NATO war summit prepares direct entry into Ukraine war
The NATO military alliance announced at its summit in Washington this week the establishment of an office in Ukraine and the creation of a NATO command in Germany led by a three-star general to oversee the war against Russia.
These measures mark the transition to a new phase of the war. During this phase, the NATO military alliance will openly assume responsibility for arming, financing and commanding the Ukrainian military, thereby initiating the deployment of NATO troops in the conflict.
The measures announced at the summit are provocative. NATO says it is stationing civilian officers in an active war zone. What will happen if these officers come under fire? Will NATO then invoke Article 5 of the NATO Treaty to declare war on Russia?
As a matter of fact, Foreign policy A NATO official was quoted as saying: “We will be pushing the idea in Washington that all Allies should commit to some kind of national planning process that brings together both military and civilian planning for Article 5.”
While NATO is flooding Ukraine with weapons, the summit communiqué published yesterday condemns China as a “decisive sponsor of the Russian war against Ukraine” and calls on it to stop supplying “weapons components” to Russia.
The New York Times’ David Sanger noted that the wording was “a big difference for NATO, which until 2019 had never officially mentioned China as a problem, and only in the most vacuous terms.” The statement said China “cannot allow the largest war in Europe in recent history without negatively affecting its interests and reputation.”
The summit’s condemnation of China is not only a breathtaking hypocrisy – it comes from powers that are pouring oil on the fire of “the biggest war in Europe in recent history” – it also makes clear that NATO is preparing for a war of global proportions.
The announcement that NATO will now play the leading role in organizing the war in Ukraine refutes years of lying propaganda by the Biden administration, American think tanks and media, which have repeatedly claimed that NATO is not directly involved in the war in Ukraine.
In reality, the imperialist powers have been systematically working to provoke war with Russia for over a decade. Since 2014, NATO has been turning Ukraine into a military frontline, using the fact that the country is not an official member as a cover for its military build-up to the teeth.
Russia’s reactionary and bankrupt invasion of Ukraine was based on a series of disastrous political miscalculations. Putin, representing a faction of the Russian oligarchy, believed when he launched the invasion that a show of military force would bring his “Western partners” to their senses and persuade them to stop NATO expansion to Russia’s doorstep and the militarization of Eastern Europe.
But the US and its imperialist allies are not interested in a peaceful solution to the conflict. They are consistently trying to prevent a negotiated solution to the war, no matter how many Ukrainian people die in the process.
The NATO powers also miscalculated massively. They believed that by supplying tens of billions of dollars worth of arms to Ukraine, they could quickly inflict a “strategic defeat” on Russia, which would lead to the overthrow of the Putin government and the destabilization or even dissolution of the country.
Last year’s NATO summit in Vilnius was intended as a “summit of the winners” to celebrate the successful “spring offensive” that Ukraine had launched just weeks earlier. But the offensive turned into a bloody debacle. Ukrainian soldiers were thrown against the Russian lines without air support and slaughtered by the thousands.
Now that hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have been killed, Kyiv has virtually no living bodies left to use as cannon fodder, even as criminal gangs of recruiters roam every Ukrainian town and village, forcing men to fight in war.
Even as they escalate the war, the various governments in Washington are torn by deep internal crises and despised by their own populations.
The French government of Emmanuel Macron has just suffered a heavy electoral defeat, the result of widespread popular opposition to the war and the associated attacks on pensions and other social programs. However, history shows that governments facing serious internal crises often seek a solution to their internal problems through war.
In the UK, Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government was overwhelmingly voted out of power in last week’s election, but was replaced by a Labour government that came to power despite a sharp drop in votes. New Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s first act in office is to attend the NATO summit, making it clear that he will essentially continue his predecessor’s policies.
And US President Biden is trying to fend off growing calls within his own party that he should step down as the Democratic presidential candidate in the presidential election in just four months. Biden is hoping that a show of belligerence and warmongering at the NATO summit will allay ruling class concerns about the impact of his apparently declining mental faculties.
One factor in the American ruling class’s consideration of Biden’s fate is the concern that an electoral defeat could have consequences for the war against Russia, given Trump’s “transactional” approach to foreign policy. While Trump and the Republicans are no less committed to imperialist war than the Democrats, there is media discussion of the need to “Trump-proof” NATO and the Ukraine war through massive military and financial aid.
With their various maneuvers and changes of personnel, the leaders of the imperialist countries demonstrate that the war policy of the ruling class is completely insensitive to public opinion.”Plus it changes, plus it’s the same thing“- or in this case: “The more things change, the more the war escalates.”
And every single one of the “dignitaries” gathered in Washington is dripping with blood and complicit in the financing and political justification of the genocide in Gaza, which the British medical journal The LancetIt is estimated that 186,000 Palestinians were killed. One consequence of the genocide is the final refutation of the claim that imperialist foreign policy has anything to do with “democracy” and “human rights,” neither in Ukraine nor elsewhere.
These despised, criminal governments are waging war against the working class while escalating war abroad. In a statement published on Wednesday New York TimesUS National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan boasted about NATO’s expansion of military spending:
In 2023, defense spending by NATO countries in Europe and Canada increased by 8 percent. This year, it is expected to increase by 18 percent. … Over the next five years, our NATO allies will add over 650 fifth-generation F-35 aircraft, over 1,000 air defense systems, nearly 50 warships and submarines, 1,200 main battle tanks, 11,300 combat vehicles, and nearly 2,000 artillery systems.
And how is all this going to be financed? Through a comprehensive attack on the social position of the working class, which will only exacerbate class tensions around the world.
The NATO Summit confirms the crucial importance of the July 24 demonstration against the genocide in Gaza, which was attended by World Socialist Website and the Socialist Equality Party in response to the visit of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who addressed a joint session of Congress.
In a statement on the demonstration and gathering released yesterday, WSWS International Editorial Board Chairman David North said the aim of the demonstration was to “provide strategic direction for building a mass movement to end the genocide in Gaza, which is inextricably linked to the global outbreak of imperialist militarism, the relentless escalation towards nuclear war against Russia and China, and the assault on the democratic and social rights of the working class.”
This must be the response of workers and youth to the NATO war summit.
The WSWS calls on all its readers to attend, register and help promote and run the rally by completing the form below.
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