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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 4/17/12

Chicago Summit: NATO To Complete Domination Of Arab World

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Chicago Summit: NATO To Complete Domination Of Arab World
Rick Rozoff

On April 17 King Abdullah II of Jordan visited the North Atlantic Treaty Organization headquarters in Brussels in the latest act of obeisance paid to the military bloc by what Zbigniew Brzezinski in 1998 referred to, bluntly but accurately enough, as the dependent vassals and pliant tributaries of the West from the Middle East, North Africa, Eastern Europe, the South Caucasus, Central Asia, South Asia, East Asia and the South Pacific.

The Jordanian monarch's pilgrimage was preceded by those of the presidents of Germany, Georgia and Moldova, the prime minister of Montenegro, the foreign minister of Croatia and the defense minister of Slovenia in the past month.

Top officials of nations as diverse as Israel, Mongolia, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Australia, New Zealand, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Japan, South Korea, Iraq, Armenia and Azerbaijan visit NATO headquarters regularly.

Notwithstanding the alliance's claims of embodying "individual liberty, democracy, human rights and the rule of law," so-called Euro-Atlantic or transatlantic values, it has always exhibited a propensity for elitist and exclusionary forms of national governance, particularly monarchy. The majority of NATO's founding members - Belgium, Britain, Canada, Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Norway - retain that pre-republican, pre-modern preference in the somewhat attenuated form of constitutional monarchies.

So it is not surprising that King Abdullah and his fellow hereditary rulers in Morocco and in the Gulf Cooperation Council feel entirely at home in Brussels.

In the NATO website's account of his visit, "NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen praised His Majesty King Abdullah II of Jordan for his country's valued security partnership during talks at NATO headquarters..."

Rasmussen, faithful subject of Queen Margrethe II accustomed to bending the knee to royals, and the crowned head of state discussed NATO's Mediterranean Dialogue military partnership, Jordan's Individual Cooperation Programme with the alliance, the Middle Eastern nation's role in NATO operations around the world (Jordan is a troop contributor for NATO's war in Afghanistan) and the consolidation of its global partnerships to be deliberated on at next month's summit in Chicago.

In the press release describing the visit, NATO added, "Jordan is an important security partner, contributing to NATO led-missions in Afghanistan, the Balkans and most recently in Libya..."

Jordan was one of four Arab states present at the March 19 summit in Paris with the U.S. and leading European NATO powers that announced the beginning of the six-month bombing campaign against Libya. The other three were Morocco, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. The last two are members of NATO's Istanbul Cooperation Initiative and jointly supplied 18 fighter jets for the aerial onslaught in Libya, both during the U.S. Africa Command-led Operation Odyssey Dawn and the NATO-led Operation Unified Protector phases of the war.

Less than two months into the conflict it was reported that the alliance of Persian Gulf kingdoms, sheikhdoms and emirates (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates), the Gulf Cooperation Council, had invited the only other monarchies in the Arab world, Jordan and Morocco, to join, although neither country is near the Gulf.

It is this bloc of royal family-ruled nations that is the West's main partner in effecting regime change in the Arab world from Libya to Syria to Yemen and in future in Algeria, Libya, Iraq and other nations as needed.

The eight monarchies are all NATO military partners: Jordan and Morocco through the Mediterranean Dialogue and Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates with the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative, with Oman and Saudi Arabia practical if not yet formal members of the latter.

Libya had been the only country in North Africa not a member of the Mediterranean Dialogue.

Shortly after the murder of Libya's Muammar Gaddafi last October, U.S. ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder offered the bloc's support in fashioning a new Libyan army and, according to Agence France-Presse, "said Libya could bolster its ties with the transatlantic alliance  by joining NATO's Mediterranean dialogue, a partnership comprising Morocco, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Mauritania, Jordan and Israel."

At a NATO foreign ministerial meeting in Brussels on December 7-8, Secretary General Rasmussen applauded the outcome of NATO's first African war and "several NATO officials and spokespersons expressed interest in Libya joining the Mediterranean Dialogue," the Tripoli Post reported.

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Rick Rozoff has been involved in anti-war and anti-interventionist work in various capacities for forty years. He lives in Chicago, Illinois. Is the manager of the Stop NATO international email list at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/
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