NATO Summit next week creating self-serving threats: Howard

Next week, NATO leaders will meet at the Alliance’s new, $1.45 billion (!) HQ in Brussels to discuss what Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg all-knowingly defines as “the challenges of today and tomorrow.”

PeaceQuest Cape Breton’s Sean Howard says it’s a self-serving short list of threats – “Russia’s aggressive actions, the threat of terrorism, cyber attacks, emerging and disruptive technologies, the security impact of climate change, and the rise of China.”

But inexcusably, the list excludes the danger of nuclear war, or indeed the detrimental impact of astronomical military spending (almost $2 trillion in 2020, the Year of COVID!) on, for example, pandemic preparedness…

Leaders will also be charged with reviewing a report, NATO 2030: United for a New Era, published in November 2020 by a ‘Reflection Group’ appointed by Stoltenberg in the turbulent wake of President Trump’s description of NATO as “obsolete,” and French President Macron’s diagnosis of strategic “brain death.”

Howard says that NATO has forgotten the lessons of the Cold War. False narratives – and histories – can generate false consciousness, constraining or eliminating options for change.

• Read “Too Late to Shake NATO Awake?” by Sean Howard in the Cape Breton Spectator