By William Pomeroy

Part II

The Helsinki Agreement on European
Security and Cooperation, signed in
1975, raised hopes throughout the world
of a new era of peaceful coexistence.
Since the signing of the agreement,
however, the peace policies of the War-
saw Treaty and the militarist tension-
creating of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) have become in-
creasingly marked.

No sooner had the ink dried on the
Helsinki Agreement than a new and
more virulent campaign by NATO lead-
ers set in to wreck detente and to attain

military supremacy over the socialist _

countries. President Carter’s cynical

use of “‘human rights” to distort and -

overturn the Helsinki understandings
has been exceeded by the NATO shrill
propaganda about a ‘‘Soviet threat”’
and about a Warsaw Treaty *“‘build-up.”’

On October 21, 1977, the Soviet Union
put forward a set of proposals that in-
cluded a commitment to no first use of
nuclear weapons, no expansion of
either NATO or the Warsaw Treaty, no
conducting of military exercises by
either side with more than 50,000 to
60,000 troops, and a broadening of mili-
tary confidence-building measures.
These proposals were rejected out of
hand by NATO with the excuse that ‘“‘the
right of self-defense’ should not be “‘re-
stricted.”

The U.S. concept of ‘‘unrestricted
self-defense”’ was illustrated by the in-
tensive campaign, in which strident
“Soviet threat’ imagery was used, to
win approval by its NATO partners for
the neutron weapon to be stationed in
Central Europe. This campaign failed,
due to mass opposition in NATO coun-
tries. However, in 1977 the U.S. suc-
ceeded in pressuring the other NATO
countries to boost their arms spending
by 3% each year until 1985.

NATO governments, though hard-
pressed by economic crisis, are being
pressed to take extremely unpopular
measures of cutting social services to
the bone in order to spend on arms. The

_ pressure is coming from NATO chiefs
(headed by U.S. General Alexander
Haig, the alliance’s supreme military
commander, and NATO’s Secretary
General Joseph Luns, recently revealed
as belonging to a fascist party in the
1930s) who have conducted a campaign
of the most bare-faced lies ‘about the
Warsaw Treaty’s alleged boosting of its
military strength in men and material
in Central Europe.

Soviet First Deputy Minister of
Foreign Affairs G. M. Kornienko, in a
statement on January 26, 1979, quoting.
numerous statements by U.S. sec-
retaries of state, defense secretaries
and President Ford, who have admitted
from 1973 to the present that there is a_
balance and a parity of NATO-Warsaw
Treaty forces in Central Europe, said:

“Since those times the Soviet Union
has not increased its forces in the area
by a single soldier or a single tank. No
one can challenge this fact. At the same
time the strength of American forces in
Europe, according to data published in.
the U.S. itself, went up by 17,900 troops
in 1977 and by another 16,900 in 1978.

‘After all this the West tries to allege
some ‘disproportions’ in favor of the
Warsaw Treaty countries and insists
under this pretext on asymmetrical re-
ductions in favor of the NATO countries.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JUNE 1, 1979—Page’10°

NATO:
a threat
to peace

This is a strange and, frankly, hopeless
line.” : :
A Warsaw Treaty Declaration
adopted on November 23, 1978 said:
‘Whether it be on the European or
the world scale, with reference to sepa-
rate areas or the whole world, the
socialist countries — Warsaw Treaty
member states — are ready to conduct
talks on all aspects of the problem of
ending the arms race, including those
on which they are not being conducted
so far. This concerns, for example, the
question of limiting and reducing those

components of the combat potential of

both sides in Eurepe, which are at pre-
sent a source of concern for any of the
countries. There is no such type of
weapon that the socialist countries rep-
resented at the Conference would not be
ready to limit or reduce on the basis of
strict observance of the principle of un-
diminished security of either of the
sides.”’

As Soviet President Leonid
Brezhnev said in June 1978: ‘“‘We are
ready at any moment to sign an agree-
ment in Vienna to reduce the level of
armed forces and armaments of the two
sides in Central Europe by 5, 10, 20 or
even 50%.” :

No statement or proposal has ever
come from NATO councils or from its
individual member governments urg-
ing reduction of armed forces or arms
budgets or taking the initiative for
measures of detente. Acceptance of
Warsaw Treaty peace proposals has
only been reluctantly made when it was

_ obviously polically inexpedient not to do

So, as in the case of the Helsinki Agree-
ment, but this has invariably been fol-
lowed by concerted efforts to resume
the arms race in pursuit of the will-o-
the-wisp of gaining strategic and tacti-
cal superiority over the socialist states.

In May 1978 the NATO Council met
and decided, chiefly at U.S. insistence,
on an unparalleled long-range program
of beefing up NATO armed forces, a
program in utter contradiction to the
aims of detente for which NATO gov-
ernment heads have been compelled to
express endorsement. Leaning on the
most strident assertions about a “‘Soviet

menace,”’ NATO has proposed to mod-.

ernize and enormously strengthen its
military potential, in all spheres, over a
period lasting until the end of the 20th
century.

It is proposed to boost arms expendi-
ture by $80 billion by 1993, when the
NATO arms budget would go beyond
$250 billion annually. This would be
spent on introducing the newest air and
naval systems,
weapons (including the neutron
warhead), electronic warfare weapons,
the most advanced tanks, anti-armor
weapons, armed helicopters, air-
surface weapons, and such costly
equipment as thelé AWACS aircraft
(carrying airborne early warning con-

tactical nuclear

trol systems) that the U.S. has finally
pressured reluctant West European
NATO members to accept.

Among the plans is the spending of $6
billion to construct ‘‘infra-structure”’
facilities — storehouses, barracks and
air bases — chiefly in West Germany for
increasing the present U.S. forces in
Europe of 300,000 by another 150,000 and
for boosting the present 20 U.S. air
squadrons by another 60 air squadrons.
Exercises have already been held for
airlifting such an increase in U.S. forces
in an ‘“‘emergency.”’ The idea is to have
all equipment, weapons, supplies, and
facilities in readiness so that only the
men would have to be airlifted in.

Since this huge program was ap-
proved by NATO chiefs, General Haig
has been touring Western Europe with
fresh proposals. In December 1978 he
was reported as ‘‘pressing strongly”’ for
the deployment of nerve gas projectiles
in Western Europe; in March 1979 he
was instigating the “huge” production
by NATO of seal-laid mines,

’ From the Haig-headed NATO mili-
tary committees has come the ‘‘Euro-
strategic’’ concept of stationing an ex-
tensive system of nuclear missiles in
Central Europe, particularly West
Germany. The idea is that when a U.S.-
Soviet Salt II nuclear agreement is

NATO's Secretary General Joseph Luns be-
longed to a fascist party in the 1930s.

signed, Western Europe would sup-
posedly lose its U.S. nuclear ‘‘shield,”
and therefore must have its own nuclear
missiles to ‘‘counter the Soviet threat.”
Such a scheme would augment tension
in Europe, and has understandably
brought opposition from NATO coun-
tries themselves, especially from West

_ Germany.

Along with the massive NATO mili-
tary build-up that is in progress, which
rings ominously like preparations for.
actual war, is occurring such trends as
that eneunciated by U.S. national sec-
urity advisor Zbgniew Brzezinski in the
March issue of the journal NATO’s Fif-
teen Nations: ‘‘Itis clear that nations in
the NATO alliance will have to pay in-
creasing attention to what is happening
outside of the treaty area itself. For
example, crises in the Middle East,
Persian Gulf, the African horn, and
southern Africa can vitally affect the
interests of our countries.”

NATO chiefs have also beén looking
in another direction outside their treaty
area, toward China, which General
Haig has referred to as NATO’s ‘16th
member.”’ Supply of arms to China and
concepts of a NATO-China strategy

_have been discussed in NATO councils.

The aggressive dreams of NATO,
however, have always exceeded the

~ NATO commander next month.

realities that have confined its ambi
tions. Today its chiefs are looking over”
their shoulders at the disintegration and
extinction of the other two treaty areas”
erected in the Cold War days against the
socialist countries and national libera-_
tion movements: the South East Asia
Treaty Organization (SEATO) and the
Central Treaty Organization (CENTO). |
These fell apart because the member
countries themselves and their people
came to view-them as against their na
tional interests. 4

Within the NATO alliance itself dis-_
cord has continually arisen. France
withdrew from its military commit
ments in 1966. Greece partially with- |
drew in 1974, in deep conflict with its”
NATO partner, Turkey, which itself,
closed U.S. bases on its soil. 4

Five NATO members have failed t0
fulfill the U:S.-pushed agreement to Ir
crease arms spending by 3% yearly 10)
1983 — Denmark, Greece, Turkey, Italy
and Netherlands. In Belgium, Nether
lands and Norway public opinion iS)
strongly against the deployment of nu-
clear weapons, and in West Germany
strong forces within the present gov”
ernment oppose the U.S. scheme to sta
tion nuclear missiles on its territor,

Fears are constant in NATO councl
_over the coming of Communists into the

a : 1
U.S. General Alexander Haig will retire a8

governments of West European coun-_
tries, especially in Italy and France.
The current fear is that a neutralis
trend will develop in West Germany,
which relies heavily on trade wit
socialist countries. |

After 30 years of aggressive aims
and plans the NATO alliance remains as ©
far, if not farther than ever from carry: |
ing out its anti-Soviet, anti-socialist
country programs. It remains, how:
ever, as a great hazard to peace, and an
even greater drain on the resources and
economic well-being of its member
countries. a

Only the persistent, patient, unde: ©
viating peace policies of the Soviet
Union and.of the Warsaw Treaty al
liance, and the building of their defenses —
at great sacrifice that has interferred_
with their more rapid construction. of |
socialism, have barred NATO from em:
barking on its war aims. If peace has”
been maintained and detente has begun —
it is because the aims of the Warsaw
Treaty have coincided with the desires
for peace of the peoples of the NATO |
countries. It is this essential alliance fom
peace that extends across military
blocs that will assure the bankruptcy of —
present NATO schemes and the even-
tual dissolution of military treaty or-
ganizations themselves in Europe. __

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