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When:
May 11, 2025 @ 5:00 pm – 6:30 pm
2025-05-11T17:00:00-07:00
2025-05-11T18:30:00-07:00
Where:
Online
David Swanson is the co-author, with Code Pink’s Medea Benjamin, of “NATO: What You Need to Know,” a concise, 200-page summary of NATO’s supremely violent, imperialist history. The North Atlantic Treaty signed in 1949 proclaimed its commitment to peace and the principles of the UN Charter, but “the real glue that brought NATO countries together was opposition to communism and socialism.” It was created not only to counter the USSR, but also to defeat European communist and socialist movements and crush revolutionary, anti-colonial struggles. At the time of its founding, Britain, France, Belgium, and Portugal were waging vicious campaigns to try to hold on to their African colonies.
The USSR didn’t create the Warsaw Pact until six years later, in May 1955, in response to NATO. The previous year, it had actually asked to join, fearing the revival of German militarism, which had cost between 20 and 30 million Russian lives in World War 2. A shared commitment to preventing another war in Europe, regardless of ideological differences, would of course have changed history, averting the nuclear arms race, but that would have undermined NATO’s fundamental purpose.
David will explain more of NATO’s history, including its expansion from twelve members to 32, which moved it right up to Russia’s borders and eventually led to the ongoing US/NATO-Russia proxy war in Ukraine.
As a longtime peace activist, he will also discuss resistance and alternatives to NATO’s endless wars.
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David Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is executive director of World BEYOND War and campaign coordinator of RootsAction.org. Swanson’s books include War Is A Lie and When the World Outlawed War. He blogs at DavidSwanson.org and hosts Talk World Radio.
On November 10, 2024, Swanson was awarded the Real Nobel Peace Prize by the Lay Down Your Arms Foundation in Oslo, Norway. Swanson was awarded the 2018 Peace Prize by the U.S. Peace Memorial Foundation. He was also awarded a Beacon of Peace Award by the Eisenhower Chapter of Veterans For Peace in 2011, and the Dorothy Eldridge Peacemaker Award by New Jersey Peace Action in 2022, and a Global Peace Leadership & Excellence Award in 2024.
Swanson is on the advisory boards of: Nobel Peace Prize Watch, Veterans For Peace, Assange Defense, BPUR, Military Families Speak Out, Fields of Peace, and Peace in Ukraine Coalition. He is an Associate of the Transnational Foundation, and a Patron of Platform for Peace and Humanity. He is on the Consultative Council of the SHAPE Project. He is on the International Coordinating Committee of No to War – No to NATO. He is on the Steering Group of Warheads to Windmills.
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