In April 2021, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg explained why it is necessary to amend Article 5 of NATO’s statutes: NATO should be allowed to intervene with weapons, even if no attack on a NATO country with weapons has taken place. NATO should be allowed to decide for itself when it is entitled to attack based on disinformation, cyber-attacks or other activities. Russian President Vladimir Putin has heard, understood and learned from this – and he has done just that: due to NATO’s eastward expansion, the installation of missile bases in Eastern Europe, the anti-Russian coup on the Maidan in Kiev, the desired and already well advanced so-called interoperability of NATO troops with the Ukrainian armed forces and, of course, the refusal of security guarantees in December 2021, he decided on February 24, 2022, to intervene militarily. The article published on Globalbridge.ch 0n 2nd April 2021 is therefore repeated here once again.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg during his acceptance speech to NATO troops and veterans, where he once again claims that NATO prevents conflicts and keeps the peace. (Screenshot NATO)
NATO: from defense alliance to attack pact
NATO was founded in 1949 as a defense alliance against the Soviet Union. Now it also wants to be allowed to attack preventively.
In 1949, four years after the end of the Second World War, the USA, Canada, and ten Western European countries founded NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Their task was clear: joint defense in the event of an attack by the Soviet Union. Greece and Turkey also joined in 1952. And on May 9, 1955, three years later, West Germany also joined NATO. It was only now that the Soviet Union and the nine Central and Eastern European states under its influence reacted and founded the Warsaw Pact on May 14, 1955, five days later.
The purpose of NATO was clearly defined in Article 5 of the founding 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 and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in the exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defense recognized by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.
Any such armed attack and all measures taken as a result thereof shall immediately be reported to the Security Council. Such measures shall be terminated when the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to restore and maintain international peace and security.»
Article 6
«For the purpose of Article 5, an armed attack on one or more of the Parties is deemed to include an armed attack:
– on the territory of any of the Parties in Europe or North America, on the Algerian Departments of France 2, on the territory of Turkey or on the Islands under the jurisdiction of any of the Parties in the North Atlantic area north of the Tropic of Cancer; – on the forces, vessels, or aircraft of any of the Parties, when in or over these territories or any other area in Europe in which occupation forces of any of the Parties were stationed on the date when the Treaty entered into force or the Mediterranean Sea or the North Atlantic area north of the Tropic of Cancer.»
The short version of these provisions: If there is an armed attack on one NATO member, it is like an armed attack on several or all NATO countries, which is why all NATO members then jointly repel the armed attack.
Everything is different now
On March 25, 2021, the US “University South Florida” in Tampa Florida and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg held an online conference lasting just over an hour. The lecturers and students had the opportunity to ask Stoltenberg questions, and Stoltenberg was ready to answer. Stoltenberg explained the following (from minute 24): It used to be simple, it was either peace or war.
That is why Article 5 of the founding treaty states that NATO must respond to armed attacks. Today, things are very different: there is disinformation, cyber-attacks, and hybrid warfare. NATO must therefore reformulate Article 5: NATO should also be allowed to respond to such attacks, i.e. non-armed attacks in the original sense of the word. And Jens Stoltenberg also emphasized that NATO is not just a military alliance, but above all a political one.
With this new understanding of “armed attack” propagated by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, NATO is giving itself a free pass to pre-emptively attack another country – specifically Russia or China. After all, disinformation, cyber-attacks, and hybrid warfare have been going on for years and in all directions. And nothing is clear: if, for example, a member of the Israeli secret service Mossad hacks the IT system of the Swiss technology group RUAG from a hotel in Moscow, this can easily be “identified” as a Russian cyber attack.
Stoltenberg is also distorting history
In this online conference, it was also hardly surprising that the NATO Secretary General once again emphasized that NATO’s eastward expansion was not a provocation against Russia and not a threat to Russia (in the video from minute 8.30). NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg also knows that the highly renowned US historian and US diplomat specializing in Russia, George F. Kennan, expressly warned in the New York Times in February 1997, a few days after Bill Clinton’s second inauguration, against NATO’s eastward expansion in Europe. Kennan in 1997: “Our opinion is, quite frankly, that NATO enlargement would be the most disastrous mistake in American policy since the Cold War.” But US President Bill Clinton was not impressed and gave the green light for eastward enlargement. With exactly the consequences predicted by George F. Kennan.
And what does climate change mean for NATO?
Naturally, a USF student also wanted to know how NATO would tackle climate change. Stoltenberg confirmed that climate change was also a “challenge” – the euphemistic synonym for the word “problem” – for NATO. For example, according to Stoltenberg, the sea ports used by NATO warships would have to be rebuilt due to rising sea levels (in the video from minute 44). (Three days earlier, at a media conference in Brussels and in the presence of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Stoltenberg had already explained that climate change is a major challenge for NATO, for example for the combat suits that have to be adapted to more extreme weather conditions). And what about the millions of people whose current habitat will be submerged due to rising sea levels? Not an issue for NATO.
The changes to NATO’s strategy are known as “NATO 2030”. Question: Who has the authority to approve these serious changes? The war and defense ministers of the member states? The governments of the member states? Or will the parliaments of the member states also have a say, which is urgently needed?
It is worth listening carefully when NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg is talking to politicians, media representatives or even students. But you can’t sleep any better afterwards.
My article, which was published on Infosperber at the time, ends here.
And today, what has changed since February 24, 2022?
It is becoming increasingly clear that Putin has decided nothing other than what NATO has propagated and programmed: to be allowed to attack preemptively with military means, even if one has first been provoked with military installations and other activities and has not yet been attacked with traditional weapons (see Jens Stoltenberg in March 2021 from minute 24):
– Thanks to a wiretapped phone call from US Ukraine representative Victoria “Fuck EU” Nuland, it is known that the USA interfered in Ukrainian politics even before the coup on the Maidan in Kiev, spending over five billion US dollars.
– In 2013/14, the USA exerted intensive influence on the Maidan, including a personal appearance by the most prominent US senator at the time, McCain, on the Maidan speaker’s platform.
– After the coup on the Maidan, the USA de facto decided the composition of the new government (including four members of the neo-Nazi party Svoboda) by ousting the democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych.
– The USA subsequently helped to equip the Ukrainian army on a large scale and to train the troops, as US generals not only confirm today, but are even proud of it.
– NATO, which is controlled by the USA, entered into a “partnership” with Ukraine long before 2014. Ukraine was supported by NATO in dozens of special programs (read in detail here). It was always about so-called “interoperability”, making the NATO army and the Ukrainian army “compatible” so that they can work together perfectly in the event of war. For example, the hierarchy levels in the Ukrainian army were aligned with the NATO hierarchy levels and Ukrainian officers had to learn English in order to understand NATO orders.
– Missile launch bases have been established in Poland and Romania, which can be used to fire nuclear-armed missiles at Russia.
– More and more gigantic NATO maneuvers with thousands of soldiers flown in from the USA have been carried out in the north and south, specifically on the Russian border.
– As is now becoming increasingly visible in Ukraine, immense military installations have been set up in the south-east of Ukraine on the border with the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk, which have declared their independence.
– The bombardment of the Russia-friendly regions of Donetsk and Lugansk became increasingly massive in 2021.
– The security guarantees demanded by Russia in December 2021 as a result of all these developments were flatly refused by the USA and NATO.
To put it in the words of NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg: NATO has not yet attacked Russia with traditional weapons by February 24, 2022, but has massively provoked and threatened it with x serious measures: it has created precisely the situation in which NATO wants to be entitled to attack pre-emptively according to the future NATO statutes! According to Stoltenberg, it wants to have the right to decide for itself when it may attack. (Minute 27: “We will never tell our enemies when we ‘activate’ Article 5.”)
Remember: on June 5, 1967, the Israeli air force launched a pre-emptive strike (!) against the Egyptian air bases, starting the war that went down in history as the “Six-Day War” – and Israel was internationally acclaimed for this “clever” pre-emptive strike. The USA has started several wars pre-emptively, and other NATO states have often been involved. But when Putin – in accordance with the NATO doctrine that it must be able to decide for itself when a pre-emptive strike is due – when Putin decides that it is too dangerous to wait until NATO attacks Russia with traditional weapons, that a pre-emptive strike by Russia is appropriate now, then all Western and not least all NATO states scream that Putin attacked Ukraine “unprovoked” – supported by most Western major media. This is pure hypocrisy in plain language.
But just in the last few days at the end of 2023, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg gave a speech of thanks to NATO members and veterans in which he once again claimed that NATO prevents conflicts and guarantees peace. The historical reality is completely different!
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This article was first published in Globalbridge
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Related article: Inconvenient Truths About NATO That Their Mainstream Media Partners Don’t Want You To Know.