Review: “Danger: NATO” – Anatoly Grishchenko, Vladimir Semenov, and Leonid Teplinsky

“Danger NATO” by Anatoly Grishchenko, Vladimir Semenov, and Leonid Teplinsky is a short Marxist-Leninist analysis of NATO published in the USSR. The book examines the history, establishment, and ideology of NATO, how the U.S. uses NATO to pressure Western European states to act as junior and subservient partners of U.S. imperialism against their own national interests, and the numerous but ultimately futile efforts by the USSR and the Warsaw Pact to achieve mutual peace, security, and disarmament between the West and the East.

Nothing in the book is ‘new’ or even radical to anyone even remotely familiar with U.S. imperialism and NATO (the fact that a Nazi was made Chairman of the NATO Military Committee should tell you everything you need to know about NATO). What I think is valuable about this little book is that all the information is contained in a single place. This book is like a mini-encyclopedia on all things related to NATO. Some of the key points the book raises are:

• The argument of some U.S. and Western leaders that the establishment of NATO was necessary to stop the Soviet advance into Europe was ridiculous because NATO was established (1949) before the Warsaw Pact was signed (1955).
• Germany was partitioned in violation of Potsdam because the U.S. and Britain wanted to re-militarize Germany as an anti-Soviet counter-force (literally déjà vu of the 1930s).
• The declaration of the first meeting of the Warsaw Treaty Political Consultative Committee in 1956 stated: “Peaceful conditions for the development of European peoples can be best guaranteed by the creation of a European collective security system which would replace the military groupings currently existing in Europe” (pp. 35-36).
• There’s no evidence that U.S. and Western European leaders truly believed the USSR posed a threat to Western Europe. John Foster Dulles himself is quoted as writing that Soviet communism “avoids anything that suggests a war of nation against nation…Some of the highest and most competent authorities in Europe have recently told me that they do not believe that the Communist Party would dare to order the Russian armies to march on Western Europe as an invading force unless Russia had been attacked, so that it was clear to the Russian people that the operation was necessary for self-defense…most well-qualified persons are inclined to feel their is no imminent danger of the Red Army’s being marched out of Russia against Western Europe or Asia in a war of aggression” (p. 19).
• Virtually all proposals of by the USSR and Warsaw Pact countries were rejected by the U.S. and NATO, including the mutual and simultaneous abolishment of both NATO and the Warsaw Pact.
• NATO served as a means for U.S. imperialism to undermine the sovereignty and national independence of Western European states. Examples include the American Plan 100-1, which, in “emergencies,” U.S. troops were expected to suppress any movement in NATO countries that would threaten U.S. strategic interests. The French press itself publicized how the U.S. exercised secret control over political developments in allied nations so as to detect in advance trends capable of weakening these countries’ dependence on the U.S. Similarly, NATO document code-named M-116 SIS-69-6 recommended action be taken against youth and student movements by isolating students and young workers from politics in order to purge the more politically active (pp. 21-22).
• At a time that the USSR and other socialist countries were reducing their armed strength the U.S. and NATO were increasing theirs. According to the authors, between 1955-57 the USSR reduced its armed forces by 2,140,000 troops, Poland by 141,500, Czechoslovakia by 44,000, the GDR by 30,000, Romania by 60,000, Bulgaria by 18,000, Hungary by 35,000, and Albania by 9,000. At the same time U.S. and Western leaders were trying to turn NATO into a fourth atomic power. A permanent item on the agenda of the many conferences of U.S., Western European and NATO leaders was the establishment of the Multinational Nuclear Forces throughout the ’50s and ’60s (pp. 40-41).
• The book also examines NATO’s role against national liberation movements throughout Asia, Africa, and Latin America. This includes U.S./NATO support for Israeli aggression, the dismemberment of Mauritius for the establishment of a military base in the Indian Ocean, NATO support for apartheid South Africa against the Namibian peoples, NATO threats and aggression against Cuba, etc.

Overall the book is a serious indictment of NATO. Any progressive minded person in the world today should oppose NATO and support its dissolution. Even if you aren’t a Marxist there really is no benefit in the world of a quasi-military power like NATO. Fuck NATO.