NATO does not, and never did, ‘defend’ democracy

 

A secretive alliance Canadians never voted to join that requires this country to defend faraway lands and funnel ever greater resources to warfare is presented as a tool of democracy. And pro-NATO propagandists ignore how the alliance once helped oust a Canadian government and its ties to undemocratic regimes.

As a result of a decision made at a private NATO get-together a decade ago Canadians have been told incessantly that we must spend ever more public resources on the war machine. At the alliance’s recent summit they determined the 2% of GDP threshold should now be considered the “floor” for military spending.

For three quarters of a century Canada has deployed troops abroad nearly constantly to fulfill its obligations under the permanent war alliance. NATO is why Ottawa recently announced plans to double its forces in a faraway country few could locate on a map. Prior to what is turning into a semipermanent deployment to Latvia 100,000 Canadian troops were stationed in Western Europe over 42 years. Two years after that deployment ended in 1993 a significant contingent of Canadian troops were deployed to the Balkans on a NATO mission, which climaxed with the 78-day bombing of Serbia in 1999.

Even further afield, Canadian troops occupied Afghanistan for 13 years to fulfill our “duty” to the alliance. They’ve also recently been deployed to Libya and Iraq to mete out NATO violence there.  (more...)

NATO does not, and never did, ‘defend’ democracy