Interview: NATO Missile Shield Has Potential As First Strike System

Press TV
May 5, 2012

NATO missile shield has potential as first strike system: Analyst

Interview with Rick Rozoff, Manager of Stop NATO, Chicago

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Audio and visual

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“…the US/NATO missile shield, which is not to be construed as a defensive project whatsoever, ‎has the potential of being a first strike system that is able to knock out missiles that withstand ‎a potential first strike by the US and NATO against other countries. Russia would seem to be ‎the chief target for that.‎”

NATO’s Rasmussen has said that the US global missile defense shield poses no threat to Russia after Russia reserved the right to make a preemptive strike against the facility.

Press TV has interviewed Rick Rozoff, manager of Stop NATO in Chicago, about the expansion of NATO partnerships over the past two decades to see it emerge as a global power and he discusses the merit in Russia’s trepidations. What follows is an approximate transcript of the interview.

Press TV: How global is NATO becoming?

Rozoff: In its own assessment, the current U.S. ambassador to NATO, permanent representative Ivo Daalder, is somebody who seven years co-wrote a major article entitled ‘Global NATO’ and others that have used a similar title, so global NATO – I invite people to visit the NATO website and look up the category of NATO partnerships.

That is, not only does NATO itself have 28 full members – and that’s a 75 percent increase in its membership from 1999 to 2009 – 12 new countries in Eastern Europe were absorbed as full members, but NATO openly acknowledges, in fact boasts of, a series of international military partnerships that exceed 40 different nations.

That is, combined, the 28 NATO members and the 40 partnership countries are well over a third of the nations in the world and these include four partners in the Persian Gulf, they include seven partners in North Africa and the Middle East, they include a brand new category, incidentally, that NATO calls openly – I’m not making this up – Partners across the globe, which includes such diverse nations as Japan, Australia, South Korea, New Zealand, Mongolia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan.

So, in fact, the US-led military bloc has become international in scope; it certainly has so in terms of missions where it has now as of last year waged wars in three continents, in Europe, Asia and Africa.

Press TV: Western and European countries express concern about the proliferation of weapons around the world yet we see NATO installing and setting up different military command centers around the world deploying more and more missiles. If that’s not called proliferation then what is it?

Rozoff: You’re absolutely correct. The NATO summit declarations that are issued after each summit, and there will be one after May 21st here in Chicago where I’m speaking, will reiterate the point that NATO remains a nuclear alliance. They’ll say something to the effect that as long as there are nuclear weapons in the world NATO will remain a nuclear force.

I should inform your listeners who may not know this, in the early 1980s we had a reform administration in Chicago, Mayor Harold Washington and during his time in office the City Council of Chicago introduced a resolution that was passed, making Chicago the first major city in the United States that declared itself a nuclear-free zone.

So the fact that a nuclear alliance like NATO is convening in Chicago on May 20th and 21st is a violation of that ordinance and is a violation of the status of this city, the third largest in the United States, which has affirmed that it is a nuclear-free zone.

What you’re alluding to of course, I heard in the lead-in the comment by the NATO Chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen, that the US/NATO interceptor missile system in Europe has achieved interim capability, initial operational capability.

He talked about tests that had been conducted in Europe that suggested the first of four phases of the US/NATO missile shield, which is not to be construed as a defensive project whatsoever, it has potential of being a first strike system that is able to knock out missiles that withstand a potential first strike by the United States and NATO against other countries. Russia would seem to be the chief target for that.

And last November as a matter of fact, in Germany, NATO conducted its first live-fire test of its own branch of the missile shield in Europe, something called Active Layered Theatre Ballistic Missile Defence, and that was announced to have achieved interim capabilities.

So Rasmussen’s comment that at the NATO summit here in Chicago later this month NATO will announce the fact that it has activated the first phase of the most ambitious interceptor missile system in history and one that is really the logical extension of the Ronald Reagan administration’s so-called Strategic Defense Initiative, popularly known as Star Wars, is a very alarming fact and I think the world as well as Russia should take note of this.