Considering the public media attention and concern about the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), it is worth reminding people about NATO’s bloody history in Africa. NATO was founded in 1949 after WWII, at a time when African countries were still under the yoke of colonialism.
In fact, most of the original founders of NATO had been Africa’s principal colonizers, such as the UK, France, Portugal, Belgium, Italy, and the USA—the lead NATO organizer and dominant partner. The organization was established as a collective defense against the Soviet Union, with the requirement (Article 5) that any attack on one member would be considered an attack on all, thereby necessitating a collective response.
Since NATO was founded with the purported purpose of halting possible Soviet aggression and stopping the spread of Communism, it would seem logical that after the collapse of the USSR in 1991, there would no longer be a need for NATO.
Since then, however, NATO has expanded from the founding twelve to thirty member states, many of whom are Eastern European countries, formerly Soviet republics, and Warsaw Pact allies. Today, NATO has become a huge axis in the wheel of the military-industrial complex controlled by the U.S.
NATO Bases in Africa
Needless to say, in the 1950s, when most Africans were still colonial subjects, they had absolutely no control over the utilization of their soil for militaristic ends. Virtually the whole of North Africa was turned into a sphere of operations for NATO, with bases aimed at the Soviet Union.
A nuclear war could have easily erupted without African peoples having any knowledge of the matter. The colonial powers held military conferences in African cities like Dakar and Nairobi in the early 1950s, inviting the white minority regimes of South Africa and Rhodesia, as well as the government of the USA.
Time and time again, the evidence points to this cynical use of Africa to buttress capitalism economically and militarily, thereby forcing Africa to contribute to its own exploitation.
Kwame Nkrumah had already warned in his 1967 Challenge of the Congo that there were at least seventeen air bases, nine foreign naval bases, three rocket sites, and an atomic testing range operated by NATO in North Africa, in addition to military missions in about a dozen other African countries.
Nkrumah called for the urgent need to counter NATO’s challenge in the strategy he outlined in his Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare, which included the call for a military high command and an All-African People’s Revolutionary Army (AAPRA).
The example of Portugal, as one of the original members of NATO, is worth exploring. The great freedom fighter of Africa, Amilcar Cabral, called Portugal “a rotten appendage of imperialism.” He said, “Portugal is the most underdeveloped country in Western Europe. Portugal would never have been able to launch three colonial wars in Africa without the help of NATO—the weapons of NATO, the planes of NATO, the bombs. It would have been impossible for them.”
Cabral goes on to explain that the only reason Portugal was able to hold on to its colonies in Africa is because it had been a semi-colony of Britain since 1775, and Britain defended Portugal’s interests during the partition of Africa.
Furthermore, NATO—a creation of the U.S.—used Portugal and its colonies as part of the larger objective of dominating Africa and the world.
Imperialism has always employed its strategy of divide and rule. To enable acceptance of the idea of a “benevolent” NATO, the colonial powers knew they had to convince and recruit a neocolonial class of indigenous Africans who would do their bidding. This divide played out in the national liberation movements, between those friendly to imperialist forces and those who wanted a real break from colonialism.
Nkrumah explains in Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism the wide array of methods employed by neocolonialism, ranging from economic and political to religious, ideological, and cultural spheres. To achieve this, NATO works hand in hand with other mechanisms of imperialism, like the CIA, which was instrumental in the coup against the Nkrumah government and the murder of Patrice Lumumba.
NATO & AFRICOM
AFRICOM is a direct product of NATO via EUCOM, the U.S. European Command. EUCOM is a central part of NATO and originally oversaw 42 African states. In 2004, NATO ended a five-year period of expansion; in 2007, the EUCOM commander proposed the creation of AFRICOM.
The U.S./NATO role in the destruction of Libya in 2011 is critical to highlight because it offers important lessons. First, U.S. imperialism and its Western allies do not accept any country that decides to operate independently outside their sphere of influence. Second, it demonstrates how NATO collaborates with other U.S./Western-dominated global structures like the UN.
In 2011, UN Resolution 1973 authorized a “no-fly zone” and blockade of Libya, purportedly to “protect” its citizens, but ultimately resulted in the destruction of Africa’s most prosperous country, which had the highest Human Development Index.
U.S.-led NATO forces launched a bombing campaign that killed thousands of civilians and caused tens of billions of dollars in property and infrastructure damage. This shows that while U.S.-led NATO sometimes uses the UN for political cover, it has no qualms about illegally overstepping its UN mandate to commit crimes against humanity and achieve regime change.
Even countries that abstained from the UN vote, like China, claimed they did so to avoid offending the reactionary Arab League and the African Union, which approved the resolution. This indirect and direct cooperation between NATO, the UN, the AU, and the Arab League—including GCC countries—reveals the expansive, deeply woven web of U.S. and NATO influence.
“The U.S.-led NATO war on Libya will be remembered as one of history’s greatest crimes, violating the letter and spirit of international law and America’s Constitution. The Nuremberg Tribunal’s Chief Justice Robert Jackson (a Supreme Court justice) called Nazi war crimes ‘the supreme international crime against peace.’” Jackson called aggressive war “the greatest menace of our times.” International law defines crimes against peace as “planning, preparation, initiation, or waging of wars of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements, or assurances, or participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing.”
All U.S. post-WWII wars fall under this definition. Since then, America has waged direct and proxy premeditated, aggressive wars worldwide. It has killed millions in East and Central Asia, North and other parts of Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and Central and South America.
These examples are but a small sampling of NATO/AFRICOM’s bloody works in Africa’s past. NATO continues to operate under the guise of “training” and “humanitarian” peacekeeping assistance.
Jihadist terrorist violence on the continent has increased since the founding of AFRICOM and NATO’s destruction of Libya, resulting in civilian casualties and instability—which the West has used as a pretext to justify AFRICOM’s continued presence.
It is against this background that I suggest African countries, particularly Ghana, reject reliance on NATO assistance and instead build cooperation with African counterparts and neighbors in the security sphere by establishing sub-regional security organizations. No one can guarantee Africa’s sovereignty better than Africa itself. A word to the wise is enough.
BY Kwasi Kishmah
