G20. IMF. UN. WTO. There have been a lot of acronyms flying around in the media recently, and just when we all though we’d had enough, up pops NATO. NATO dates from 1949 and the beginning of the Cold War, and is a military alliance set up to balance the threat of the Warsaw Pact countries led by the USSR.

The Cold War, it shouldn’t surprise you to know, is now over. The Warsaw Pact has been dissolved. However, this fact seems to have escaped the attention of NATO, which has persisted stubbornly on. Like a spy who has found himself drifting into obsolescence and alcoholism without any Commies to track down, it has sought out new ways to justify its continued existence. Now, on its sixtieth birthday, the anti-war groups from across Europe are gathering to suggest that it’s about time NATO called it a day.

Retirement is essential because NATO is increasingly becoming an obstacle to achieving world peace. Desperate to keep itself relevant as a military alliance, since the end of the Cold War NATO has attempted to reinvent itself as a tool for military action by the "international community" – a misleading term when it refers to 28 developed nations from the Global North, rather than, say, the 192 members of the UN. NATO allows its members to promote conflicts which are in their own interest, giving them an air of legitimacy while bypassing the more representative UN and the rule of international law it is attempting to enforce. This of course drives up spending, with NATO countries accounting for 75% of global military expenditure.

This is only set to increase. NATO is currently discussing a $500bn expansion programme to include up to six more members. It has also sent over 80,000 troops to Afghanistan, a war which is now in its eighth year. After that time NATO remains dominant in less than half of the country, while all the while chaos reigns, development indicators all decline, heroin production is much higher than under the Taliban and the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission concludes that most women’s situations are worse now than under the regime NATO went to oust.

NATO’s only answer is a military one. Barack Obama recently sent 17,000 more US troops to Afghanistan, which brings the American total to about 55,000 of NATO’s 80,000. Independent estimates by the Rand Foundation put the number of troops required to win military control of Afghanistan at 500,000.
Or perhaps we should try another tactic? I mean, how many times do you have to punch somebody to make them like you? We are told repeatedly that the war in Afghanistan is about preventing terrorism in Britain, but we’ve been punching Afghanistan for eight long years now, and for some reason, beyond the comprehension of mere mortals, they still don’t like us. Maybe if we keep punching they’ll warm to us. Maybe if we punch harder. How much longer, oh Lord, how much longer?

Unless we see a surge in funding for diplomacy and development, rather than further military escalation, we will be mired in Afghanistan for decades to come – a situation which it appears NATO may in fact welcome in it’s desperation to find a new purpose. That is why Ctrl.Alt.Shift will be joining Stop the War in Strasbourg for the protests against NATO. It is time for governments to stop funding the military-industrial complex through the proxy of NATO.  It is time for world leaders to recognise the rule of law at the UN, not the rule of strength, and it is time for NATO to disband.