Canada Out of NATO!
By Barry Weisleder
Heavy showers abated as a crowd gathered across the street from the U.S. Consulate in Toronto on July 18. Despite smoky air fed by massive northern wild fires, folks came together to denounce the war-mad North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), led by Washington, Ottawa and their allies.
Nearly one hundred voices chanted “Canada Out of NATO. NATO Out of Canada”, “Defend Iran”, “Hands Off Lebanon”, and “Palestine Will Be Free, From the River to the Sea.”
The anti-war protest was sponsored by: Socialist Action, Capitalism Can’t Be Fixed, Hands Off Iran Community Toronto, Canadian Voice of Women for Peace, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom-Canada, the Canadian-Cuban Friendship Association, and Code Pink Ontario.
The following speech was delivered by Barry Weisleder from Socialist Action. _________________________________________________________
Ten days ago, members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) gathered in Ankara, Turkiye.
Their Summit meeting revealed a festering conflict. On one hand, we see dramatically increasing military spending, along with more belligerence globally. On the other hand, there is growing internal division, along with more international resistance.
Last year’s NATO Summit was unable to reach agreement on its basic mission. This year, divisions have deepened. Member states struggled to concur on support for Ukraine; they could not find common ground on Iran; and notably, Spain refused to commit to the 5% of GDP spending target.
In response, US President Donald Trump lashed out. He branded Spain a “terrible partner” and ordered his Treasury Secretary to cut off trade with the European country, all while reviving his threat to annex Greenland — the territory of a fellow NATO member.
This year’s declaration shifted to implementation of the 5% spending goal. NATO’s European members and Canada are to increase their “investments in core defense requirements by more than $139 billion”. The focus on the European members and Canada — to the exclusion of the United States — was not incidental. The Trump administration has pushed aggressively for what generations of US leaders have advocated: getting Europe and other members of the trans-Atlantic alliance to bear more of the burden of maintaining the imperialist system.
To a degree, Washington’s strategy appears to have succeeded. As NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte emphasized in his praise of Donald Trump, spending is on the rise. It seems that Washington got Europe to love war again.
But escalating militarism carries profound dangers and comes at a great cost. The war against Iran has no end in sight. While NATO leaders met, Washington launched successive waves of strikes — more than eighty targets on the first night, some ninety the next — and reimposed the oil sanctions it had briefly suspended. Trump declared the truce is “over” from the summit floor, and crudely insulted Iran’s leadership.
Meanwhile, the NATO proxy war in Ukraine, now in its fifth year, continues to escalate. Only a few years ago, countries like Germany were reluctant to send combat helmets to Ukraine for fear of escalation. NATO now operates as the strategic rearguard of the war effort. It has provided a full spectrum of advanced weaponry to Kiev. It has established drone production facilities around the bloc. And its intelligence actively engages in the targeting of Russia’s critical infrastructure.
Today, several NATO member states speak openly about the possibility of direct confrontation with Russia. Europe is marching towards war, and Washington helped to pave the way. Rutte himself recently admitted: “NATO is a platform for the United States to project power on the world stage.” Diplomatically, that means exert imperialist rule.
The cost is borne, as always, by the working class. NATO’s rearmament spree has given European big capitalists a pretext to finally dismantle the remnants of the social democratic order that prevailed since World War 2. Militarization and austerity are two sides of the same coin. The effects are already being felt in budget cuts across the continent.
But here is where resistance to NATO’s militarist agenda is growing.
On 14 June, days before the European Council convened to negotiate its next seven-year budget, thousands of people marched through Brussels under the banner “Welfare, not Warfare”. The Brussels march was the centre of a week of actions across the continent, from Spain to Finland, Greece to Britain.
Resistance confronted the Summit in Turkiye itself. In the two weeks beforehand, anti-NATO demonstrations led by trade unions and anti-imperialist movements took place in Istanbul, Ankara, and Izmir against swelling military budgets and NATO expansion.
The Turkish authorities responded with repression: the Ankara governorship banned all rallies, marches, and leafleting across the province for the duration of the summit, while detaining hundreds of people. The alliance, that proclaims itself a community of “mature democracies”, met behind a wall of closed roads and prohibited assembly.
NATO’s march towards war is not a sign of its strength, but of its weakness. It reflects the panicked response of an imperialist system in an advanced state of decay, seeking to salvage its hegemony by brute force — killing working people abroad while impoverishing them at home.
The international anti-war movement should connect these fronts: to link the worker in Brussels defending her pension to the people of Iran under bombardment; to link the struggle against austerity to the struggle against war. That is our message: Build Homes, not Drones. Expropriate war industries under Workers’ Control. Abolish the billionaire class.
Unsurprisingly, the Canadian Prime Minister is not listening. Mark ‘Carnage’ just announced the purchase of a dozen German attack submarines. The 12 subs will cost about two billion dollars each and the contract will top $100 billion over their lifecycle.
At a geopolitical level, the purchase bolsters Canada’s anti-Russia partnership and prioritizes NATO inter-operability. The German firm TKMS provides 70% of NATO’s non-nuclear submarines. Such vessels excel at blowing up war ships and merchant vessels. They can also be used effectively to impose a blockade. Does the Gulf of Hormuz come to mind?
What use would these subs be in defending Canada against the only country that can realistically invade -- to make it the 51st state? Consider history. Did you know that two Canadian submarines and a dozen other vessels participated in the 1962 US blockade of Cuba, according to Royal Canadian Navy Lieutenant Bruce Fenton? Military historian Jack Granatstein labeled it “the single greatest breach of proper civil-military relations in Canadian history.” Remember that NATO was founded in 1949. The Warsaw Pact formed in 1955, six years later! America instigated this infernal business.
Once again Carney’s government has kowtowed to Trump and a capitalist war machine that is willing to destroy the planet to make more profit. So much for “elbows up”.
We say Capitalism Can’t be Fixed. It’s time to dump this rotten system, to overturn Canadian imperialism and the Canadian colonial settler state. Canada Out of NATO! NATO Out of Canada! From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free!