Next Wednesday, a rare joint session of Congress will hear a speech by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg -- the day after Donald Trump is scheduled to welcome him at the White House to officially "underscore the importance of the Alliance."
NATO began 70 years ago with an announced mission of being a defensive alliance of Western European nations, Canada and the United States. But in recent decades, NATO has been
a destabilizing and deadly force -- with large-scale military interventions in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Libya -- while
more and more countries have become NATO members.
The NATO expansion “is the largest and fastest growth of a ‘sphere of influence’ (American) in modern peacetime history,” Russia scholar Stephen F. Cohen writes in his new book
War With Russia?: From Putin & Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate. “Throughout the process, with
hypocrisy that does not go unnoticed in Moscow, Russia has been repeatedly denounced for seeking any sphere of security of its own, even on its own borders.”
Just days ago,
NATO confirmed that it intends to bring into military membership yet another country on the Russian border -- Georgia. But before that dangerous change can take effect, the U.S. Senate must vote on it.
That’s where you come in. To quickly send emails to your senators -- telling them to vocally oppose bringing Georgia into NATO -- click here.The historical record is clear. After the 1990 reunification of Germany, the first Bush administration promised that NATO would move “not one inch eastward.” (Background information below provides details.) But during the last three decades,
NATO has added 13 countries and now is up against Russia’s borders.NATO expansion has made the world less secure. Cohen’s book points out: “
The alliance’s incessant, ubiquitous media saturation and lobbying in Western capitals, particularly in the United States, has been a major driving force behind the new Cold War and its rampant Russophobia. One result has been the near-end of American diplomacy toward Russia and the almost total militarization of U.S.-Russian relations.”
Cohen adds: “This alone is a profound source of insecurity -- including the possibility of war with Russia.”
The United States and Russia combined have more than 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons.
We must reduce the chances of unfathomable nuclear catastrophe by reversing the momentum of conflict between the two countries -- conflict that has been greatly increased by NATO expansion.
In less than a minute, you can
tell your senators to put a stop to the dangerous expansion of NATO.
After signing the petition,
please use the tools on the next webpage to share it with your friends.
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-- The RootsAction.org Team
P.S. RootsAction is an independent online force endorsed by Jim Hightower, Barbara Ehrenreich, Cornel West, Daniel Ellsberg, Glenn Greenwald, Naomi Klein, Bill Fletcher Jr., Laura Flanders, former U.S. Senator James Abourezk, Frances Fox Piven, Lila Garrett, Phil Donahue, Sonali Kolhatkar, and many others.
Background:
>>
Stephen F. Cohen, War With Russia?: From Putin & Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate>>
No to War -- No to NATO: Claims vs. Realities>>
Stephen F. Cohen, The Nation: “Have 20 Years of NATO Expansion Made Anyone Safer?”>>
National Security Archive: “NATO Expansion: What Gorbachev Heard -- Declassified Documents Show Security Assurances Against NATO Expansion”>>
NATO Watch: “How Gorbachev Was Misled Over Assurances Against NATO Expansion”>>
Video -- Former Senator Bill Bradley: “Russia and NATO”
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