 Hello, everyone, and welcome to Eat NATO for Breakfast. I'm Noda, talking to you from Madrid. I'm part of the European Coordination of the International People's Assembly. Thank you, everyone, for joining us. This is our second show, exploring the history of NATO together with Kate Hudson. Francie, let's welcome today's guests, and also, how are you? Hello, everyone, welcome. I'm just getting over COVID. I think I'm still positive, and I'm all alone here because nobody can be with me while I'm that positive. I did, however, prepare my mug as usual, and we have a little bit of a joke prepared for all of you. In the chat, you will find, for the people who are watching now, you will find a logo to download so you can print your own Eat NATO for Breakfast mug, and you can show it and share it with us. Kate, how are you today? You are in tea-drinking country. So, hello from London, and I'm celebrating Freedom of Movement today. This is a mug from my party, Left Unity Party. So, during the Brexit referendum, we were really supportive of Freedom of Movement. On the back, we have Defend Migrant Rights, so this is a really important ongoing campaign. So, that's what I'm celebrating my tea with this morning, Francie. Great. Welcome, Kate. I think it's important that we use everything to make, you know, to talk to people, to show our positions, and why not using Macs for that? So, that's great. And lastly, we spoke with B.J. who gave us a quick and a horrific overview of NATO's criminal behavior, for example, in Libya, and also the way forward that they are using as policemen of the world. In NATO for Breakfast, we wanted to say that it's part of the Peace Summit not to NATO Madrid 2022. This show is part of our educational program inside the Peace Summit that is working as a lead-up to the Country Summit against the NATO Summit in Madrid. So, we wanted to say, now at the beginning, check our website in the chat, sign the declaration, and join the efforts of the Peace Summit. Cool. And just one little reminder on how the show works. In every Eat NATO for Breakfast episode, we will follow another topic into some depth and with different guests who will help us understand what NATO is all about and all its different aspects. And we want to take your lead in these questions and explorations, and this is also how we will integrate your questions. If we don't get to them during the show, don't despair. We will try to address them in a different show. For example, last week, someone was asking in the chat about the current situation in Mali. Well, we will in about two weeks' time talk about the African continent when we have guests from Pan-Africanism today who will walk us through what is actually happening with NATO and Africa, and then we will be addressing Mali. So please put your questions in the chat even if we don't directly get to them immediately. Also, we had another idea. After every episode, we will produce a small article with the content of the show, and we will also pick out some of the questions that came up and address them. Fortunately, we can publish this article on People's Dispatch, but even better, we will be translating it into different languages and then make it available to everyone who, well, everyone who needs it or wants it. So please use the chat. Last but not least, don't be surprised if you see different hosts and even different languages in different weeks. Yes, you will hear me in Spanish and you can also hear Francie in German. And maybe with also other hosts in other languages because NATO and the mobilization against NATO, it's international and with different languages and organizations. Let's begin the show. But before that, please check our website, read our declaration and sign it. It's, you have to do it like Kate and the CND that is already part of the P-Summit. And write in your agendas our next open meeting in two Saturdays, February 26th. We'll paste the inscription link on the description box. So introducing Kate. Kate Hudson has been advocating for peace for a very long time, fighting to prevent war with the campaign for nuclear disarmament in Britain and putting forth alternatives through solidarity, internationalism and lots of pedagogy. She is an amazing speaker and writer with a radio voice, you will hear her. It's an honor to have breakfast with you Kate. You have a couple of minutes to finish your breakfast while Francie explains a bit why we are talking about history because it seems boring but we are fun. Well, we were thinking about why is history important? It seems it's in the past and the past is kind of over. But then on the other hand, history is also the thing that provides us with the knowledge to actually take decisions and kind of see the future, to articulate a strategy from the present moment on forward. And then also we feel history is kind of a curious thing. As we learn it, it is often carrying the hegemonic agenda of threats and conflict and great men. And then we actually need a history written by those who do fight against war, destruction and profit. And this is often a silent history of resistance. So let's take apart this fairy tale and founding myth of NATO defending democracy and peace. And we thought about questions like who invented NATO and what were they thinking and what were the actual goals? And with that I would give it to Kate to start us off. Thanks very much indeed Francie and thanks to Nora as well. It's great to be here today. And the show, the whole framework of the show is just brilliant. So straight in there then if people think about the history of NATO they tend to know that it was founded in 1949 and it became one of the defining military alliances of the Cold War. Now I would say of course that's true but I argue that if we want to really understand NATO and the Cold War itself we have to go back in time to the end of the Second World War in 1945. We need to look at what was changing in the world and what the powers that emerged out of that war were planning to do. And there's one particular event that I want to look at because I think it helps understand what motivated the founding of NATO in particular on the part of the United States which has always been really the dominant force within NATO. So before the Second World War the world was dominated by the US and the European powers colonial empires still existed. The big change at the end of the Second World War was the emergence of the Soviet Union onto the world stage. The Soviet Union was the US's wartime ally against Germany. Now ultimately of course their economic systems were incompatible. In particular the US would not accept that any part of the world economy should be close to it and those seeking an alternative to the market economic model tended to look to the Soviet Union. The increasing popularity of the Soviet model meant less and less of the world would be available for US market expansion and exploitation and resources. This antagonism was heightened by the increased power and prestige of the Soviet Union following its role in breaking the back of Germany's military machine, think of Stalingrad for example. And of course also the likely popularity that the Soviet Union would have in countries that were fighting their way out of colonialism and also amongst working classes in Europe and elsewhere that wanted to shift the balance of power in their own countries. So a new framework globally. So the war in Europe was over in May 1945 but the war with Japan was still going on. The US was desperate to prevent the Soviet advance in Asia. They were terrified that the Soviet Union for example would come to occupy Japan and the US dealt with this in the most shocking way. They had just successfully tested the atom bomb and they decided to use it on Japan to demonstrate their unique military power. Their intention was to gain political and diplomatic advantage over the Soviet Union in the post war settlement in both Asia and Europe. Now this isn't just some crazy idea thought up by me and CND and so on. There's a very eminent US historian called Gar Alperovitz who wrote about this in his seminal book, Atomic Diplomacy. So I recommend that if you're unsure about what I'm saying, do look at that book. And this was a deeply cynical move by the United States because the Japanese were already trying to surrender. And in fact, numerous political and military leaders from the US and other places stated it wasn't necessary to use the bomb to defeat the Japanese. But the US wanted an excuse to use that bomb in order to demonstrate their power in a world where only the United States had that bomb. So the Soviet Union had promised to enter the war on Japan three months after the end of the war in Europe. That day was rapidly approaching, it's the eighth of August. That was the three month date. So the US dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima on the sixth of August, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians. Three days later, they dropped another atom bomb on Nagasaki. US Secretary of War Henry Stimpson described the atom bomb as the mastercard in US diplomacy towards the Soviet Union. Others called it the first act of the Cold War. I call it a catastrophic war crime. As well as causing appalling human suffering, it also triggered a nuclear arms race and the continuing existential threat which hangs over all of us today. The Soviet Union developed nuclear weapons by 1949, Britain in 1952 and others in the years that followed. So NATO was founded four years later in 1949, supposedly as a defensive organization and at that time the Cold War was really getting underway. Interestingly, no military operations were conducted by NATO during the Cold War, but it was a massive drain on the resources of the member states and it continues to be so today with 2% of GDP required as spending by the member states. You may remember Trump stamping around at NATO summit saying, you've got to pay up, pay more. But not only was the spending a big issue, NATO also ensured there was a really high level of tension between the West and the Soviet bloc. US nuclear weapons were also stationed in Western Europe under the guise of NATO and many of them are still there, even though countries have tried to get rid of them. Most recently Germany tried to get rid of them but was prevented and NATO continues to have a nuclear first use policy. The rationale of all this is that the Soviet Union could at any time launch a mass invasion of Western Europe and nukes were necessary to deter them. Now, of course, those of you that like history, know history will know that it shows that Russia previously and then the Soviet Union had much to fear from Western invasion, whether from the armies of Napoleon or during the First and Second World Wars. So where was this idea of this kind of massive Soviet port invading coming from? Western Europe was intensely militarized with occupying troops effectively occupying Germany for decades and in fact, British troops didn't finally leave Germany until 2010. NATO's first members were Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal and the United States. So quite a big range to start off with. At first, West Germany was excluded and it had no military for several years after the war but eventually it was encouraged to rearm from around 1950 and it joined NATO on the 6th of May, 1955. And Branti, you were mentioning this earlier. I think you have coming from Germany, you have some knowledge of this area. Thank you, Kate. I think there are two points to be made here. The first one is that the Warsaw Pact, so the Eastern military alliance was actually founded in reaction to West Germany joining NATO. So it did come into existence only years after NATO had already existed. I think this is just like a small historic fact but I actually think that a more pertinent point to be made is in 1955 there were quite a few people and organizations in Western Germany protesting against the demilitarization and the rearmament of Germany and Germany entering NATO. For example, the Social Democratic Party which is currently in power and the non-parliamentary groups most importantly which became later on the Green Party. So two governing parties currently in Germany that are actually, well, I'd say that are singing the NATO's tune and are actually encouraging not disarmament and peace as they did 60 years ago but actually are encouraging this warmongering towards Russia. And I think it is important to see this normalization of NATO being somehow, I don't know, a good force in all this. This is something that we should be paying attention to and that shows an interesting switch in politics from back then to right now. Thank you. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right about that and I'm glad you've brought up the question of popular mobilization against NATO and against rearmament and militarization because before CND was founded in 1958, the main campaign of the peace movement in Britain was against German rearmament because people could see, you know, there's the end of the war, you're supposed to have learned some lessons but actually militarization so rapidly was coming to the fore. And as you say also, Brenti, this was a major factor in the creation of the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact, what became the other major military alliance of the Cold War, because people always try and present NATO as if it was some response to this huge threat but you can see at every stage, you know, it was the US had nuclear weapons, others got them after, the US formed NATO, others had to then form their own alliances. So it's the kind of not this kind of blaming one side or the other, you have to work out, look at the history and see who is actually responsible. And I think that that's really important. And then talking about mobilization, popular mobilization as well. In 1952, recent Turkey joined NATO and then there was a big gap until Spain joined in 1982. And I understand, Laura, there was a massive struggle in Spain against NATO membership. Yeah, it was a massive movement in Spain. I wasn't born yet. But yeah, it's been one of the huge mobilizations of the latest years in Spain. In fact, we are the 16th country to join NATO. And as you said, that happened in 1982. And we have now in 2022, 40 years after that, then the NATO summit in Madrid that we are all rallying against. So we are hoping to join forces, to see again those huge mobilizations because Spain is also a place where the people are fighting for peace. You can see also this history against the Iraq war, against NATO and others. So yeah, 40 years after, we have to show again our strength in the streets. Brilliant, yeah. And COVID permitting, Laura, I'm hoping to be there in Madrid with you and all the masses there that we hope are going to be there. So just quickly nipping back to the NATO question before we move to more discussion and so on. In 1991, with the end of the Cold War, the Warsaw Pact was dissolved. And I remember from the peace movement in Britain, we all thought, great. Now NATO will be dissolved too, or people hoped NATO would be dissolved and we'd have the kind of new peaceful world order, but of course that didn't happen. The fact is that NATO had been the military tool of the US throughout the Cold War and they wanted it to continue to be so after it. And that was what happened rather than scaling back its global military presence, the US moved to fill the positions located by its previous rival and they did this by expanding NATO. And the first big wave of expansion into Eastern Europe took place in 1999. Along with the expansion when the first big strategic change, NATO ended the idea. It was just a defensive alliance and it had a new so-called out-of-area orientation. It explicitly presented itself as a world police force and really it was reminiscent of 19th century colonialism. And then it went on, well, during the 1990s actually, it began to launch offensive military operations. So first in Bosnia in 1994, then with the illegal bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999. So it kind of changed its remit and almost immediately went into action. So two years after changing its kind of mission statement, it began its 20 year war on Afghanistan. I remember people at the time saying, this is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. What are they in Afghanistan for? Well, we know what they were there for and they were there for 20 years. Following on from that in 2004, lots of other countries joined, including the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. And of course, this was incredibly significant because not only were they former Warsaw Pact members, they were also former Soviet republics. So taking NATO right up to the border of Russia and then there were subsequent waves of expansion further into Eastern Europe and the Balkans. And I would say there's no doubt that this scale of expansion has contributed to international tension as Russia has seen itself increasingly surrounded by US and NATO bases. And if anyone's in any doubt about this, you just have to look at a map. And of course, this increasing NATO presence has been a big factor in the ongoing crisis in Ukraine. So of course, we all know NATO's gone global. We know that's the latest wave of expansion. So we've seen, I think B.J. mentioned this last week, NATO operations in Libya and the Horn of Africa. We've seen Columbia in Latin America become a NATO partner. And maybe you don't know, but NATO has even declared space to be an operational domain. So, you know, not only the world, you know, the universe. So just to finish off, there is at the moment, obviously a very big focus on Russia, but let's not forget the next phase is China. In 2020, NATO published a new report. It's called NATO 2030, United for a New Era. Its chief focus is how to maintain Western dominance in a world where China is rising economically. And NATO's answer is to expand its orientation to the Asia Pacific to deal with the impact of the emerging China. I mean, why does America and NATO think it has to deal with some other countries' economic development? There's a clear parallel here with the way the US thought about the emerging Soviet Union in 1945. They thought, how do we defeat them? How do we keep them down? And I would say a better approach would be to embrace a multipolar world where everyone can develop together towards a peaceful and sustainable world for all. So thank you. Thank you, Kate. This is a really good, this is actually, you are giving us a good opportunity to give an outlook to our next episode where we will actually spend some time looking at this new Cold War that you just mentioned and look at the relations to China. But before we do our goodbyes, I do think we should give you an opportunity to briefly talk about the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, C&D, the organization that you've been working with, I think, a very long time. Where are we at on this? Like coming out of history, you have been describing how the effects of the atomic bombs being dropped on Japan have also for a long time been very, been very on the forefront of people's minds and were certainly a mobilizing factor. With the end of the Cold War, with the fall of the Warsaw Pact, et cetera, et cetera, somehow this has been, it seems become almost less of an issue. We have been confronted with a sort of nuclear, nuclear mutual destruction scenario in many, I don't know, in movies and in worst case scenarios, et cetera, et cetera, but is this still something today that mobilizes people? How do we mobilize people around this? Because obviously these things have not disappeared. They're made like the awesomely big arsenals of weapons are still there. They didn't disappear because the NATO expanded a little bit in this direction or the Warsaw Pact disappeared. How do we bring this to the attention of people? How do we mobilize around it? How do we continue this fight? Well, very important question, Franti. And it's a question of existential importance actually, because although there's been a reduction in nuclear weapons since the Cold War, I mean, there used to be about 70,000 of nuclear weapons. Now there's maybe 14,000. But some of those are like a thousand times the size of the Hiroshima bomb. There's enough weaponry there to destroy all life as we know it many times over. And that is still a live issue. And in many ways, we're in a more dangerous situation than we were during the Cold War. Because at that time, there was this idea of like, they call it the balance of terror, you know, and they talked about mutually assured destruction. And the idea was that no one would use them. You know, use was inconceivable because everyone would be destroyed. The debates changed since then. You know, just a few years ago, Donald Trump, president of the US with his finger on the nuclear button, he said, well, you know, we got all these nuclear weapons. Why can't we use them? You know, and he was talking about reintroducing nuclear weapons testing as well. I mean, completely crazy. But it wasn't just a fantasy in his head in their nuclear planning. They planned for usable nuclear weapons. They actually talked about use, usable nuclear weapons. And they didn't just talk about them. They produced them and now they are deployed on their nuclear weapons submarines. You know, this is a scale of escalation. And for the last two years, you may have heard of the Doomsday Clock, you know, which is American atomic scientists and they put the hands on the Doomsday Clock closer or farther away from midnight, depending on how close we are to global annihilation. And for the past two years, it's been a hundred seconds to midnight that is closer than it ever was even at the height of the Cold War. And they have two reasons for this. One is nuclear weapons. You know, all the massive threats there. And the other is climate catastrophe. So these are two really interlinked questions. Both can destroy us. So it's right that people are really seized of the climate campaigning. We are very involved with that now as well. Everyone has to be active on dealing with that emergency. But people shouldn't forget the also imminent threat of nuclear war. And when we see the provocation and the escalation around Ukraine, two nuclear, three nuclear powers there, do you include the UK? It's a very, very dangerous situation. So people have to really understand that and don't think that nuclear weapons are a thing of the past. Nuclear weapons are a thing of the present. And in fact, Britain this last year, our government, so-called government under Boris Johnson, decided to increase its nuclear arsenal. How crazy is that? So we all have to be aware and we all have to get active against it. And one way of doing that is to be involved in the Madrid peace summit, because sure as anything, nuclear weapons are gonna be a big part of that peace summit. Yeah, and also it's not like that is something from the past, but also geographically, I don't know if people know that we have nuclear weapons, like they are deployed not only in US or I don't know where, but we live in a place that have nuclear weapons and that's a threat. And I think that people doesn't, I don't know, like people and younger people doesn't understand the threat that this means. And I don't know if you could explain us how the US also deploys some weapons outside their territory and also makes Europe, I don't know, a more unsecured place. Absolutely. So this dates back actually from the Cold War. After the Second World War, the United States put nuclear weapons into Western Europe. Did they withdraw them at the end of the Cold War? No, and they're still there in several European countries. And there are big struggles actually, frankly I know that in Germany there are big struggles there to try and get rid of those nuclear weapons. And the same in places like Belgium and Italy and the Netherlands. People trying to get rid of those nuclear weapons. And even parliaments and governments of those countries have said to the US, we don't want these nuclear weapons here anymore. They make us less safe, they could make us a target, for example. But the US has always said, no, sorry, they're not US nuclear weapons, they're NATO nuclear weapons. NATO does it by consensus. So if we want to get rid of those nukes of your country, everyone has to agree that they should go. What about sovereignty? NATO is a massive affront to the sovereignty of countries, whether it comes to defence spending or having nukes forced onto them. So that's a big important struggle in Europe. We need a nuclear weapons free Europe and world of course. There's big moves of foot led by the global south to get rid of all nuclear weapons in the world. Treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons. We need to be backing those initiatives because the people have nuclear weapons. It's a tiny minority of the world, but they're holding us all to kind of, under nuclear terrorist threat, so to speak. So we need to be aware, we are the global majority, both in states and peoples that want to get rid of nuclear weapons. So we need to get together and get rid of that tiny minority of nuclear weapons loving governments. You've made so many powerful points, like we need Europe to be a free zone of nuclear weapons as well as the world. We need to rally against that. Also to talk about this issue that people is not conscious about and also put this on our agendas in all our declarations, in all our programs towards, also joining this nuclear threat with NATO. I think that our time today is up. We are past the 30 minutes that we are trying to keep up. But if you don't have enough yet of history, if you want to read or see more of Kate, if you want to get a bit more of history, please check out the CND website. You have it on the chat. They have a great article also connecting the CND resistance since 1958 and with the history of nuclear weapons, treaties and conflicts. So, and also they are very well explained with pictures and in some of them you can see Kate also. So we are posting that link on the chat so you can read more about history. And also we are on the moment, the final moment of recommendations. You mentioned the book Atomic Diplomacy, but I don't know Kate if you have another recommendation to our friends here in NATO for breakfast, also they can read a bit more of history. Wow. Yeah, here we are. Not that I'm trying to promote my own books, you understand, but it's got a lot of politics. It's not just not dry history, it's politics about people shaping the world, doing their work and all that sort of thing. And there's some nice photos as well. Great, and also if I may say so, CND have great graphics, great design since the beginning with all your logos and all your productions. So yeah, also it's nice to have beautiful books talking about important things to mobilize around. Yeah, thank you. Thank you Kate. Thank you Nora. I think one final piece of information for everyone out there will be here next Saturday. We'll be doing this next Saturday. And as I mentioned before, we'll actually be our topic next week is the new Cold War. And we'll be talking with Fiona Edwards and Ajit Singh from No Cold War. And so please join us next Saturday, bring your friends, read history, make a NATO mug, make a NATO mug. Oh wait, let me find your camera. Make your NATO mug and find NATO. And we'll see you next Saturday. Thank you all. Ciao. Bye. Thank you, thank you both. Thank you so much.