{"id":402768,"date":"2019-04-09T13:24:58","date_gmt":"2019-04-09T12:24:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/as-nato-marks-70th-anniversary-threat-of-nuclear-confrontation-grows\/"},"modified":"2019-04-09T13:24:58","modified_gmt":"2019-04-09T12:24:58","slug":"as-nato-marks-70th-anniversary-threat-of-nuclear-confrontation-grows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/as-nato-marks-70th-anniversary-threat-of-nuclear-confrontation-grows\/","title":{"rendered":"As NATO Marks 70th Anniversary, Threat of Nuclear Confrontation Grows"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">AMY<\/span><span> <\/span><span class=\"caps\">GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong><span> <\/span>We turn now to continue our look at the 70th anniversary of the founding of<span> <\/span><span class=\"caps\">NATO<\/span>, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The alliance was formed April 4th, 1949. Commemorations, as well as protests, were held last are to mark the anniversary. President Trump used the anniversary to push for<span> <\/span><span class=\"caps\">NATO<\/span><span> <\/span>countries to increase military spending. During an Oval Office meeting Tuesday with<span> <\/span><span class=\"caps\">NATO<\/span>Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, President Trump demanded Germany and other<span> <\/span><span class=\"caps\">NATO<\/span><span> <\/span>countries increase their military spending from 2 to 4% of<span> <\/span><span class=\"caps\">GDP<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">AMY<\/span><span> <\/span><span class=\"caps\">GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong><span> <\/span>The push for more military spending could benefit U.S. weapons manufacturers, including Boeing, Lockheed Martin and others. This comes as Acting Pentagon Chief Patrick Shanahan is under investigation for improperly advocating on behalf of Boeing, where he worked for more than 30 years.<\/p>\n<p>For more on this, we continue our conversation with Joe Cirincione, who I spoke to on Friday, the president of Ploughshares Fund, a global security foundation, author of<span> <\/span><em>Nuclear Nightmares: Securing the World Before It Is Too Late<\/em><span> <\/span>and<span> <\/span><em>Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons<\/em>. I began by asking him to respond to President Trump\u2019s demands that<span> <\/span><span class=\"caps\">NATO<\/span><span> <\/span>countries spend even more on military weapons rather than education and healthcare \u2014 what some might say are the true markers of national security in a country.<\/p>\n<div id=\"\">\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">JOE<\/span><span> <\/span><span class=\"caps\">CIRINCIONE<\/span>:<\/strong><span> <\/span>We\u2019re cursed in this discussion by a very narrow definition of national security. We\u2019ve all come to accept that national security equals military forces and weapons, when, in fact, as you point out, a national security is more often determined by the health and welfare of its citizenry, the system of justice, whether citizens feel that they\u2019re engaged in the country and have a role in the governance of that country. And spending on military is just one small part of national security, but this has become the test of whether a country is carrying its fair burden. So, burden sharing with<span> <\/span><span class=\"caps\">NATO<\/span><span> <\/span>countries has been&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/truthout.org\/video\/as-nato-marks-70th-anniversary-threat-of-nuclear-confrontation-grows\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to continue our look at the 70th anniversary of the founding of NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The alliance was formed April 4th, 1949. Commemorations, as well as protests, were held last are to mark the anniversary. President Trump used the anniversary to push for NATO countries to increase [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-402768","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402768","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=402768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402768\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=402768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=402768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=402768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}