DAVID SWANSON, david@davidswanson.org, @davidcnswanson
Swanson is executive director of World Beyond War and campaign coordinator for RootsAction. He will be speaking at a summit and rally this weekend, No to NATO, Yes to Peace, in Washington, D.C.
This comes just ahead of meetings early next week with heads of state that are members of the 75 year-old military alliance. Swanson’s books include the recently-released NATO: What You Need To Know co-authored with Medea Benjamin.
ANN WRIGHT, annw1946@gmail.com, @AnnWright46
Wright will also be speaking at the summit. She is a retired colonel who resigned from her position at the State Department over the invasion of Iraq. She recently wrote the piece “Is NATO Taking Over the Pacific?” for Covert Action Magazine. She writes: “As the United States increases its military confrontation with China through new military bases on Guam and the Philippines and more land, sea and air exercises with countries in the Asia-Pacific, the world’s largest naval war exercises are going to be held in the mid-Pacific from June 26 to August 2, 2024 — and NATO is in the middle of it. … Thirty percent of Rim of the Pacific [RIMPAC] naval forces are from NATO Europe.”
Other speakers at the summit include German Bundestag member Sevim Dagdelen, Sean Conner, executive director of the International Peace Bureau and Sheen Kim, co-chair of the Asia-Oceania subcommittee of the Democratic Socialist of America’s International Committee.
A host of resources are available on the summit’s website, including Swanson’s piece “Does NATO Promote Global Stability? No.” He also recently wrote the piece “What Does NATO Have to Do with the Genocide in GAZA?” In the piece “NATO Spreads Nuclear Weapons, Energy, and Risk,” Swanson writes: “Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty declares that NATO members will assist another member if attacked by ‘taking action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force.’ But the UN Charter does not say anywhere that warmaking is authorized for whoever jumps in on the appropriate side.”
In the piece “Confronting NATO’s War Summit in Washington,” Medea Benjamin writes: “The details of NATO’s agenda for the Washington summit were revealed at a NATO foreign ministers’ meeting in Prague at the end of May. NATO will drag its members into the U.S. Cold War with China by accusing it of supplying dual-use weapons technology to Russia, and it will unveil new NATO initiatives to spend our tax dollars on a mysterious ‘drone wall’ in the Baltics and an expensive-sounding “integrated air defense system” across Europe. … While President Biden and NATO leaders hold endless debates over different ways to escalate the war, they have repeatedly rejected peace negotiations, notably in April 2022, November 2022 and January 2024, even as their failed war plans leave Ukraine in an ever worsening negotiating position.”
