Lies about NATO.
The kremlin and its mouthpieces lie about NATO all the time.
Spoiler: This is the first of two posts about NATO. The second will be about how Swedish NATO opponents lie about our membership and defence cooperation agreement with the USA. That post will be in Swedish because it is probably of low interest to non-Swedish readers. But the post will include a link to Google translate for those that are interested to know more about Swedish morons. Anyway, this post is about liars in all countries.
Shortly after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, a campaign was launched with the aim of disbanding NATO. The campaign was, and is still this day, run using lies and misinformation. The most common lies are the claims about American promises to Gorbachev not to "expand NATO to the east", that NATO bombed civilian Serbs, that NATO has destroyed Libya without cause, that NATO waged war against Iraq and blah blah blah in Afghanistan.
The facts are that no promise was ever made to Gorbachev or anyone else that new countries would not be allowed to join NATO, that NATO intervened to prevent Serbian nationalists from committing massacres against Kosovars in the same way as was done against Bosniaks in Srebrenica, that the intervention in Libya was done to prevent the butcher Gaddafi from killing his own population, that NATO did not participate in the war against Iraq, and that NATO took over parts of the intervention in Afghanistan in order to protect women and children against the Taliban.
NATO has been involved in four large operations which can be described as wars. Twice on the Balkan, once in Libya, and once in Afghanistan. The NATO operations have been supported by the UN in three of these four operations. The fourth operation was vetoed by the kremlin and Beijing who do not care about muslim populations’ lives.
The Kremlin lies. More than most other regimes in the world.
Source: Varieties of Democracy. Note: The indicator ranges from 0 to 4. Values of 0 indicate governments that lie extremely often on all key political issues, and 4 governments that do not.
NATO was formed in 1949 as a response to the threat from the Soviet Union. The threat became imminent after the 1948 Prague coup and Stalin's ongoing blockade of Berlin. NATO was thus formed as a defense alliance. It was a success. The Soviet Union did not dare to attack any NATO country and neither has any other country. The Warsaw Pact was meaningless as a defense alliance as NATO would only attack targets within the Warsaw Pact countries if those would attack NATO. As a war alliance, however, the Warsaw Pact was not a complete failure. It managed to attack itself three times, in Berlin in 1953, in Hungary in 1956 and in Prague in 1968. It came close to attacking Poland in the early 1980s but was prevented from doing so by Carter, the American president.
The promise that was never made and the documents that were never written.
As we all know, the kremlin lies. Its spokespersons are lying and the little fascist-in-chief is lying. About everything. One of the kremlin's and putin's favorite lies concerns NATO. According to the lies, Gorbachev was given a promise that NATO would not "expand eastwards". It's nonsense for several reasons. Firstly, this is not how applications of memberships are decided. Countries become members through an application process. The applications are reviewed and if the criteria for membership are met, it is the member countries that must approve the country for membership. All countries.
The Poles discovered that the application process can be lengthy and difficult in 1991. The Polish application was rejected and it took until 1999 for the country to become a member of NATO.
A good lie always contains a grain of truth. And the fascists in the Kremlin are among the best liars in the world. As far as NATO is concerned, it is true that representatives of the Allies and the Soviet Union discussed how the reunified Germany would be handled from a security policy perspective. The American Secretary of State Baker came up with a plan called "2 + 4", where the 2 represented the two former halves of Germany and the 4 France, Great Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union. The plan was accepted by all parties and resulted in a reunited Germany as a member of NATO. Furthermore, the Soviet Union would have four years to withdraw its troops from East Germany. The agreement also stipulated that no non-German NATO troops or nuclear weapons could be stationed on former East German soil. This has also been confirmed by Gorbachev in his memoirs where he also confirms that the agreement was held by NATO. Furthermore, Gorbachev has confirmed that no other promises about NATO have been made to him at all.
But in the Kremlin and consequently also its mouht pieces spit on the truth even if there are no documents anywhere to support their lies. The truth is that it was the former occupied eastern countries that expanded westward by becoming members of NATO (and the EU). And those accessions were voluntary unlike the forced memberships of the Warsaw Pact and COMECON. The kremlin can never accept why NATO is so popular in countries that used to be occupied by it.
NATO prevented Milosevic from committing genocide against Kosovars.
Anyone who has followed the NATO debate over the years has been overwhelmed by claims from NATO opponents about NATO's massive bombing of civilians in Serbia. Aged protesters from the 1968 generation have been seen on TV ranting about NATO being a murderous organization waging war on civilians. Just as the Kremlin wants. In addition, it is alleged that NATO's actions took place without a UN mandate and in violation of the UN Charter.
These are, of course, lies. The US and NATO had long hesitated to intervene. In connection with the disintegration of Yugoslavia, heinous war crimes were committed by the warring sides, Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs. The worst were committed by the Serbs who murdered over 8.300 Bosnian boys and men in Srebrenica in 1995. The massacre led NATO to decide that further Serbian attacks on areas declared safe by the UN would be met with airstrikes. Obviously, the Serbs did not take this seriously and continued to shell civilians in the same way as happened in e.g. Sarajevo. After another artillery attack on the market in Sarajevo, NATO launched Operation Deliberate Force in cooperation with UN forces on the ground. Serbian military targets were bombed. Not civilians. The operation lasted two weeks and led to peace negotiations and a peace agreement, the Dayton Agreement, which was signed in Paris in December 1995.
Even though it was NATO’s jet fighters that led to the Dayton Agreement, Milosevic and his henchmen could not refrain from murdering Muslims. This time Kosovar Albanians in the until then Serbian province of Kosovo. The Dayton Agreement did not decide Kosovo’s status. That was to decided in the future. Big mistake. The province has great historical significance for Serbian nationalists who, supported by Milosovic, rejected the demands of the 90 percent Muslim Albanian population for independence or even autonomy. Miloovic decided to change that through ethnic cleansing and sent his forces on the largely unarmed Muslim population.
Milosevic probably hoped that NATO's member states would also this time demand that the effort be supported by a UN mandate and that China and the Kremlin would veto such a mandate. That hope would probably have materialized if his troops had not proceeded so brutally against the Muslim population. Barbaric attacks that left thousands dead and half a million refugees led to warnings from NATO and diplomatic efforts. Milosevic ignored the outside world and continued to slaughter Kosovar Albanians. Then the outside world and NATO had enough. NATO's political council, the North Atlantic Council, decided in the fall of 1998 on airstrikes unless Milosevic withdrew his forces and allowed the Kosovar Albanian population to return to their homes.
At first, Milosevic controlled himself. He agreed to NATO monitoring Kosovo by air. However, he changed his mind shortly thereafter and intensified the terror against the Kosovars. After further warnings from NATO and failed negotiations in Paris, NATO realized that Milosevic would not be deterred from committing genocide in Kosovo. Therefore, on March 24, 1999, NATO launched Operation Allied Force bombing of Serbian military targets in Kosovo and Serbia. The operation lasted until June 10 of the same year, i.e. for two and a half months. NATO has still a presence in Kosovo, a KFOR peacekeeping mission in Kosovo based on a United Nations Security Council mandate.
The operation naturally concentrated on military targets, but civilian targets were also bombed with civilian casualties as a result. However, not to the extent that the NATO opponents claim. Two bridges and a TV station are the most famous civilian targets bombed by NATO. Between 15 and 20 people died in the bombing of the TV station. That was a war crime. There is no point trying to deny that.
It is not surprising that China and the kremlin objected to NATO preventing a genocide of Muslims. Both regimes have murdered Muslims. Beijing mainly in East Turkistan, also known as Xinjiang and the kremlin in Chechnya and the Crimean Peninsula.
With the support of the UN Security Council, NATO intervened to prevent a genocide in Libya.
On February 26, 2011, UN resolution Resolution 1970 was adopted by a unanimous UN Security Council. In the discussions, Libya's defected UN ambassador was very committed to bringing about an intervention against Gaddafi's brutal abuse of the civilian population. The resolution condemned the Gaddafi regime's use of deadly violence against protesters. In addition, a series of sanctions were introduced and Khadaffi's regime was referred to the International Criminal Court. The resolution referred to the UN principle Responsibility to Protect. That principle empowers the international community to intervene to protect populations from brutal abuses such as in this case.
On March 1, 2011, Libya was kicked out of the UN Human Rights Council. It was the first time in the history of the UN that this happened. On March 17 of the same year, the UN adopted Resolution 1973. On March 17, 2011, UN Resolution 1973 was adopted. Five countries abstained from voting. Underpinned by the UN Charter, the resolution gave the international community the right to intervene militarily to protect Libya's civilian population. A no-fly zone over Libya was enforced.
To begin with, the operation in Libya was not a NATO operation. It was an operation by France, Great Britain and the United States with the United States taking a less active role. To improve coordination and logistics, etc., it was decided to convert it into a NATO operation. The operation was an air operation that lasted about seven months. Sweden participated as a partner country with aerial reconnaissance and intelligence, which contributed to the operation being a precision bombing with minimal civilian losses and damage to civilian infrastructure and housing. As a result of the operation, the dictator Khadaffi was overthrown and tens of thousands of lives were saved. Unfortunately, the UN failed to follow up the operation afterwards. This was not a NATO responsibility even if the kremlin and its mouth pieces want you to believe so. Due to the UN failure, the country has since been in chaos.
NATO did not wage a war against IRAQ. USA did with the help of Great Britain.
Period.
9/11, Article 5 of the NATO Charter and Afghanistan.
After the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001, the United States activated NATO's Article 5. The operation in Afghanistan came to be led by the United States. A number of countries participated, including Sweden as a partner country. The war in Afghanistan was justified by Article 51 of the UN Charter on self-defense and from the UN Security Council Resolution 1366 on 12 September.
The operation turned into a twenty-year-long war against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. NATO sometimes took on greater responsibility, including in the years when the US waged war against Iraq. In 2003, NATO took over command of ISAF (International Security Assistance Force), an international force.
NATO's efforts over the years increasingly turned to combating various Taliban insurgencies aimed at overthrowing Afghan governments. NATO's operation in Afghanistan ended with the shameful withdrawal in 2021. The Swedish participation in the operation is described here and here. A strange and substandard review of the Swedish effort in Afghanistan has been undertaken. One of the findings of this review was that the Swedish participation did not cause poverty to decrease in the country. How a long-term goal for the entire country could be achieved with such a limited effort as the Swedish one is beyond my understanding. Perhaps someone at the government office had entered such an objective for the effort and then the objective must be evaluated, no matter how stupid it is.
The reviews did however note improvements in health and education for women and children. Swedish soldiers thus made life better and safer for women and girls in the areas where they operated. It was, of course, a success. Unfortunately short-lived.
Since the withdrawal of NATO and the USA, the country is ruled by fanatics who seek cooperation with China and Russia, who in turn are interested in the country's raw material resources. As you know, these regimes could not care less about the welfare of Afghan women and girls.