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TAMARA LORINCZ

Earlier this month, Minister Chrystia Freeland went to Washington, D.C. to attend the foreign ministers’ meeting and the 70th-anniversary celebration for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Back at home, hundreds of Canadians rallied against NATO in Victoria, Vancouver, Calgary, Regina, Ottawa, Toronto, Hamilton and Halifax. Across the country, people are beginning to challenge Canada’s continued participation in this troubled transatlantic alliance that has a ruinous post-Cold War record.

The current chaos in Libya is a direct result of NATO’s disastrous military intervention in 2011. At the time, the U.S. and NATO allies rejected the African Union’s roadmap for a peaceful resolution, which was supported by Col. Moammar Gadhafi, to the internal crisis occurring in the country.

Instead, NATO launched a bombing campaign commanded by Canadian Lieut.-Gen. Charles Bouchard. Human Rights Watch reported that over 7,700 precision-guided bombs were dropped, killing hundreds of civilians in seven months.

NATO also supported and armed the rebels who killed Gadhafi in 2011 and who are fighting today to overthrow the United Nations-backed government in Tripoli. The rebel commander, Khalifa Haftar, a Libyan-American who lived for two decades in Virginia near the CIA headquarters, attempted a coup three years ago. NATO’s intervention eight years ago has instigated the current violent conflagration in Libya and has also led to a refugee and humanitarian crisis across North Africa and the Mediterranean Sea.

Twenty years ago, NATO, including Canada, launched airstrikes against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia without the United Nations Security Council’s authorization. Over 10,000 bombs were dropped during the 78-day campaign, destroying civilian infrastructure. Between 500 and 2,000 innocent Serbian civilians were killed and over 200,000 Serbians were displaced from their homes.

Canada's former ambassador to Yugoslavia, James Bissett, argued at that time that NATO’s bombing of Serbia was a flagrant violation of international law and that Canada had committed a war crime. Bissett was subsequently barred from entering the Canadian embassy in Belgrade and from talking to his diplomatic colleagues by then Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy.

Despite 18 years in Afghanistan, NATO’s mission has been an abject failure and the Taliban continue to control vast swaths of the country. The NATO-trained Afghan army and police force are highly inefficient and corrupt. The illegitimate central government is composed of warlords who were funded and armed by Western forces during the long war, such as notorious strongman Abdul Rashid Dostum, who is vice-president. Canada’s 12-year combat operation with NATO in Afghanistan has been tarnished by allegations of torture and war crimes.

Under NATO’s auspices, Canada is currently commanding a NATO battle group in Latvia and training military personnel in the Ukraine. Last fall, Canada participated in Operation Trident Juncture, the largest NATO war exercise, along Russia’s border. The alliance force projections and expansions are dangerously provoking Russia and inflaming a new Cold War.

NATO’s heavy hitters, the United States, the United Kingdom and France, are spending billions to modernize their nuclear arsenals. It is because of our membership in NATO that Canada and other allies have refused to join the new UN Treaty to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons. The transatlantic alliance’s reliance on these weapons of mass destruction is a serious risk to our common security.

Under the 2014 Wales Summit Declaration, NATO allies committed to increase their defence budgets to two per cent of GDP by 2024. Last year, the 29 NATO members spent over $1 trillion on their militaries. By contrast, since 2014, Russia has reduced its defence budget by 20 per cent and spends only $66 billion per year on its military. NATO’s intense pressure on members to disproportionately increase their military spending diverts precious public funds away from urgent social and environmental needs.

In a 2017 interview with Carleton University, Bissett said that NATO’s bombing of Serbia established a dangerous pattern that has been followed in Iraq, Libya, Syria and the Ukraine. This pattern of aggressive NATO intervention, he added, is “the greatest threat to peace and security that we face today.”

Thus, Canadians are rightly challenging our membership in NATO, a transatlantic alliance that violates international law and undermines the UN. Since the end of the Cold War, NATO’s military interventions have fuelled instability and insecurity in Eastern Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.

In 1949, Canada was one of the 12 founding members of NATO; it should now be the first country to withdraw. Canada should instead work diplomatically with the international community on disarmament, climate change and the sustainable development goals, the most pressing human security challenges we are all facing.

Halifax native Tamara Lorincz is a board member, Canadian Voice of Women for Peace, and a PhD candidate, Balsillie School of International Affairs, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ont.