TTIP, “Economic Nato” by Manlio Dinucci

Sunday, 26 June 2016

TTIP, “Economic Nato” by Manlio Dinucci

VOLTAIRE NETWORK | ROME (ITALY) | 21 JUNE 2016

Citizens, local authorities, parliaments, governments, entire states depleted of economic choices, placed in the hands of organizations controlled by multinationals and financial groups, violating labour rights, environmental protection and food security, demolishing public services and communal goods. It is for these reasons, articulated by the campaign “Stop TTIP” that sponsored the demonstration held on 7 May at Rome, that the “Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership” (TTIP) must be rejected. The EU and the US have been negotiating the TTIP in secret.

Such reasons are coupled with others, about which little or nothing at all is said: geopolitical and geostrategic reasons, which reveal a far wider and more threatening project.

The US ambassador for the EU, Anthony Gardner, insists that “there are fundamental geostrategic reasons to conclude this agreement”. What are these reasons? These are indicated by the US National Intelligence Council. It forecasts that “following the decline of the West and the rise of Asia, by 2030 developing states will have taken over developed states”.

This is why Hillary Clinton defines the US-EU partnership as “the biggest strategic goal of our transatlantic alliance”, proposing an “Economic Nato”, a blend of politics and the military.

Washington’s project is clear: to take Nato to a higher level and to set up a EU-US political, economic and military bloc, still under US leadership, enlarged by a range of partners on both sides of the Atlantic and others, including allies such as Israel and the Gulf monarchies.

A bloc that, in Washington’s strategy, should be a counterweight to the Euroasian area, an emerging region, based on China-Russia cooperation, the Brics, Iran and any other country that escapes Western control.

The first step to implement this plan: splinter the relationship between the EU and Russia.

The TTIP negotiations began in July 2013. They struggled to go forward due to conflicting interests between the US and the biggest European powers, to which Russia is offering favourable trade agreements.

Six months later, in January/February 2014, the Maidan Square putsch set up by the US/Nato, triggers a chain reaction (attacks on Russians in Ukraine, Krimea is severed and absorbed into Russia, sanctions and countersanctions). This creates in Europe once again a climate of Cold War.

At the same time, EU countries are put under pressure by an influx of migrants brought about by the US/Nato war (Libya/Syria), which they participated in and terrorist attacks which bear Isis’s signature (Isis too being a creature of these wars).

In this Europe, divided by “walls of containment” of migratory flows, where the pyschosis of being under siege is spreading, the US launches the biggest military operation since the end of the Cold War, lining up on Russia’s border fighter-bombers and warships with nuclear capabilities.

US-led NATO, whose membership includes 22 of the 28 EU member states, cranks up it military drills (which exceeded 300 in 2015) especially on the Eastern front. At the same time it launches, with air units and special forces, military operations in Libya, Syria and other countries on the Southern border, closely connected with those on the Eastern border, notably following Russian intervention in Syria.

All this promotes Washington’s plan to create an EU/US political, economic and military bloc. A plan unconditionally supported by Italy and Eastern states that have closer ties to the US than the EU. The biggest powers, notably France and Germany, are still negotiating. However in the meantime they are further integrating into Nato.

On 7 April [2016] the French parliament adopted a Protocol authorizing Nato bases and commands to be set up on its territory, military set ups that France had refused in 1966.

Der Spiegel reports that Germany is ready to send troops into Lithuania to strengthen the Nato alliance in Baltic countries bordering Russia.

Again it is der Spiegel that reports that Germany is prepared to set up an air base in Turkey where German tornados are already operating – officially in an anti-Isis capacity, strengthening the Nato alliance in this area that is of primary strategic importance.

The growing integration of France and Germany into US-led Nato shows that the “geostrategic reasons” for the TTIP prevail over conflicting interests (in particular, the costly sanctions against Russia).