Are the new “regime change” policies an existential challenge to the organization, shifting it from a defensive mechanism to something else?
NATO’s violation of the Tenth Commandment: “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s goods.”
The word regime is a negative term for government or administration, which are neutral, ordinary terms. When action is pending or undertaken against a country whose leaders displease Washington US officials have the media call it “regime change” and not government overthrow.
Overthrowing a government, or conspiring to, or joining an organization alleged to be trying to, are crimes in most countries. US law provides strict penalties for seditious conspiracy and treason. Under the 1940 Smith Act between 1949 and 1958 American citizens — even their attorneys — were prosecuted and jailed for membership in the Communist Party, which allegedly advocated overthrow of the government. Though not used since 1961 the act remains in effect. But by philological magic when Washington unilaterally deems a government a regime and the Main Stream Media (MSM) broadcasts the term, regime-change changes from a crime to a worthwhile reform under American guidance. That was the purpose of bombing Tehran (February 2026) and assassinating its leaders. While US lawmakers and media sometimes call the Russian government a regime, at the official level the term is avoided since it implies regime change.
The opposing term would be security or national security. Threats to national security are ritually invoked by political authorities, often as a pretext for regime change. Today much of the news warns that the weak and brutalized Cuban nation (population ~10m) is a “national security” threat to the United States. TikTok is another. K-POP may yet make the list.
Security-speak calls Iran a threat to the US and the world for 47 years, referring to the revolution of 1979. European leaders claim Russia is a standing threat ever since V. Putin began rebuilding Russian industry and military. In 1958 W.E.B Du Bois, in an introduction to The Souls of Black Folk, said, “No nation threatens us, we threaten the world.” https://www.uplopen.com/reader/chapters/pdf/10.18574/nyu/9780814769096.003.0017
Russia has argued for “indivisible” security, meaning a legal frame or “architecture” covering all parties, not some at the expense of others, not Europe at the expense of Russia. This is how the NATO-Russia war in Ukraine began. The Russians counted on the West to keep the promise Secretary of State James Baker made to Mikhail Gorbachov in 1990 that NATO was a “defensive” organization and would not move “an inch” eastward. In exchange, Gorbachov accepted German reunification.
However, could the covetous west resist the temptation to plunder Russian wealth – its energy, minerals, agriculture? Russia’s resources are by far the world’s wealthiest – a veritable cornucopia, to which in the eight years after the Soviet Union fell (1991) Boris Yeltsin’s regime afforded the oligarchs of Europe and America highly affordable access.
But then, in 1999 Yeltsin appointed a successor, Vladimir Putin. Was it to avenge the privatizing and asset-stripping of the 1990s? Putin began to rein in the oligarchs, to nationalize strategic industries under state capitalism, and to rebuild the military. Putin’s program succeeded beyond all expectation. Russia rose from the ashes, a formidable rival to NATO and a potential world power once again.
It was at this time, the late 1990s, that NATO decided to build up Ukraine to exert pressure on, possibly even invade Russia, via an avenue the Nazis had used in 1941. In 1997 at a summit in Madrid the NATO-Ukraine commission was set up to arrange the future inclusion of Ukraine in NATO. But the issue did not escalate until 2008 at the Bucharest conference.
In the US there was opposition to NATO expansion. In 1997, with the USSR gone and Russia vulnerable, fifty high defense and arms control officials and experts, including Robert McNamara, Richard Pipes, Edward Luttwak, and Paul Nitze, signed a document stating that:
“Russia does not now pose a threat to its western neighbors and the nations of Central and Eastern Europe are not in danger. For this reason, and the others cited above, we believe that NATO expansion is neither necessary nor desirable and that this ill-conceived policy can and should be put on hold.” https://www.armscontrol.org/act/1997-06/arms-control-today/opposition-nato-expansion
As so often happens in Washington ambition overrode judgment – George Kennan, Paul Nitze, etc. be damned — NATO began moving east, in stages. Ukraine was the last stage and its inclusion in NATO, together with Georgia, was advanced in the April 2008 meeting in Bucharest, Romania.
According to Wikipedia: “Romania received support from the United States, and U.S. Under Secretary of State R. Nicholas Burns said in December 2006 that Romania deserved the honor [sic] to hold this event due to its contribution to the Alliance’s common effort in the War in Afghanistan and for stability in the Iraq War. Romania has been a member of NATO since 14 March 2004.”
Who would be surprised that the MSM took little note of the demonstrations held in Brussels and Bucharest weeks before the meeting? Wikipedia relates: “Protests against NATO’s role in ‘promoting war’ were held at NATO’s HQ in Brussels two weeks before the summit,[6] and in Bucharest.[7] Protesters targeted the renewed determination of NATO to use nuclear weapons[8][9] and NATO’s backing of the US anti-missile shield.[10] ” Washington has not forsworn nuclear first use; Beijing has.
One striking detail in the Bucharest Declaration is the emphatic respect shown to Article 51 of the UN Charter (collective self- defense) and to Security Council Resolutions 1373 (anti-terrorism) and 1540 (non-proliferation of WMD). One suspects that this was meant to remedy the utter disrespect shown to the UNSC when NATO moved from collective defense to collective offense in 1999: bombing Yugoslavia for 78 days on its own authority absent UN authorization. The Russians were particularly exercised over NATO going rogue in Yugoslavia, so were others.
How would Moscow react as NATO became ever more aggressive bombing one country after another: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, threatening to move into East Asia, “threatening the world” in Du Bois’s phrase?
Wikipedia relates: “Russian President Vladimir Putin was invited to the Bucharest summit, and he arrived on the second day (3 April) to participate in bilateral NATO–Russia talks. . . . He opposed Georgia and Ukraine’s NATO membership bids.[38]” Washington and the eastern European members sought to bring the two into NATO but agreed to postpone a decision due to opposition from NATO’s western European members, who were reluctant to provoke Russia further.
In the less fallible perspective of hindsight Washington’s optimism about NATO expansion looks like blind folly. Article 18 of the Bucharest Declaration reads: “NATO’s ongoing enlargement process has been an historic success in advancing stability and cooperation and bringing us closer to our common goal of a Europe whole and free, united in peace, democracy and common values.” That’s not how Moscow saw NATO’s military buildup in Ukraine when it launched its “provoked” attack in February 2022, basing itself explicitly and repeatedly on the US attack on Iraq in 2003 for preventive defense. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6bnajOIW_Q&t=1s
As for NATO’s for the tenth commandment enjoining “coveting thy neighbor’s goods,” it is noteworthy that this commandment, unlike the other nine, is about thought, not action, and aims at motive. Before any wrongful act is ever committed, the commandment warns against its contemplation, the desire to get something that belongs to another. Is there an external punishment as there is for overt actions, killing or stealing? Or does the Tenth depend solely on the mental discipline and sense of honor of the individual or leader? This is not to say that NATO respects the other commandments.
