Resist Military Globalisation!

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Five years after the Iraq war started: an international action weekend at NATO's headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.

Europe serves as a staging ground for military interventions worldwide. The framework can differ: NATO, EU, US coalition of the willing, UN. The target as well: Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, ....

But the departure points not: military bases, airports and harbours in Europe.

Europe hosts a large military intervention machinery. The 5th anniversary of the war in Iraq is a good moment to again make the resistance against military globalisation visible. We do not need a machinery for global military intervention. We do not need military alliances that threaten the rest of the world. Enough! Security is too important to leave it to the military.

Economic globalisation also has its military correlary. New York Times' columnist Thomas Friedman said: "The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the builder of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley 's technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps." This fist is not solely a US phenomenon. Europe builds its own intervention capacity through the militarisation of European Union, with or without the US and NATO. In Africa EU humanitarian interventions support and legitimate the neo-colonial policies of the bigger European states or the former colonial powers. Within NATO energy security is now openly being discussed as a NATO task.

A broad and international movement challenges the legitimacy of the G8-leaders and blocked the G8-summit in Germany last year. It is time to also challenge the legitimacy of their military power tools. NATO is one of the most important institutions of this military globalisation, just like the G8 is for the economic globalisation. And just like we said no to the G8, we have to say no to NATO. Stop these war games! NATO—Game Over.