Should NATO Be Disbanded – Burning Issues – Free PDF Download

The News

The Big Question

Russia’s concerns with NATO

• Russia has repeatedly articulated its grievances
  1. NATO’s expansion violated promises made prior to the breakup of the Soviet Union
  2. Ukraine’s accession to NATO would cross Russia’s red lines
  3. NATO’s strategic posture poses a continuing security threat to Russia.

Cold war 1945-1991

NATO

• NATO or North Atlantic Treaty Organization is an intergovernmental military alliance based on the North Atlantic Treaty (Washington treaty) which was signed on 4 April 1949.
• NATO constitutes a system of collective defence whereby its member states agree to mutual defence in response to an attack by a non-member.
• NATO’s headquarters are located Brussels, Belgium.

NATO during cold war

NATO during cold war

• The leaders of Western powers in 1980s had assured the then Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not expand into the East. But it kept expanding, and now has 30 member states in the place of the original 12.
• Note: All the Warsaw Pact allies except Russia are now NATO members.

NATO After Cold War

NATO After Cold War

NATO after Cold War

• Destruction and instability have marked NATO’s footprints where ever they have intervened.
  1. NATO’s involvement in Kosovo is well known. Over 500 civilians lost their lives due to NATO’s indiscriminate bombing in that campaign.
  2. NATO’s involvement in Afghanistan war saw 1,76,000 deaths between 2001 and 2019. Over 46,000 of the dead were civilians according to the Costs of War Project.
  3. NATO led intervention in Iraq resulted in over 1.5 lakh deaths from March 2003 to 2010 among which 80 per cent were civilians.
  4. NATO’s intervention in Libya to enforce a no-fly zone is estimated to have killed more than 400 civilians.
• Note: These numbers do not include indirect deaths nor do they reveal the havoc wreaked by forced migration, loss of property, psychological damage or geopolitical instability.

This brings us to bigger questions

• Is NATO an institution of Peace?
  • Who has benefitted most from NATO?
• Should NATO be disbanded?
  • Collective Security or Collective defence?

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