One of the biggest lies of the Cold War era was the founding philosophy of NATO. This lie, which even made its way into textbooks in the Atlantic world, was that "NATO was founded against the Warsaw Pact." When NATO was founded, the Warsaw Pact didn't even exist. The Warsaw Pact was established in 1955, six years after NATO, which was founded in 1949. The US used this lie from the beginning of the Cold War to meet its needs, but continued to reverse it as the Cold War ended. When the Warsaw Pact dissolved in 1991, the US never considered dissolving NATO. On the contrary, it stated that NATO was even more needed. However, if NATO was founded against the Warsaw Pact, then NATO should have dissolved when the Warsaw Pact dissolved. Instead, the US administration decided to further expand NATO.

Where has the concept gone from 1990 to today?

A much-debated topic among political scientists has been whether or not NATO should expand. What they failed to realize was that the US had decided to expand NATO in four areas. The first target was Eastern Europe; the former Warsaw Pact member countries. The second target was the Balkans; the countries that emerged after NATO's disintegration of Yugoslavia would be made members of NATO. The third level consisted of the former Soviet Union (USSR) countries in Europe. The fourth level targeted the former USSR countries along the Caucasus-Central Asia line. The source of today's Ukraine crisis is fundamentally this imperialist US strategy. Although this strategy is being implemented solely through NATO, any pole that fundamentally opposes US interests will continue to face resistance under this heading. The US had promised Russia that there would be "no expansion" when the USSR collapsed, but by 2004 it had expanded NATO in the two areas mentioned above. In conditions where Russia was not yet able to resist the US, the US rapidly pressured Russia by making Eastern European countries members of both the EU and NATO. In 2008, NATO continued its expansion on a second level in Eastern Europe, while simultaneously taking a step towards expansion on a third level in the Caucasus via Georgia. The intervention we are witnessing these days began as a result of this step.

NATO peacekeeping force?

No military operations were carried out by NATO during the Cold War. After the Cold War ended, 6 major operations and many other large and small operations were carried out. Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo intervention, Afghanistan War, Iraq mission, Gulf of Aden (Yemen), Libya intervention are the major operations listed so far.

The most important of these, and the attack that sheds light on today, is the war declared by NATO against Yugoslavia. It must be emphasized as it provides a very good example to understand the structure of NATO. While Libya, Iraq, Sudan and Afghanistan are considered to be a part of the US attacks aimed at bringing "terrorists" or "terrorist countries" into line, the Yugoslavia attack should be read as a warning to crown and end the process of giving the world a new order and to bring everyone into line. Apparently, for the first time since its establishment, NATO declared war on a country even though this country did not attack or pose any danger to any NATO country. But more importantly, America does not feel the need to hide that it is openly using NATO in its attacks for the first time. With this war, which was waged without the involvement of the United Nations Security Council, America has forever eliminated the danger of the future veto of the United Nations Security Council member countries.

The central element in all of these operations and wars was that they threatened US interests. From the very beginning, the USA designed NATO to use it as the main attack tool. For this, it needed to evolve into an organization that would receive the necessary legitimacy and distribute a share of the benefits. NATO still serves as an indispensable front for this work.

Military bases of expansion

Speaking to Bucharest radio at the beginning of 2016, Romanian Defense Minister Mihnea Motoc said that US soldiers would be based in Romania within the framework of NATO's Eastern European border protection project and that they had reached an agreement with Washington on this issue. Regarding the new American force to be deployed in Europe at the beginning of February, US Secretary of Defense Ash Carter said, "We will strengthen countries against Russian influence and at the same time increase the defense power of our NATO allies, as we have done for decades." The US anti-ballistic missile shield was placed at the military base in the Deveselu region in Romania's Olt province. Nuclear warheads extracted from Turkey were deployed in Romania during this period.

In 2009, the Czech Republic and the United States signed the first bilateral diplomatic agreement in July to install a powerful radar. In 2019, Poland and the United States of America (USA) reached an agreement on the location of new American troops to be deployed in 6 regions of the country. Polish Minister of Defense Mariusz Blaszczak, at the joint press conference held with US National Security Advisor John Bolton, who came to the country for the anniversary, said, "We agreed on 6 regions and talked about the seventh location." He announced the agreement by saying. Recently, the Estonian Ministry of Defense announced that they would receive 68 million dollars from the USA for the development of the infrastructure of military bases in the country. The US State Department spokesman announced this agreement during his trip, where Estonia would receive 68 million dollars for the development of the infrastructure of the military bases in Amari and Tapa, thanks to NATO's support program for eastern countries, the European Reassurance Initiative (ERI).

The current situation shows where NATO's eastward expansion is leading, not just through increased membership but directly targeting Russia, placing it as the primary threat, and arming the region. While one aspect of the problem seems to be how prepared Russia is or has prepared for this, the real issue is that US-centered imperialism is now triggered by the very existence of a country that poses a threat to, or is a potential threat to, its idea of ​​a multipolar world. The US concept of eliminating major powers has been discussed many times in these newspaper pages. It has dictated to NATO that all states forming this pole—both technologically and geographically—will be at the center of its attack strategy, a fundamental need of the capitalist order. The outcome of the debate last year about whether NATO was brain dead has evolved into a 138-article transformation with the 2021 concept. Whether Russia will be brought to its knees remains unknown; we are currently witnessing a war equation where ideological bias is paramount. In a system where the working class has no intervention, a process is being woven that pits peoples against each other.