At three in the morning on July 26, 2023, the presidential guard detained President Mohamed Bazoum in Niamey, the capital of Niger. Troops, led by Brigadier General Abdourahmane Tchiani closed the country’s borders and declared a curfew. The coup d’état was immediately condemned by the Economic Community of West African States, by the African Union, and by the European Union.

NATO and its defenders claim it is strictly an alliance of “collective Western defence.” But a review of its history finds that it has, for more than 50 years, plotted and backed military actions against liberation movements in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Indeed, NATO’s existence is a recipe for more frequent military conflict and confrontation.

We at Canadian Dimension join our voices with the many left organizations, including Rabkor, the media outlet founded by Kagarlitsky, as well as Green Left, The Nation, Counterpunch, and the Transnational Institute, calling for Kagarlitsky’s immediate release and we urge our readers to support this international solidarity campaign.

There is little debate about the hundreds of millions in weaponry Canada is sending abroad, or the billions Ottawa is spending to update its own military apparatus. Chrystia Freeland has voiced no concerns about “infinite spending” on these matters. But in Toronto and other Canadian communities, Ottawa is jumping through hoops to pretend its hands are tied.

A secretive alliance Canadians never voted to join that requires this country to defend faraway lands and funnel ever greater resources to warfare is typically presented by the media and politicians as a tool of democracy. Yet, very often, pro-NATO propagandists frequently ignore the alliance’s ties to undemocratic regimes and its efforts to silence its critics.

The history of Europe and the US in Latin America and the Caribbean is one of looting and carnage, colonization and slavery, invasions and coups. Is it any wonder that the nations of the region welcome positive relations with Russia and China, while viewing attempts to pressure them into abandoning these alliances as merely another stage in a long history of foreign intervention?

If Western states want to produce better results in Ukraine than they did in Afghanistan, they will have to think a lot more intelligently about what sorts of aid they give and how they deliver it. Simply put, giving money away in large quantities tends to produce perverse incentives that cause people to behave in ways that engender negative results.

The documentary “20 Days in Mariupol,” a chronicle of the first 20 days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, captures what I witnessed as a war correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. As Chris Hedges writes, it fails, as all films about war must fail, but it succeeds where few films about war succeed.

CODEPINK recognizes that the future of Ukraine, Russia, the Global South, and the entire world depends on a diplomatic resolution to this war. NATO has never been a force for peace and never will be. The war-hungry organization has shunned all attempts at peace talks and diplomacy. The future of the planet depends on the dismantlement of NATO.

The global vision that Stoltenberg articulates encourages conflict and militarization while propounding a fantastical image of Western benevolence. He excuses every violent and illegal action taken by the US and its NATO allies since the end of the Cold War, for the purpose of making Russia’s invasion of Ukraine seem like a war crime of unprecedented criminality and scope.