Guest Post By Investigative Historian Eric Zuesse: NATO to Plan Invasion of China

-by Eric Zuesse

On November 27th, Germany’s Spiegel magazine, which is a reliable propaganda organ for America’s NATO military alliance against Russia, headlined (in German but autotranslated here) “Explosive reform proposals for NATO: There is life after ‘brain death’”, and made only passing mention there of NATO’s plan ultimately to ‘defend Europe against China’ (and not only against Russia); but, on December 1st, Russia’s Tass News Agency headlined more informatively and honestly, “China to become NATO’s second main enemy after Russia in next 10 years, report says”. So: NATO’s coming second coming, or life after ‘brain death’ (which was Macron’s phrase for NATO), will be for it to ratchet-up, from one central target for its aggressions, to two central targets.

As I have extensively documented in analyzing the data to determine “Is the U.S. actually a ‘police state’?”, today’s United States isn’t merely ‘a’ police state, but is the world’s leading police state, and yet its European allies-- which are far less dictatorial-- continue, obliviously, to ignore this reality. They refuse to quit their alliance with the world’s leading police state. They claim that they have to keep their alliance with the world’s leading police state, in order to ‘protect’ themselves against ‘Russian aggression’, but the only example they cite of such ‘aggression’ is Russia’s having resisted the U.S. regime’s plan, which was clearly in effect by no later than June of 2013, to grab Russia’s main naval base, which was, ever since 1783 (and still remains) in Sevastopol in Crimea, which then was in Ukraine (though only from 1954 to 2014, and inside Russia for hundreds of years before 1954), and to turn it into yet another U.S. naval base. Russia’s having taken the necessary self-defensive actions to prevent that grab by the U.S. regime was ‘Russian aggression’. Europe’s leaders are simply lying to their respective publics. NATO is strictly a military organization to boost military spending in U.S.-allied countries-- the U.S. regime’s vassal nations-- so that the profits of (mainly U.S.-based) military contractors such as Lockheed Martin and BAE will be boosted, at the expense of the deceived publics of European nations (as well as of America’s own population), which publics pay in their tax dollars for this boondoggle for those huge U.S.-and-allied armaments firms. To put it simply: NATO is an enormous sales-promotion organization for the benefit of owners of U.S.-and-allied armaments contractors-- the manufacturers of the weaponries of war.

However, NATO is actually more than that. For example, the lists of top donors to NATO’s main PR arm, The Atlantic Council, such as in 2018 and in 2020, show-- either by name, or by a corporation or foundation that is controlled by beneficiaries of the work of this sales-promotion organization for warfare-- practically all U.S-and-allied billionaires, but also include some mere centi-millionaires (such as Adrienne Arsht, whose late husband, Myer Feldman, had negotiated U.S. arms-sales to Israel, then founded a major law firm, and-- with his key government contacts-- became a very successful investor). A large portion of the U.S. economy is controlled by beneficiaries of the firms that sell to U.S.-and-allied governments, and many of them (unlike Feldman, who instead merely worked for billionaires) are heirs of America’s famous aristocratic families. These annual payments (tax-deductible donations) to NATO’s main PR arm are ‘charitable’ but no type of charity that benefits the public or anyone much outside U.S.-and-allied aristocracies. Instead, this is payment for services rendered, just as much as in any non non-profit corporation, such as ExxonMobil or Lockheed Martin (except: these are tax-deductible payments). So, even these payments to a ‘non-profit’ are actually payments for services rendered to themselves. They are sound business investments for these individuals, some of whom are even in NATO’s target-countries (instead of in its member-countries) and might help those billionaires to receive favorable treatment as exceptions if and when their countries become invaded by NATO (those donations might thus be considered as protection-money). An example, in the list of top donors in 2019, “$500,000 – $999,999 Donations,” which has three listees there, is “System Capital Management,” which is the Ukrainian Rinat Akhmetov, $6.4 billion. His coal mines were in the breakaway far-eastern Donbass part of Ukraine, which he didn’t want to lose, and so he was helping to fund those people who were defending themselves against the frequent invasions from the 2014 U.S.-supplied Ukrainian stooge regime, which was trying to conquer them. So, Akhmetov is, though in different ways, helping to fund both sides in that conflict. Also in that “$500,000 – $999,999” category is “Saab North America, Inc.,” which is Kai Johan Jiang, of both Sweden and China. And the third entity there, a Swiss firm (and Switzerland isn’t even a NATO member but instead ‘neutral’), “SICPA, provides more than 85% of the world's currency inks”, and this product is in people’s wallets as a result of their government’s paying that corporation-- so, maintaining favorable relations with U.S-and-allied governments is important, there, as well, even though the ink that is used to prevent counterfeiting isn’t specifically military. But most of the major donors to the Atlantic Council are U.S. billionaires and their organizations, and are specifically military-related.

Funding both sides in a war isn’t unusual for billionaires, because protection money is sometimes a necessary expense in a business-- especially in an international one.

All of these people need to stay on the ‘good’ side of NATO, because, if they fail to do that, then they might lose everything, and they know it. Donating to the Atlantic Council buys not only a type of insurance policy, but a tax-write-off, and also prestige.

The newly issued NATO report, “NATO 2030”, opens its “China” section with:

The scale of Chinese power and global reach poses acute challenges to open and democratic societies, particularly because of that country’s trajectory to greater authoritarianism and an expansion of its territorial ambitions. For most Allies, China is both an economic competitor and significant trade partner. China is therefore best understood as a full-spectrum systemic rival, rather than a purely economic player or an only Asia-focused security actor. While China does not pose an immediate military threat to the Euro-Atlantic area on the scale of Russia, it is expanding its military reach into the Atlantic, Mediterranean, and Arctic, deepening defence ties with Russia, and developing long-range missiles and aircraft, aircraft carriers, and nuclear-attack submarines with global reach, extensive space-based capabilities, and a larger nuclear arsenal. NATO Allies feel China’s influence more and more in every domain.

NATO is a treaty-organization, and therefore its decision to invade a country is made by one-or more of its member-nations. Its first invasion was in violation of NATO’s Charter because no member-nation had been attacked, and this was when the U.N. requested NATO into the Bosnian War on 6 February 1994, which the U.N. did because the U.N. wanted to invade but the Truman-shaped U.N. lacks the military forces that FDR had intended it to have-- Truman wanted the U.S. Government to be the policeman of the world, not the U.N. to be that. So: this invasion violated not only Truman’s NATO but FDR’s U.N., and it reflected the fundamental lawlessness of the international order in this Truman-made world, despite all of FDR’s plans and intentions.

NATO’s second invasion was when the U.N. requested NATO into the Croatian War of Independence on 19 November 1994. Again, both the Atlantic Charter and FDR’s intentions for the U.N. were being violated; so, the Truman-created international lawlessness was reaffirmed.

NATO’s third invasion was of Kosovo, when “On 13 April 1999, NATO approved plans for Operation Allied Harbour, a 10,000-troop NATO deployment to support humanitarian relief efforts for refugees resulting from the Serb expulsion of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo.” This-- NATO’s first ‘humanitarian’ invasion-- also violated both the Atlantic Charter and the U.N. Charter, but, this time, the U.N. had not requested the action; and, so, that is why the U.N.’s 23 October 2000 “Kosovo Report” made explicit this U.N.’s absurdity and irrelevance by asserting “The Commission concludes that the NATO military intervention was illegal but legitimate.”

After that-- regarding America and some of its NATO allies invading and conquering Iraq in 2003, and many other U.S. international gangland operations after the breakup of Yugoslavia-- brought out into the open this U.N.’s absurdity and irrelevance.

NATO’s first invasions occurred after the Soviet Union itself ended. The reasons for this is that, until that happened in 1991, NATO wasn’t able to invade without possibly thereby sparking a nuclear World War III, which would destroy the entire world-- including the U.S. The post-1991 mono-polar geostrategic world is the world of endless wars, endless invasions by the U.S. to impose its will throughout the world.

The decision to invade a nuclearly armed nation, such as Russia or China, would be fundamentally different than NATO’s prior invasions. NATO will actually be irrelevant to attacking Russia or China, except for its allowing America to post in its NATO vassal-nations U.S.-controlled nuclear weapons and therefore to cause any retaliation against an American nuclear attack to become a retaliatory counter-attack against not only America, but also against any such vassal-nation. In other words: any decision, on the U.S. side, to launch World War III, will be made by only one person, the U.S. President himself or herself. The NATO Charter (the Atlantic Charter) is no actual defense against anything, but it is, instead, the subservience of all non-U.S. members to the collective will of the U.S. aristocracy, and-or, of any idiotic or perhaps power-crazed U.S. President (such as George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump), the person who actually makes that decision.

Regarding the possibility that either Russia or China will launch WW III, it is zero, because the imperialistic power, which has routinely coup-conquered, or outright invaded and destroyed, nations, is-- and after WW II has always been-- only the United States. The list is long: Thailand 1948, Syria 1949, Iran 1953, Guatemala 1954, and all the way up till Iraq 2003, Libya 2011, Syria 2012-, Ukraine 2014, and others.

Right now, NATO’s hope to deceive their publics to believe that China’s Government during the modern (post-dynasties) era is an aggressive, imperialistic, Government, are issues concerning what had long been parts of China, such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Tibet. However, back at the end of World War II, when the ambivalent but basically neoconservative (i.e., U.S. imperialistic) American President Harry S. Truman endorsed the Chinese “nationalists” under Chiang Kai-shek, America was endorsing those nationalists’ claims to all of those traditionally Chinese territories-- including claims that were then being challenged by other U.S. allies, such as UK (Hong Kong). In other words: before the communist Chinese won China’s civil war on 1 October 1949 against the U.S.-backed nationalist Chinese, America was supporting instead of opposing China’s getting back the territories that it had lost; but, afterward, it opposed that, as being ‘Chinese aggression’. Now, NATO will be moving in, to intensify America’s aggressions against China.

During the periods of hereditary monarchs ruling in China and in Russia, there was such a thing as “Russian imperialism” and as “Chinese imperialism,” but those days are long-since over, and now the only real threat to the entire world is the U.S. Government. To be allied with it is to be a part of that imperialism, which is extremely real today-- far more real than ‘Russian imperialism’ or than ‘Chinese imperialism’. To be a part of that hyper-aggressive imperialism, which exists today, is to be a U.S.-stooge regime in international relations, and is therefore to be subject to whatever retaliation will come from any nuclearly armed independent nation such as Russia and such as China in the event that the U.S. regime will decide that the time has finally come to execute its unofficial but (since at least 2006) overarching geostrategic goal of winning WW III against both Russia and China (called “Nuclear Primacy”) so that it will rule the entire world as its realm, unchallenged and unchallengeable. If they believe in that, then it certainly isn’t for the benefit of their public, even if it might be for their own benefit, in profits of firms (ones whose profits depend mainly or only on sales to the U.S. Government and to the Governments that are allied to it) that they own, or benefit from in other ways. For example, since 2014, Amazon Web Services has supplied to the U.S. Government (CIA, Pentagon, NSA, etc.) its cloud-computing services, which has since produced virtually all of Amazon’s profits (also see “Cloud Business Drives Amazon’s Profits”), though Amazon doesn’t even so much as show up on that list of 100 top contractors to the U.S. Government; so, this extremely profitable business is more important to Jeff Bezos (the owner also of the Washington Post) than all the rest of his investments put together are, though Amazon doesn’t even show up on the list of top 100 U.S. Government contractors. In fact, more recently, Forbes reported that “Amazon Derives Most of its Profits from AWS”. A company doesn’t have to be among the top 100 sellers to the U.S. Government in order to be making, perhaps, even the majority of its profits from the U.S. Government. But this is a reason why the U.S. Government now spends approximately half of the entire planet’s military expenses. And to own also a major news-medium, such as the Washington Post (which has a long tradition of backing U.S. coups and invasions), places one in the position to shape the public’s perceptions, and not merely to profit from them.

NATO was supposed not to take on any new members after the Soviet Union, in 1991, ended its communism, and ended its Warsaw Pact which had been created in 1955 in response to America’s having created NATO in 1949; and which nation-- the Soviet Union-- itself broke up into 6 independent nations: Russia, Belorussia, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia. But the U.S. regime was simply lying about its intentions during that crucial period from 1989 to 1991, and now has absorbed all of the Warsaw Pact into its NATO alliance against Russia, and is even trying to get the Soviet Union’s 5 non-Russian states into its alliance to help conquer Russia-- and, now, also to conquer China. If the U.S. Government had not been negotiating in bad faith back in 1990, it would simply have ended its anti-Russian alliance immediately, when the Warsaw Pact ended in 1991. But, now, it is instead set upon expanding, so as to conquer the entire world, for the U.S. aristocracy. None of this is in the standard propagandistic ‘history’ books, and the U.S. regime still prohibits it from being included in any that get mass distribution. (For example, none of them mention that the Cold War was started by U.S. President Truman, upon the advice of General Dwight Eisenhower, on 26 July 1945.) By the time the public will know it (if that ever happens), it might already be too late. NATO’s now planning to invade China ought to be a wake-up call, but how many people, in the countries that are controlled by the U.S. regime, even know that any of this is happening, and has already happened?