{"id":250005,"date":"2016-06-15T20:37:01","date_gmt":"2016-06-15T20:37:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=250005"},"modified":"2016-06-15T23:03:08","modified_gmt":"2016-06-15T23:03:08","slug":"nato-says-might-now-grounds-attack-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/latest-news\/nato-says-might-now-grounds-attack-russia\/","title":{"rendered":"NATO Says It Might Now Have Grounds to Attack Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/b>Eric Zuesse, originally posted at The Saker<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

On Tuesday, June 14th,\u00a0NATO announced<\/span><\/a>\u00a0that if a NATO member country becomes the victim of a cyber attack by persons in a non-NATO country such as Russia or China, then NATO\u2019s Article V \u201ccollective defense\u201d provision<\/span><\/a> requires each NATO member country to join that NATO member country if it decides to strike back against the attacking country. The preliminary decision for this was made two years ago after Crimea abandoned Ukraine and rejoined Russia, of which it had been a part until involuntarily transferred to Ukraine by the Soviet dictator Nikita Khrushchev in 1954. That NATO decision was made in anticipation of Ukraine\u2019s ultimately becoming a NATO member country, which still hasn\u2019t happened. However, only now is NATO declaring cyber war itself to be included as real \u201cwar\u201d under the NATO Treaty\u2019s \u201ccollective defense\u201d provision.<\/span><\/p>\n

NATO is now alleging that because\u00a0Russian hackers had copied the emails on Hillary Clinton\u2019s home computer<\/span><\/a>, this action of someone in Russia taking advantage of her having privatized her U.S. State Department communications to her unsecured home computer and of such a Russian\u2019s then snooping into the U.S. State Department business that was stored on it, might constitute a Russian attack against the United States of America, and would, if the U.S. President declares it to be<\/i> a Russian invasion of the U.S., trigger NATO\u2019s mutual-defense clause and so require all NATO nations to join with the U.S. government in going to war against Russia, if the U.S. government so decides. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

NATO had produced in 2013 (prior to the take-over of Ukraine<\/span><\/a>) an informational propaganda\u00a0video<\/span><\/a>\u00a0alleging that \u201ccyberattacks\u201d by people in Russia or in China that can compromise U.S. national security, could spark an invasion by NATO, if the U.S. President decides that the cyberattack was a hostile act by the Russian or Chinese government. In the video, a British national-security expert notes that this would be an \u201ceminently political decison\u201d for the U.S. President to make, which can be made only by the U.S. President, and which only that person possesses the legal authority to make. NATO, by producing this video, made clear that any NATO-member nation\u2019s leader who can claim that his or her nation has been \u2018attacked\u2019 by Russia, possesses the power to initiate a NATO war against Russia. In the current instance, it would be U.S. President Barack Obama. However, this video also said that NATO could not automatically accept such a head-of-state\u2019s allegation calling the cyber-attack an invasion, but instead the country that\u2019s being alleged to have perpetrated the attack would have to have claimed, or else been proven, to have carried it out. With the new NATO policy, which was announced on June 14th, in which a cyber-attack qualifies automatically as constituting \u201cwar\u201d just like any traditional attack, such a claim or proof of the target-nation\u2019s guilt might no longer be necessary. But this has been left vague in the published news reports about it.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the context of the June 14th NATO announcement that cyberwar is on the same status as physical war, Obama might declare the U.S. to have been invaded by Russia when former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton\u2019s State Department emails were copied by someone in Russia.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a hot issue now between Russia and the United States, and so, for example, on the same day, June 14th, Reuters headlined \u201cMoscow denies Russian involvement in U.S. DNC hacking\u201d<\/span><\/a>, and reported that, \u201cRussia on Tuesday denied involvement in the hacking of the Democratic National Committee database that U.S. sources said gained access to all opposition research on Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In previous times, espionage was treated as being part of warfare, and, after revelations became public that the U.S. was listening in on the phone conversations of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, espionage has become recognized as being simply a part of routine diplomacy (at least for the United States); but, now, under the new NATO policy, it might be treated as being equivalent to a physical invasion by an enemy nation.<\/span><\/p>\n

At the upcoming July 8th-9th NATO Summit meeting, which will be happening in the context of NATO\u2019s biggest-ever military exercises on and near the borders of Russia, called \u201cAtlantic Resolve\u201d<\/span><\/a>, prospective NATO plans to invade Russia might be discussed in order to arrive at a consensus plan for the entire alliance. However, even if that happens, it wouldn\u2019t be made public, because war-plans never are. <\/span><\/p>\n

The origin of this stand-off between the U.S. and Russia goes back to promises that the West had made in 1990 to the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, not to expand NATO up to the borders of Russia<\/span><\/a>, and the West\u2019s subsequent violations<\/span><\/a> of those repeatedly made promises. Gorbachev disbanded the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact, on the basis of those false assurances from Western leaders. Thus, Russia is surrounded now by enemies, including former Warsaw Pact nations and even some former regions of the Soviet Union itself, such as Ukraine and the Baltic republics, which now host NATO forces. NATO is interpreting Russia\u2019s acceptance of the Crimeans\u2019 desire to abandon Ukraine and rejoin Russia following the 2014 Ukrainian coup<\/span><\/a>, as constituting a showing of an intent by Russia to invade NATO nations that had formerly been part of the Soviet Union and of the Warsaw Pact, such as Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia; and this is the alleged reason for America\u2019s Operation Atlantic Resolve, and the steep increase in U.S. troops and weapons in those nations that border on Russia. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of\u00a0 They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of<\/span> \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse, originally posted at The Saker On Tuesday, June 14th,\u00a0NATO announced\u00a0that if a NATO member country becomes the victim of a cyber attack by persons in a non-NATO country such as Russia or China, then NATO\u2019s Article V \u201ccollective defense\u201d provision requires each NATO member country to join that NATO member country if it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":250007,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,18],"tags":[115,30,1036,32,535,698,59,1023,753,543,524,754,523,49,76,40,1024],"class_list":{"0":"post-250005","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-latest-news","9":"tag-barack-obama","10":"tag-big-brother","11":"tag-breaking-news","12":"tag-cia","13":"tag-global-news","14":"tag-hillary-clinton","15":"tag-military","16":"tag-nuclear","17":"tag-police-state","18":"tag-putin","19":"tag-russia","20":"tag-syria","21":"tag-ukraine","22":"tag-usa-news","23":"tag-warfare","24":"tag-white-house","25":"tag-ww3"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250005\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}