U.S. TO PUSH NATO EXPANSION AT PRAGUE SUMMIT
By Heather Cottin

With a summit on NATO expansion set for Nov. 21 and 22 in
Prague, leaders in the Czech Republic are hurriedly assuring
Washington that they are its best friends in Eastern Europe.
This is ominous for the people of countries now in line to
join the U.S.-dominated military alliance. Reuters reported
Nov. 11 that NATO Secretary-General George Robertson has
"left open the possibility of a role for the alliance in a
military strike on Iraq, saying this would be among options
considered at a summit in Prague."

Meanwhile, the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia has
called for an anti-NATO summit of European parties on Nov.
19, and an anti-NATO demonstration in Prague the next day.

At a meeting last spring in Reykjavik, Iceland, NATO passed
a U.S.-sponsored resolution that said the alliance "must be
able to field forces that can move quickly to wherever they
are needed." This decree "was done by stealth, but everyone
was conscious of its significance," said a Western European
ambassador to NATO. (Washington Post, Nov. 5)

So the next stage is expansion, and not just in terms of
NATO membership. Washington hopes to use troops from other
NATO countries to help patrol the world-from Afghanistan to
Iraq and beyond. For Washington, the Eastern European
countries especially are modern colonies expected to supply
young workers as cannon fodder.

The Prague summit may add as many as seven new members--
Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and
Slovenia--to NATO. Washington plans to create a "multi-
national rapid deployment force of about 21,000 troops that
would allow NATO to operate quickly and effectively against
new enemies far from Europe," reported the Post.

Washington hopes for "a military action against Iraq [to]
provide an early test of sentiment for operations well
beyond Europe." That translates into using NATO for U.S.
expansionist plans outlined in the Bush Doctrine.

NATO'S HISTORY AND ROLE

The NATO military alliance was primarily seen as a threat to
the USSR and its Eastern European allies. However, it also
was meant to defend Western European capitalism against
popular workers' uprisings. Right after World War II, such
uprisings and even Communist electoral victories in France,
Italy and Greece were conceivable; such a possibility
emerged again in Portugal in 1974-1975.

Throughout NATO's history, Washington portrayed it as a
defensive alliance. A senior Bush official recently
admitted, however, "the goal of territorial defense of
Europe is no longer relevant."

So is that the end of NATO? No. NATO is now bigger than
ever.

What is NATO's current function? Can it be used to support
the U.S. ruling class's "endless war" expansionist goals?

The United States used NATO in the breakup of Yugoslavia,
specifically in 1993-1995 in Bosnia, and then in the full-
fledged bombing assault on Yugoslavia in 1999. That
operation, on territory outside the boundaries of any NATO
country, was unprecedented.

HAVEL'S ROLE IN THE NEW NATO

Czech President Vaclav Havel was portrayed in the West as
the gentle leader of a "velvet revolution" when the
socialist regime there was overthrown. But Havel has
publicly embraced not only the expansion of NATO but also
U.S. plans for a war on Iraq.

One of Havel's opponents, Czech Sen. Richard Falbr,
commented: "He is always the first president to back up what
Bush says. His statement [supporting the war in Iraq] is
nonsense and on a par with his remark that Yugoslavia was
bombed for humanitarian reasons." (Postmark Prague, Oct. 1)

Havel plans to send a thousand Czech soldiers trained in
biological and chemical warfare to the war. (Jordan Times,
Oct. 22) The Bush-Rumsfeld strategists want no consultation
with these NATO allies, just "contributions."

Czechoslovakia broke up into the Czech Republic and Slovakia
in 1993, while Havel was president. He quickly launched a
series of "market reforms." In the more industrialized Czech
Republic, a capitalist layer of society grew rich. In
Slovakia, the poorer half of the former Czechoslovakia,
poverty went from 7.8 percent in 1993 to 13.4 percent in
1999. And it continues to rise in both republics as
unemployment grows and social services are stripped away.
Unemployment is now close to 20 percent in Slovakia and 9.4
percent in the Czech Republic. (Postmark Prague, Oct. 1)

Privatization campaigns in both republics have closed
everything from schools to factories. With the Czech
Republic already in NATO, and Slovakia as well as other
formerly socialist nations in the East slated to join at the
Nov. 21-22 summit, the population faces increasing misery as
public money goes toward military spending.

COMEBACK FOR CZECH COMMUNISTS

These developments have bred resistance. In last June's
Czech elections, the Communist Party, the only parliamentary
party to increase its support, polled 880,000 votes, or 18.5
percent--an increase of 220,000 since 1998.

The party has opposed Czech membership in NATO and in the
European Union. The EU's "free trade" policy allows the free
flow of capital, but not of workers. Czech workers
attempting to flee joblessness at home have been hounded out
of Western Europe.

In the September elections in Slovakia, Communists won 11
seats in Parliament.

September floods in the Czech Republic were catastrophic.
Rebuilding has gone slowly. Public trust in Havel is at an
all-time low: 40 percent.

But Havel barrels on, driving the Czechs into penury as the
new ruling class enriches itself on fat military contracts.
The summit on NATO expansion only serves to highlight the
Prague government's total submission to Washington's
demands.

In a visit to the United States, Havel and Czech Defense
Minister Jaroslav Tvrdík promised Czech support for the U.S.
"missile defense" program. Tvrdik offered Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld the possibility of locating a base
for this "Star Wars" system on Czech territory, according to
Radomír Silber of the CPBM.

The U.S. government has offered to enforce security at the
NATO summit with as many as 250 U.S. troops and 15 U.S.
planes to be flown over Prague airspace between Nov. 15 and
30. Communists in the Czech government voted against this
violation of Czech sovereignty, to no avail.

Czech officials are making police-state preparations against
the thousands of protesters who have vowed to come to Prague
to say no to NATO expansion. They are calling in 12,000
police officers to suppress demonstrations.

Much of the Czech public supports resistance to NATO,
according to the Prague Post of Oct. 24.

NATO EXPANSION SPREADS MISERY

The Prague Summit is a boon for the defense industry. The
merchants of death will be advertising their latest
weaponry.

Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems, Boeing, EADS and Volkswagen
will sponsor the summit. Northrop Grumman wants to sell NATO
its expensive new radar system. A spokesperson for EADS, a
Czech firm affiliated with a Texas military contractor,
said, "This should be a good opportunity ... to support the
next stage of NATO expansion." (Prague Post, Nov. 6)

NATO expansion won't improve the lives of the people of
Eastern Europe and the former USSR. Workers there have
experienced a 10-fold increase in poverty since the fall of
the socialist regime. Reduced spending on health, education
and other social programs, the end to subsidized housing,
and rising unemployment are devastating the population.

Miluse Besvodova, 46, of the impoverished Czech village of
Kostelec, has been unemployed for over a year. "Under
communism, there were jobs for everyone and everything was
cheaper," she said. (Prague Post, Nov. 6) Her anger reflects
the deteriorating conditions of all Eastern Europe and the
former USSR, where infant mortality and tuberculosis rates
have skyrocketed

The leaders of now-capitalist Eastern Europe mouth
platitudes about joining the war against terrorism, but the
newly expanded NATO actually has one purpose: to carry out
the imperial designs of U.S. corporations. The oil, gas,
fertile fields, gold, lead, uranium, cheap labor, and
multitude of other riches of Eurasia and the Middle East are
ripe for the picking if NATO can sweep through any region at
will.

However, anti-NATO sentiment is strong in all Europe, East
and West. In the Czech Republic and elsewhere in the East,
there is mounting opposition to capitalist regimes ready to
support Washington's endless war policies with the lives of
European working-class youths. The Bush administration may
hope to bring NATO into its imperialist schemes, but knows
it will have difficulty getting the people of Eastern Europe
to fall in line.

In Slovenia, anti-NATO activists from all over Eastern
Europe met from Nov. 7 to 10. They said "the existence,
functioning and expansion of NATO" are "a part of the logic
of war that underlies the system of globalized capitalism
and ensures the maintenance of a gravely unjust world order.
We regard NATO as one of the instruments of the global neo-
liberal politics of coercion and exploitation of human
beings and the natural environment in the interests of the
global ruling class."

(http://www.workers.org/)