is approaching one million. Given the scale of this health crisis, there is no doubt that emergency measures, in particular to help the most vulnerable, are necessary.

However, the billions of dollars mobilized to respond to COVID-19 mean very little in the face of the colossal sums that the Western imperialist states are constantly pouring out not to fight, but to incubate another virus just as deadly, if not more, than COVID-19: NATO.

NATO has killed 400,000 in Syria since 2011 and left more than a million dead in Iraq alone since 2003. More than $1 trillion is spent on arms each year, or 56% of spending worldwide. There are more than a thousand foreign military bases globally. The military is the most significant source of pollution on the planet.

Contrary to what Emmanuel Macron asserts, NATO is not in a state of “brain death”. Today it is the main threat to world peace and, therefore, a threat to the whole of humanity. Mark Esper, US Secretary of Defence, said at a Munich Security Conference in February that the competition between “great powers” ​​was the “first priority” of the United States. Esper stressed that America was to adopt a strategy of national defense which distances itself from “conflicts of low intensity” to better prepare for “high intensity” wars with China and Russia. He reiterated that the secondary priority of the United States was the fight against the ‘rogue states’ that are, among others, Iran and the DPR of Korea.

Even though these announcements were made before the COVID-19 crisis broke out, the fact remains that to date they have not been contradicted by anyone in the United States (not even by Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders), or anywhere else in the world. Trudeau, for his part, has still not considered rolling back the 73% increase in military spending announced in 2017.

With the billions of dollars mobilized to wage war around the globe and prepare for conflicts of “high intensity”, we could easily have maintained health services able to meet the needs of this crisis. Italy, a member of NATO, has become the centre of the pandemic after China. We have come to learn that the Italian health system is regionalized, so each region is put in competition with the other, and for the past 10 years, cuts to healthcare have amounted to €37 billion, which has resulted in the closure of 150,000 beds. Meanwhile, the annual Italian military budget has risen, according to official sources, to €28 billion…

Reducing the military budget, which, according to NATO guidelines should amount to 2% of the GDP of each country (nearly $35 billion for Canada against about $25 billion today) would fund not only public health; it is also a way to invest in scientific cooperation projects around the world that would allow countries like Cuba to receive the financial and scientific support necessary to develop their potential vaccine (in this case, Alpha-2B) rather than putting Professor Raoult’s findings in competition with those of Cuba, and rather than appealing to the greed of the pharmaceutical companies, as Donald Trump does when he offers German scientists tempting sums if they work on behalf of the United States.

Unlike COVID-19, NATO is a virus that does not develop in human cells. It is growing thanks to the cells of Big Capital and it is clear that the measures taken by the western capitalist governments, if they serve to curb the health crisis of COVID-19, also serve as an incubator for imperialist warmongering, including that of NATO. Indeed, all the economic indicators are showing that the post-COVID-19 era will be pockmarked by an economic depression and an even greater concentration of capital than that which we saw in 2008 – 2009. However, it is precisely this concentration of capital which acts as an incubator of imperialism and warmongering, because war and occupation are only products of a separation from the world in zones of influence which meet the needs of the increasingly saturated markets, which, to satisfy the needs of their monopolies, must extend beyond their national borders.

Unlike COVID-19, getting rid of this virus is relatively simple. For us in Canada, it is about fighting for the withdrawal of our country from NATO, which can be achieved through a simple unilateral declaration. It is scandalous that Trudeau and his government speak of solidarity and “national” effort when it does not touch on Canada’s participation in NATO or on military spending.

COVID-19 evolves in disconcerting lock-step with this “other virus”, NATO, imperialist war-mongering. This is why anyone who cares about real social solidarity, a social solidarity that does not stop at Canada’s borders, but an internationalist solidarity must not fall into the traps set by the ruling class and which aim to instrumentalize the COVID-19 health crisis to better place their pawns on the world geopolitical chessboard and ensure better domination of the world.

It is for this reason that we call on all of our readers, all progressive people to remember that April 4 represents NATO’s anniversary day and, therefore, to sign the following petition calling for Canada’s immediate withdrawal from NATO and for the dissolution of this murderous and criminal cartel.