IRELAND, NATO AND
CRIMES AGAINST
HUMANITY:
Paper presented by Dr.Edward Horgan,
International Secretary, Irish Peace and Neutrality Alliance (PANA) and Shannonwatch
member , at the Stop the War International
Anti-War Conference, 30 November 2013 in London.
Irish Governments have continuously declared since 1939,
that Ireland is a neutral state, subject to the rules and obligations applicable to
neutral states under international law. In recent years the Government has attempted to re-define
neutrality in order to justify its entanglement in military alliances such as NATO
Partnership for Peace (PfP) and European Union (EU) battlegroups under the Common Foreign and
Security Policy (CFSP).
However, the rules are clearly defined in The Hague Convention1, Article 2 of which states that:
“Belligerents are forbidden to move troops or convoys of
either munitions of war or supplies across the territory of a neutral Power.”
Since October
2001 successive Irish Governments have allowed over two and half million armed U.S./NATO troops
and large quantities of war materials through Shannon airport on their way to and
from the Afghan and Iraq wars, in clear contravention of the customary international laws
on neutrality.
In addition, Ireland has been complicit in crimes against
humanity including torture by
allowing U.S. special forces and CIA “extraordinary
rendition” aircraft to refuel at Shannon airport while on special missions that we know did
include the torture of prisoners and may have included assassination missions in breach of
national and international laws.
Adding insult to collateral damage, Ireland has also
joined NATO’s so-called Partnership for Peace, an organisation designed to suck in neutral states
into NATO’s warmongering schemes. Not only has NATO become involved in
facilitating crimes against humanity, it has been doing this under the false pretence of promoting
international peace and claiming to honour the articles of the UN Charter. There is a certain
type of honesty for full NATO countries such as Britain and France to be engaged in
wars. These NATO countries could be described as ordinary decent international criminals
(ODCs in prison language) compared to neutral countries like Ireland complicit in war crimes
that should be described as despicable international criminals.
The main international warmongering organisation is NATO,
whose members have been acting both collectively and individually in breach of
international laws and conventions by perpetrating military aggression and crimes against
humanity on several continents, in the Balkans, Asia, the Middle East and Africa, in breach of
the UN Charter2.
1 The Hague Convention V
1907, Convention respecting the rights and duties of neutral powers and persons
in
case of war on land.
2 UN Charter Article 4.
“All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or
use of force
against the territorial
integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner
inconsistent with
the Purposes of the United
Nations.”
NATO has developed since 1949 from a military alliance of
just 12 states intended to protect Western Europe and the “North Atlantic” region from the
threat of Soviet communist military expansion. Now NATO has expanded to 28 members3, the same number as the EU, and 23 members of the EU are also full members of NATO.
Most of this expansion has taken place since 1990 when NATO should have been declared
redundant. Practically all other European states except Switzerland and Cyprus have been
tied in to NATO’s coat-tails with the so-called Partnership for Peace (PfP). NATO is still
seeking to expand further and to entice in several more permanent members with the
apparent objective of pushing NATO’s boundaries right up to and around Russia.4
But, NATO’s ambition does not stop in Europe and it is no longer confined to the North Atlantic as its
name implies. It is now seeking to entice so-called partnership states in North Africa, and
worldwide, and in so doing is usurping the role of the United Nations. There is no
longer a defensive military need for NATO, so its main purpose is to protect the national
interests of the world’s elite group of states, and it is prepared to engage in resource wars to
achieve this. It does so under the false guise of “humanitarian intervention”, and sometimes
cites the “responsibility to protect” theories espoused by the United Nations in
recent years.
Since the Al Qaeda attacks on the U.S. in 2001, the U.S. and its allies have
been using and abusing this atrocity to justify a war of revenge in Afghanistan and a resource
war in Iraq. The discourses of security and stability are used to hide the real purposes
of such military aggression, which include maintaining the existing international order (or
disorder), which favours the Western elite states, and which was copper-fastened in
1945 by the veto powers given to the UN Security Council permanent members.
It is worth examining some key articles in the NATO
charter:
NATO Charter Article 1: The Parties undertake, as set
forth in the Charter of the United Nations, to settle any international dispute in which
they may be involved by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and
security and justice are not endangered, and to refrain in their international
relations from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United
Nations.
Clearly NATO has been in gross breach of this Article
since its 1999 attacks on Kosovo and Serbia, and its invasions and occupations of Afghanistan
and Iraq, its bombing campaign in Libya, French led military interventions in Chad and
Mali, drone attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and targeted assassinations
wherever it suits President Obama to decide on his Tuesday morning assassination conferences.
NATO Charter Article 2:
In order more effectively to
achieve the objectives of this Treaty, the Parties, separately and jointly, by means of continuous
and effective self-help and mutual aid,
will maintain and develop their individual and collective
capacity to resist armed attack.
This article seems to have been written by or for the
benefit of the military industrial
complexes (MICs). The arms industries are in the business
of profiteering from human
misery and war crimes. Any unjustified war of aggression
and all wars that are not
specifically approved by the UN Security Council are in
breach of this Article.
NATO Charter Article 5:
The Parties agree that an armed
attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an
attack against them all …
This is the Three Musketeers Article, all for one and one
for all. This includes any attack on overseas territories occupied by NATO members. In theory
if Spain occupied Gibraltar, Spain would have to assist the UK to repel its own occupation
forces. That’s military logic. Also other NATO states should have assisted the UK in the
Falklands War. In reality, French Exocet missiles were used against UK warships.
NATO’s original purpose was achieved by 1990 when the
Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact military alliance disintegrated and it should have been
retired. However, large bureaucracies specially those involved in the military industrial
complexes never retire voluntary, they have to be put down by the people or else they will put
the people down. We have seen that the Egyptian military, ever since Nasser and his
group of officers seized power, have
almost continuously held on to power in the meantime
except for the very brief period during which President Morsi was the democratically
elected president of Egypt, before being deposed brutally by the Egyptian military, with
support from their US backers and funders. The “Arab Democratic Spring” was poisoned and
destroyed by the corrupt Egyptian military industrial complex with the connivance of the
U.S. whose taxpayers provide large military funding to Egypt. The US taxpayer also funds the
Israeli military, so it’s great for the MICs when every decade or so, there is an Arab/Israeli
war which destroys lots of military hardware. Like Egypt, the Pakistani military have
developed their own even more all-encompassing MIC. They have held power in Pakistan overtly or covertly
almost since independence, overthrowing and sometimes killing civilian
leaders who dare to challenge their power. They also are supported and funded lavishly
by the US Government. The term “deep state” has been used to describe such underlying
abuses of power in dictatorial states, but it also applies to Western democracies which
are increasingly being controlled and manipulated by vested interests that include their
security and military establishments.
NATO to a certain extent, did protect Western Europe from
threat of Soviet Union
expansion throughout the Cold War, except of course that
this was at the expense of
terrorising humanity with the real threat of nuclear
holocaust, and very likely by
exaggerating the Soviet threat. The NATO Charter gave it
a very clear and very limited
mission to protect and defend its member states with no
authority to take action against any other state that was not attacking a NATO member
state. Instead of retiring a redundant NATO in 1990, it continued in existence so as
to justify the continuing existence of the military industrial complexes in the US and
Europe. Cynical words such as “interoperability” are being used to justify additional
military spending on newer weapons, in spite of the fact that the older weapons kill just as
effectively. In fact the oversupply of weapons presents a problem for the MICs, because the
flood of weapons available throughout the world means that new weapons might be
unnecessary. To overcome this problem, wars are needed to destroy the old weapon
stocks, necessitating the purchase of new weapons.
The possibility of NATO redundancy spelled disaster for
the MICs, so the Kosovo war was engineered through the collapsing of the Rambouillet
Peace conference by the U.S. That gave NATO the unjustified excuse to engage in war beyond
its charter and in breach of the UN charter also. In the meantime NATO has been making war
almost continuously in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and in parts of Pakistan, Yemen
and Somalia. When the NATO dogs of war were let loose, it seems there was no recall
mechanism because three of NATO’s leaders, the US, UK and France, are outside the rule of
international law and the UN Charter by the trick they gave themselves with their UN veto powers.
In the meantime, NATO and its principal rogue state
members have been dragging
additional new states into its coalition of complicity,
just as successful ordinary criminals as well as war criminals will do in order to conceal or
share the guilt of their own criminality. Georgia was encouraged into an unwinnable war with Russia
in 2008 with NATO membership as a carrot. The people of Ukraine are at
present experiencing civil strife over conflicting demands for closer ties with the EU and NATO
on the one hand and Russia on the other. In reality, Ukraine should be a bridge of neutral
peace between the East and West. We in the peace movement must not underestimate the power
and resources of the forces of evil we are up against or their cunning ability to operate
as sheep in wolves clothing. NATO’s Partnership for Peace is one such wolf and so is
that international smokescreen for war that is now called “humanitarian intervention”5. The Afghan, Iraqi and Libyan peoples all have experienced just how murderous this
“humanitarian” intervention has been. The
dogs of war will not lie down, they must be put down, and
that will take a huge and a very concerted effort by a well organised peace movement. That
does not necessarily mean a Uno Duce, Uno Voce, type of mass movement. I believe that
far greater strength and results can be achieved by peace activists acting more as a bunch
of cats than as a herd of sheep.
Some examples include Bradley/Chelsea Manning, Wikileaks
Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, and many other individuals and groups acting
individually, and in cohort when it suits, overcoming the forces of the military industrial
complexes by unconventional and asymmetric peace-fare. We must all be prepared to serve
time for such a justified cause in various ways including, if necessary, time behind bars.
It is important also to realise that NATO is a
multi-headed hydra. The NATO dogs of war are not confined within a carefully controlled set of leashes
as all vicious dogs should be. The term “coalition of the willing” is used by NATO to enable
NATO’s principal states to engage either in resource wars either in large coalitions such
as ISAF in Afghanistan, or smaller acts of aggression pursuing national interests of particular
NATO states such as the French led “humanitarian” missions in Chad, Central African Republic
and Mali, or even individual NATO states pursuing their own very questionable national
interests such as the United States carrying out carelessly targeted assassinations
using special forces and drones. When you lie down with the dogs of war, you don’t just wake up
with fleas, you wake up with a type of H.I.V., the Horrors of International Violence.
This NATO type of international disease has its origins
in the very flawed foundation of the UN in 1945, when the five self-appointed permanent
members of the United Nations, China, USSR, USA, UK, and France gave themselves unlimited
powers of veto at the UN, thereby placing themselves above and beyond the rule and
sanctions of international laws. Three of these states, UK, USA and France are the leading states
in NATO, and now we are increasingly seeing them joined by Germany which is being
described as the G5+1. This device is being used to give Germany the equivalent of a
UN veto also, which results in Europe having 2+1 permanent members in the UN, while
India, the largest democracy in the world, with over twice the population of all of Europe
has the same voting powers in the UN as Lichtenstein. Such an elitist divided world is a
recipe for long term disaster.
The primary role of NATO is to maintain this elitist divided world,
and to maintain Africa in particular not only in relative poverty but also in a semi-permanent
state of conflict and corruption, so as to more easily extract an undue share of African
resources for Europe and the West. That is the real cynical and vicious purpose of NATO’s existence
since the end of the Cold War. Of course there are security and stability concerns
nationally and internationally but these can and should be addressed more appropriately, first by
enhancing the rule of international law, and then by increasing international and global
cooperation rather than the
confrontation that NATO expansion and aggression has been
creating. Most importantly, justice, including restorative justice, must be pursued
and achieved so as to right some of the injustices that have been and are being perpetrated
on the disadvantaged peoples of the world.
3 At present, NATO has 28 members. In 1949, there were 12 founding members of the Alliance:
Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal,
the United Kingdom and the United States. The other member countries are: Greece and Turkey
(1952), Germany (1955), Spain (1982), the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland (1999), Bulgaria,
Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia (2004), and Albania and Croatia (2009).
4 Currently, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Montenegro and the former Yugoslav Republic of
Macedonia¹ are aspiring members.5 Comment: Of course not
all humanitarian interventions are fraudulent ones, particularly in the cases
of
natural disasters such as
earthquakes and severe storms. There has also been an urgent need for properly
controlled humanitarian
interventions ever since the foundation of the UN, in cases of gross crimes
against
humanity such as Rwanda in
1994 and Cambodia 1975-78. Yet the international community has failed to act in
such cases because the most
influential states either had “no dog in the race”, or were pursuing their own
national interests by
interfering inappropriately in such disasters, as France did in Rwanda.
France, as a NATO and EU member, is perceived as one of
the most respected democracies in the world. Rwanda is frequently quoted by military
interventionists as justification for their wars, aerial bombings and drone attacks. Yet our fellow
EU member, France, played a disgraceful role in arming and protecting the genocidal
Rwanda Government not only before the genocide but also while the genocide was occurring,
and it engineered a special UN approved mission called Operation Turquoise, composed
mainly of French Para troops, whose purpose was rescue the defeated Rwandan army and
engineer their escape into the Congo where they are still causing havoc, all in the
interests of preserving French interests in Francophone Africa. An examination of all the former
French African colonies reveals that virtually none of them have evolved into stable
democratic states. Most of them are
corrupt, violent, neo-colonial client states of France,
and many of them are minority military dictatorships. The Central African Republic (CAR) with
its gold and uranium mineral resources is one of the worst examples of French colonial
and neo-colonial abuses. It has descended once again into chaos in recent weeks with a
danger of genocide according to UN officials. France as usual is increasing the number of
its troops in CAR to protect French interests.6
When we are all hopefully protesting at the NATO summit
in Wales next year let us
remember that we are protesting towards achieving the
ideals of Liberty, Equality and
Fraternity, not for our so-called North Atlantic friends,
but Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, for the peoples of Iraq, Afghanistan, all of Africa and
the Middle East, and every region where people are being exploited by North Atlantic
predators, in our name. But most of all, we must be protesting and campaigning for global justice.
Being opposed to war is good, but is not enough. Peace is not just the absence of war.
Peace without justice is just a temporary cease fire. Humanity does need security and stability
just as every town and village needs a considerate and appropriate police agency. The United
Nations should be such a world police force, but it never has been, because the five
founding members set themselves up as the “five policemen”, when they wrote the UN Charter and
gave themselves immunity and impunity by placing themselves above international law.
Reform of the UN is not enough. It
urgently needs to be either transformed or replaced, and
NATO must never be seen as a surrogate or replacement for the UN.
Small neutral European states such as Ireland, Austria,
Sweden, Finland and Malta, should work together to initiate such substantial UN
transformation, and should begin by abandoning their associations with NATO, and opting out
of other military commitments such as EU battlegroups.
Next year, on the centenary of WW1 we will have sickening
celebrations and glorifications of this most stupid war. WW1 was a prime example of the
psychological reprogramming whereby soldiers are trained to obey senseless orders
unquestionably, so that when they are required to do something that to a normal thinking
human being is stupidly dangerous, the soldier obeys his orders, regardless of common sense.
When he is killed he will of course get a military medal of honour, and, provided there are
enough body parts to bury, he will get a military funeral, with full military honours.
The
WW 1 victims did not die honourably for their country, they died needlessly and stupidly so
as to preserve the elite status of the elite. Civilian populations are subjected to separate
propaganda programming in favour of war. In recent wars Western soldiers are dying needlessly
trying to support undemocratic
governments in Iraq and Afghanistan some of whose
ministers include drug barons, child molesters and gross human rights abusers. In the Afghan
case the NATO soldiers will know that the government they have been dying for will be
replaced by the Taliban within weeks of NATO withdrawal in 2014. Echoing the words of
Thucydides over 2000 years ago, In Iraq and Afghanistan NATO has created deserts and called them
peace.
In our quest for peace and opposition to war we must also
take care not to adopt the
attitude that if we can’t beat them then we should join
in the violence or encourage others to do so, by engaging in civil wars. The present civil
war in Syria and civil wars elsewhere including past civil wars in Ireland are disastrous.
Justice cannot be created by killing people. Peace must be nurtured by peaceful means and by enhancing
the rule of law and by accountability.
During a recent visit to Cardiff, David Cameron, the
British prime minister, said: "It's the end of Afghan mission and important to reflect on the future
of Nato."7 I disagree with David Cameron. NATO must have no future, it is well past its
sell by date.
We must actively campaign for the dismantling of NATO and
for the transformation of the United Nations into a proper and genuine organisation for
world peace, in which no UN member state can be above international law, whereby they
can, and do, commit crimes against humanity with impunity.
6 Washington Post 27
November 2013: The Central African Republic descending into ‘complete chaos’.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/the-central-african-republic-descending-into-completechaos/
2013/11/26/35f71348-5394-11e3-9e2c-e1d01116fd98_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines
7 the Guardian, November 25, 2013.
(Dr Edward Horgan served as a Commandant in the Irish Army, but since retiring
has been active in the Irish and International Peace Movement. He also works
with the OSCE in supervising elections in various countries throughout the world).
Dr Edward Horgan, with protest banner, outside the main Terminal Building
at Shannon Airport, Co. Clare, Ireland.
