It was once said by a former US Secretary of State about Britain that it had lost an empire but had yet to find a role.The NATO summit recently held in Strasbourg/Kehl marked the sixtieth anniversary of an organisation which has lost the Soviet Union but which is still struggling to find a role almost two decades later.What started off as an alliance to keep the Russians out, the Americans in and the Germans down, is now scratching around trying to find a reason for its very existence. Sixty years in, NATO is growing stale, disunited and more imperialist in its old age. Rather than putting on meaningless summits, NATO needs to be put in a museum. In the most recent summit, NATO leaders came together to discuss the latest challenges facing the alliance (no mean feat as there aren’t any) and to formally endorse President Obama’s strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan.They also signed up to the following series of bland and banal statements over the course of the two day summit,

• Agreed that NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mission in Afghanistan – NATO’s largest and most challenging mission in its history – is key to preventing Afghanistan from becoming a safe haven for Al Qaeda and the Taliban, and a base for terror attacks that threaten all allies and the entire international community.

Comment :Afghanistan is now considered by NATO to be more challenging than was defeating the mighty Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact with its thousands of nuclear warheads and overwhelming superiority in conventional forces.The Taliban with their AK 47’s are now considered by NATO to be more powerful than the mighty Red Army which will be news to most people. NATO members are obviously becoming desperate in trying to justify their continued existence and an unpopular war to their apathetic domestic populations.

• And following close and intense consultations with the United States on its Afghanistan-Pakistan review, updated NATO’s strategic political-military plan for its ISAF mission, stressing that success requires a stronger regional approach that involves all of Afghanistan’s neighbors and greater civil-military coordination and civilian resources.

Comment:With respect to Pakistan, the AfPak strategy is now clear and involves more of everything. More economic aid for Pakistan based on performance based results, more diplomacy (Mike Mullen Chair of the Joint Chiefs has been to the region 9-10 times in the last year and Richard Holbrooke is as ubiquitous in Islamabad as he is in Washington ) alongside more troops and more drones. Day by day Pakistan becomes the central front in America’s war on terror, a nation of 170 million with Islam in their hearts and nukes on their soil, Pakistan is what keeps western policymakers awake at night.The fear of the greater Middle East and the growing strategic importance of the Indian ocean which a recent US Marine Corps report (Vision and Strategy 2025) cited as being a central theatre of global conflict and competition this century clearly explains the importance of US action. By specifying the vague goal of defeating al Qaeda, this will allow a US presence in the region for decades to come, causing not just destabilisation for Pakistan but for the whole of Central Asia.America’s plan if successful would sign the death warrant for Pakistan.

• Celebrated the 60th anniversary of NATO, highlighting the Alliance’s successes while reaffirming the value and the strategic purpose of the Alliance in providing collective defense and working to build a Europe whole and free and at peace.

Comment: Defense from who, the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians? Who is exactly threatening NATO at present? Isn’t it NATO that is doing the attacking?

• Agreed to renew NATO’s shared sense of family united by common values; a commitment to democracy, human rights, and the rule of law;

Comment:Are these the same values that inspired Abu Ghraib, Guantanomo, extraordinary rendition, the Iraq war, torture, secret prisons, corrupt politicians and their corporate buddies and support for Israel’s massacres in Gaza. Does NATO really have any credibility talking about values?

• Welcomed Albania and Croatia as NATO’s newest Allies, reinforcing the message that NATO’s door remains open and that countries in Europe’s East can become members when they meet NATO’s performance-based standards and are able and ready to contribute to Allies’ common security;

Comment:A clear provocation aimed at Russia.What would happen if the latter sought a military alliance with Cuba, Mexico and Venezuela. NATO enlargement devoid of a defined mission is causing massive instability, the kind of instability that led to Russia’s attack on Georgia in 2008.

• Committed to a new transatlantic approach on Russia and Europe’s East that deepens cooperation with NATO aspirants and advances positive engagement with Russia, including by restarting dialogue and cooperation through the NATO-Russia Council, and agreed to build pragmatic cooperation with Russia in areas of shared interest, such as in Afghanistan, counter-piracy initiatives, arms control, and counterterrorism;

Comment: Is Russia that naive? that it will be bought off with an invite to a NATO talking shop? Doessn’t it remember what NATO did and said after the Georgia attack?

• Committed NATO to meeting new challenges; confronting new asymmetric threats to include terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, cyber-attacks, environmental degradation and energy disruptions, and the fallout from failed states and the economic crisis;

Comment: Most of these problems are caused directly by NATO members. State terror in Iraq and Afghanistan, proliferating their own nuclear arsenals e.g.Trident in the UK and mini nukes in America. Environmental degradation and the economic crisis were created in the west due to a capitalist ideology that is collapsing under its own excess.Who created failed states like Somalia, it was America and her ally Ethiopia who removed the one government (Islamic Courts) which had brought stability to Somalia in the last fifteen years.

• Issued a “Declaration of Alliance Security” as a first step towards balancing NATO’s traditional collective defense responsibilities with the need to modernise and transform to address new threats through the subsequent preparation of a new “Strategic Concept,” NATO’s mission statement for the future (last updated in 1999), to ensure that NATO remains as vital to our common security in the 21st century as it was in the 20th century.

Comment: Great words which could have come from a firm of management consultants, but still no clarity as to what the mission should be, what is NATO for?

• Selected a new Secretary General, Prime Minster Anders Fogh Rasmussen, to lead the reform of the Alliance so that it retains the flexibility and resources to meet the new challenges of our time.

Comment:Yes a Secretary General who has no respect for Islam and who as Prime Minister of Denmark justified the publication of obnoxious cartoons degrading the holy Prophet (sallalahu alaihi wassalam).This is the man who will now be the face for NATO’s campaigns in the Muslim world (you couldn’t make it up), after the Turkish government sacrificed their “principled” opposition to Rasmussen for a few staff positions at NATO headquarters.

For a NATO summit meeting marking the 60th anniversary of the alliance and intended to be about real substance, the event was more a damp squib, with NATO allies at best providing lukewarm support to Obama’s new AfPAK strategy.This was despite Obama detailing on the surface of it a narrowed war mission: emphasising intense action against Al Qaeda even above implementing secular democracy and western human rights.

“We want to do everything we can to encourage and promote rule of law, human rights, the education of women and girls in Afghanistan, economic development, infrastructure development,” he said.”But I also want people to understand that the first reason we are there is to root out Al Qaeda, so that they cannot attack members of the alliance.”

The Afghan war remains a dividing line for alliance leaders. In October of this year NATO’s war in Afghanistan will enter its ninth year, by any measure the Afghan campaign has already been a long war and most commentators expect will end up becoming significantly longer than WW1 and WW2 combined. For the US military bruised with nearly 4,500 fatalities in Iraq – the Afghan war is fast becoming one of the most demoralising chapters in the history of the United States. Despite widespread praise for President Obama’s new inclusive approach, his calls for a more significant European troop increase for Afghanistan were politely ignored, as they had been in negotiations leading up to the meeting. European allies agreed to provide only 5,000 new troops for Afghanistan with 3,000 deployed only temporarily to provide security for the August elections in Afghanistan.A further 1,400 to 2,000 soldiers will be sent to train teams for the Afghan Army and the police. So much for Afghanistan being critical for western national interests.The Afghan war like the Iraq war before it is fast becoming an American war with Europe steering well clear. President Obama’s decision to increase the number of American troops this year to about 68,000 from the current 38,000 will significantly Americanize the war. In a recent article in the New York Times a senior European diplomat said “No one will say this publicly, but the true fact is that we are all talking about our exit strategy from Afghanistan.We are getting out. It may take a couple of years, but we are all looking to get out.”

It is clear that the new American strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan is flawed for several reasons

1. The numbers of forces are still insufficient to win in Afghanistan (just ask the Russians) and are therefore designed to hold Afghanistan while projecting further into Pakistan.As a variety of US officials have stated, the strategic prize is Islamabad not Kabul.

2. The goal to defeat Al-Qaeda is vague and ambiguous and has been deliberately kept so.At the point of writing, the US administration has failed to publish any performance metrics despite their insistence that they have learnt the lessons of Iraq.The US cannot rid Afghanistan and Pakistan of Al-Qaeda (when Al Qaeda can exist everywhere in the world including in the United States) nor can it root out or kill everyone who opposes America or sympathises with its adversaries.America cannot police the borders of Pakistan until they are completely secure (it can’t even police its own border with Mexico) especially as the US military is the main source of the insecurity on both sides of the border.

3. By not having defined metrics, the US administration can continue a prolonged war in a strategic location that borders the energy resources of Central Asia as well as the geopolitical epicenter of the world, the Indian Ocean. Its location also has the advantage of neutralising Russian and Chinese influence in a key region of the world.

4. America also doesn’t realise that it cannot build nations, after systematically destroying them with their missiles, drones and aircraft. It is America that is stopping Iraq,Afghanistan and Pakistan from having a better future, by insisting that those who oppose her imperial agenda can only be met by more killing.The US represents the forces that over the age have constantly destroyed nations for material and strategic gain, a situation which today has led the world into further cycles of violence and insecurity.America has history, from Hiroshima to Korea to Vietnam to its own Civil War, and its bitter divisions of region and race, it continues to choose violence over stability, imperialism over morality and hatred over hope. But hostility and violence will never be a match for justice; they offer no pathway to a better world; and they cannot stand between the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan and the wider Muslim world from a future of reconciliation and political unity.

It should be clear to the Afghan and Pakistani people what America’s intentions are.The United States pursues an imperial claim on their territory and on their resources. For them controlling South Asia would not only degrade Pakistan’s capability of becoming a cornerstone of the future Khilafah, but is a stepping stool in the latest manifestation of the Great Game being fought with Russia and China. America contrary to its public policy does not respect the sovereignty of either country (daily drone attacks in Pakistan coupled with a separate US mission in Afghanistan answering to the Pentagon are a testament to that) and it constantly belittles the tremendous sacrifices that the Afghans and Pakistanis have made in securing their own countries from foreign interference.The US is not seeking a full transition to Afghan responsibility nor do they seek real security for Pakistan.And going forward,American forces will ensure that both states are weakened like Iraq before it and become yet another stepping stone to America’s new world order.The future of Afghanistan and Pakistan is inseparable from the future of the broader Middle East, so it is key that America’s nefarious plan to control Afghanistan and weaken Pakistan be stopped.

There are many lessons to be learned, from what we’ve experienced since 9-11.We have learned that America’s addiction to war in the Muslim world, continues unabated regardless of who sits in the White House.We have learned that in the 21st century, we must use all elements of the Muslim world’s power to achieve our objectives, which is why we need to politically unify our resources, our lands, and our armies to ensure that no one individual nation has to fight and sacrifice alone.We have learned that our leaders are corrupt and not up to the task which is why they must be removed if we are ever to meet the tough challenges of our era. And we have learned the importance of our iman, that by implementing Islam politically we can provide a better life not just for our children but for everyone else’s as well.