 In the aftermath of Russia's attack on Ukraine, a lot of focus has also been on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or NATO, whose eastward expansion contributed greatly to the crisis in Europe. Anti-war groups across the world have condemned NATO's activities in Europe in the run-up to and after the war. What role has NATO historically played across the world since its foundation? What was the context in which it was formed? Vijay Prashad of Tricontinental Institute for Social Research explains. NATO or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was set up in 1949 as part of a series of treaty organizations the United States set up going from the Rio Pact of 1947, which allowed the United States to have essentially influence and military projection across the Americas going from there to the Manila Pact, which allowed the United States to set up bases in the rim of Asia that was in 1954. And then the Baghdad Pact, which allowed the United States to set up bases in central part of West Asia. Look, NATO was just one of many platforms for the United States to extend or project its military power out of the US territory, build bases around the world and so on. That was essentially NATO's objective. Right up to the present time, NATO is an instrument for US power projection. In a sense, a Trojan horse. It's not actually a place where all the European powers, Canada and the United States have an equal say in the development of a foreign policy or a military policy. The United States sets the agenda. That's pretty straightforward. And the US has strategically used NATO to reign in any attempt by European powers to exercise independence. Every time Europe tries to exercise independence, whether it's Germany or it's France or any other country, there is a way in which the United States has reigned them in. In recent years, for instance, Angela Merkel, the former Chancellor of Germany, opened up and deepened German relations with Russia, including to bring in natural gas through Nord Stream 2, the pipeline. Well, you know, United States tried to say stop buying natural gas from Russia by liquefied natural gas from the United States. Germany refused liquefied natural gas will be much more expensive. So in order for that, they accelerated a kind of struggle that's patently obvious. Till now, Mr. Joe Biden of the United States asks Olaf Schulz to ban Russian natural gas and Mr. Schulz says we can't do that. We'll go into a deep recession. Here NATO used again as an instrument to corral European countries into a North Atlantic project and not allow them to slip into a Eurasian project. After the fall of the Soviet Union, many questioned the relevance of NATO. However, instead of winding up, NATO continued to expand, taking in former Soviet republics and later deploying advanced weaponry in areas near Russia. A vital moment was when it began to consider the membership of Georgia and Ukraine. What has been the purpose of the easterly expansion of NATO? When the Warsaw Pact was disbanded and the USSR broken up into various new countries, at that point NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty organization should have been wound up. It should have been disbanded as well. But it wasn't. In fact, interestingly, NATO based in Brussels received letters of application from many Eastern European countries including Russia. Russia didn't apply to become a full-fledged member of NATO but Russia asked to be a NATO partner which it did become from 1994 till 2014. By the way, if you go back historically in 1954 after the death of Stalin, the Soviet Union applied to join NATO. I mean, that was an interesting period. The Soviet Union basically said, look, we want to be part of NATO but that is going to mean that no threatening weapons from the United States will be placed in Europe. But of course that was rejected out of hand because NATO is an instrument of US power projection. Similarly, it was acceptable for Russia to be a member of NATO as long as Russia accepted the US hegemony or domination over Europe and at the same time as the Russian elites were very keen on economic integration with Europe and the United States. During this period, in fact, seven Eastern European countries including Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Baltic countries that have borders with Russia, they all joined NATO. That was in 2004. There was no problem. The problem isn't just NATO. The problem is, if you are not going to allow yourself to be a subordinate ally of the United States, then it becomes a question. And wrapped in all this is the withdrawal by the United States or the scuttling of two important treaties that gave Russia a sense of security. These were the anti-ballistic missile treaty which the United States scuttled and then the intermediate forces treaty, the INF, very important treaty because that basically said that no intermediate nuclear weapons should be there, especially in this case in the European theater. But by withdrawing from anti-ballistic missile, withdrawing from the INF treaty, the United States basically messaged Russia that we could move intermediate nuclear missiles into Ukraine or into Latvia, Lithuania. Those missiles will have a flight time of under five minutes to major Russian cities. This is actually what terrified the Russians. That's why they were asking for security guarantees. It's not merely NATO's eastward expansion. It's a question of whether Russia wanted an independent position in the world. And then secondly, the West, particularly the United States, driving a policy of instrumentalizing nuclear weapons in Europe and threatening Russia quite directly. The manoeuvres of NATO vis-a-vis Russia are inseparable from the policies of the US towards China. How can the current phase of NATO be understood with reference to the attempt to encircle China and the rising tensions in the Asia-Pacific region? After 9-11, which is the 11th of September 2001, when the Al-Qaeda people attacked the United States, after that period, US strategy, particularly under George W. Bush, his 2002 document on US grand strategy, US strategy was focused on what was called the war on terror. That was the principle focus that ran for about 20 years. A few years ago, the United States began to shift out of the war on terror mentality. And US strategic documents directly said that no longer is the war on terror the principal problem. The principal problem is actually the threats posed to the United States by China and Russia. So focus of attention no longer on Black Sides and on, you know, Guantanamo and fighting off Al-Qaeda here, there and everywhere. The focus now is old-fashioned military conflict against China and against Russia. And in line with that assessment, United States upgraded the Quad, which includes Japan, India, Australia. United States pushed for the AUKUS agreement with Australia and the United Kingdom to sell nuclear-powered submarines to Australia. The United States then accelerates this whole thing about the intermediate nuclear missiles, the anti-ballistic missile treaty, putting pressure on Russia and so on. So in the recent period, combination of withdrawing from the nuclear treaties that had been in fact imposed on the United States by the European people. If you remember the history of the INF, withdrawing from those pushing military exercises, so-called freedom of navigation maneuvers in the Taiwan Straits and so on. All of that stuff in the South China Sea. All of that was a direct indication of this pivot that the US has taken in its own foreign policy assessment from the war on terror to directly engaging Russia and China. You don't need to analyze this from outside. This is actually what the United States government has been saying. And recently, this is exactly what NATO command has been saying in their document NATO 2030, a sort of global NATO viewpoint. They directly say that the adversaries of the time are China and Russia. So again, we don't have to do much analysis. This is right there in their own documents.