Alain Laurent is a philosopher, sociologist and essayist. A former founding member of the Committee of Intellectuals for a Europe of Freedom, since 2004 he has directed the collection
La Bibliothèque Classique de la Liberté
, at Belles Lettres.
To discover
Find all the results of the legislative elections
Pierre Rigoulot, a specialist in communist regimes, is director of the Institute of Social History (founded by Boris Souvarine in 1935) and editor-in-chief of the quarterly
Histoire & Liberté.
He is the author of numerous books, the latest of which is
Hot Points of the Cold War (1946-1989),
L'Archipel, 2019.
Just a few months ago, from Marine Le Pen to Jean-Luc Mélenchon (via a few sovereignists), it was up to who would most ferociously denounce NATO, this other "thing" made by the Americans to join auxiliaries in their struggle to establish their world domination.
Today, both presidential candidates have calmed down.
They know that now is not the time to be too close to Putin's speech.
They also know that every voter feels more or less confusedly that the American nuclear umbrella is a serious protection and that in the face of Russia's mad enterprise on the borders of Europe, the latter needs the military force that is the 'NATO.
We know it: each member country of this alliance undertakes according to Article 5 of its Charter to respond to the aggression that any other member of the alliance could suffer.
In a magnificent effort to save what could be of Western civilization in Europe, a formidable airlift was set up by Westerners and especially the United States.
It was in this context, on April 12, 1949, that NATO was created.
Alain Laurent and Pierre Rigoulot
Voters know less about the circumstances of the birth of NATO.
But they also plead in his favour: from the beginning of 1948 until May 1949, Stalin had gradually put in place a blockade of the city of Berlin.
Should this be left to the Soviets?
Nope!
And in a magnificent effort to save what could be of Western civilization in Europe, a formidable airlift was set up by Westerners and especially the United States.
It was in this context, on April 12, 1949, that NATO was created.
Stalin had not yet given up on seizing the German capital but, the Westerners yielding nothing (on April 16 a plane loaded with food or fuel landed every minute in Berlin!) he ended up reopening the roads which allowed access and exit a month later.
The USSR (“humiliated” and “threatened” as Mélenchon would have said) obviously denounced the “diktat of war and aggression” that the new North Atlantic Treaty Organization represented in its eyes.
She even denounced the pretexts which NATO put forward to justify its foundation and in particular the serious violations of human rights in the USSR and in the European countries which it had conquered: how did NATO dare to use
such an argument when "the Nazis of West Germany" and the Spanish Francoists approved of his birth?
At the time, the Nazis were not Ukrainian but the supporters of the Atlantic Pact could be: its founders took over, according to Moscow, the aims and designs of Hitler!
Germany did not join NATO until 1955 and Spain only after becoming a democracy in 1982.
It was Stalin who really created NATO: the Prague coup in 1948 and the blockade of Berlin in 1949 did much for the birth of the Alliance and made it necessary, in the face of its threats, to set up a counter-threat, credible and effective.
Alain Laurent and Pierre Rigoulot
Various sovereigntists like Philippe de Villiers speak for their part of American control over Europe and of acceptance by Europeans of submission to America.
The war, cold or hot, led by the USSR would have been an opportunity for Washington to configure a Europe in American hands...
However, it was Stalin who was the real creator of NATO: the coup in Prague in 1948 and the blockade of Berlin in 1949 did much for the birth of the Alliance and made it necessary, in the face of its threats, to set up a credible and effective counter-threat - the surprise outbreak of the Korean War with the approval of the same Stalin in June 1950, reinforcing Atlantic determination.
When the USSR collapsed in 1991, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe freely asked to join to ensure their security.
In the years that followed, 14 of these states joined NATO, including the three Baltic states.
NATO will intervene later to facilitate the decommunization of Yugoslavia - This episode, often caricatured, put an end to the attempt of the red-brown Milosevic to succeed it.
NATO is the armed wing of a Western world threatened by the Russian desire to regain its former “greatness”.
Alain Laurent and Pierre Rigoulot
NATO is the great force of small states too weak to defend themselves alone against Putin's Russia.
The large majority desire of the very peaceful Finns and Swedes to join NATO is a good illustration of the true nature of the organization: a free defensive alliance of liberal democracies who above all want to live in peace and who have understood the tyrannical imperialist nature and therefore especially dangerous for them from the current Russian state.
NATO is the armed wing of a Western world threatened by the Russian desire to regain its "greatness" of yesteryear.
NATO is an alliance to protect freedom in a world where the UN is unable, muzzled as it is by the vetoes of Russia and China, to denounce the threats of totalitarian states.
