At present, NATO’s nuclear weapons policies violate both the spirit and the text of the NPT in several respects: Today there are an estimated 200 US nuclear weapons still in Europe. The air forces of the nations in which they are based are regularly trained to deliver the US weapons.

This “nuclear sharing,” as it is called, violates Articles I and II of the NPT, which forbid the transfer of nuclear weapons to non-nuclear-weapon states. It has been argued that the NPT would no longer be in force if a crisis arose, but there is nothing in the NPT saying that the treaty would not hold under all circumstances.

Article VI of the NPT requires states possessing nuclear weapon to get rid of them within a reasonable period of time. This article is violated by fact that NATO policy is guided by a Strategic Concept, which visualizes the continued use of nuclear weapons in the foreseeable future.

The principle of no-first-use of nuclear weapons has been an extremely important safeguard over the years, but it is violated by present NATO policy, which permits the first-use of nuclear weapons in a wide variety of circumstances.

In 1991, after the breakup of the Soviet Union, George H.W. Bush and his Secretary of State, James Baker, promised Mikhail Gorbachev that if he agreed to the unification of Germany, NATO would not expand eastward, toward Russia, “not one inch”.

The promise was broken almost immediately by Bill Clinton, who helped to bring the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland into NATO. Russians saw this not only as a betrayal, but also as an act of aggression.

*This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 20 Feb 2023: TMS: NATO’s Aggressive Militarism

NATO’s Aggressive Militarism | HUMAN WRONGS WATCH