(The following article is from the February 15-28, 2009, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 133 Herkimer St., Unit 502, Hamilton, ON, L8P 2H3.)

Resolution adopted by the Central Committee, Communist Party of Canada, January 31 - February 1, 2009

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is one of imperialism's most dangerous weapons against peace and national sovereignty. The leading imperialist countries formed the military alliance in 1949 as an aggressive alliance against the socialist countries, especially the Soviet Union.

     At the time, it was an alliance of imperialist countries which controlled much of the world by direct colonial rule. Countries such as Britain and France fought to keep their possessions while the United States attacked the sovereignty of countries by invasions and CIA subversion.

     It was a leading tool of imperialism to roll back the democratic advances created by the defeat of fascism in World War Two - not just the United Nations Charter, which it violated by its formation as a regional military alliance, but as an alliance set up to preserve and regain colonial rule and oppose a new, progressive international economic order.

     Since the beginning, NATO has been dominated by the United States' aggressive military doctrines, compelling NATO countries to maintain massive, well equipped armies and the most dangerous nuclear weapons in Europe, aimed at the Soviet Union and Eastern European socialist countries.

     NATO includes three countries with nuclear weapons (US, France, and UK). It has a "first use" doctrine of these weapons in a conflict.

     Since the overthrow of socialism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe nearly twenty years ago, NATO has never ceased working as an instrument helping the leading imperialist countries to dominate the global economy.

     NATO's aggression against Yugoslavia in 1999 was a savage, unilateral and criminal blow to the sovereignty of Europe's last country with a declared goal of socialism.

     In the middle of the Yugoslavian bombing campaign, NATO held a gala 50th anniversary celebration in Washington. The member states changed NATO's mandate, allowing it unilaterally to start "preventive" wars anywhere in the world, well beyond its original "North Atlantic" territory.

     The new mandate reflects the most aggressive, criminal military doctrines of the Bush administration; it is a mandate that totally violates the most basic international laws. The mandate allows NATO to carry out campaigns like the one in Yugoslavia, which violated its own original charter.

     Since 2001 in support of U.S. imperialism, NATO has been carrying out a war of plunder and domination in Afghanistan. Successive Liberal and Conservative governments made Canada into one of George Bush's keenest bootlickers in this blood-soaked occupation, presenting proposals in the U.N. Security Council and, along with NATO's dominant states, pressuring the other members to supply more and more troops.

     NATO is seeking to expand its membership, especially recruiting countries around Russia, and to coordinate with countries that surround China, both countries with rich resources and which at times resist the hegemony of the core countries of NATO.

     As seen by the U.S.'s "green light" for Georgia's aggression against Russia in 2008, NATO is seeking to provoke a war with Russia, a country that now has a low threshold for the "first use" of its own nuclear weapons. China is being provoked by the growing number of encircling U.S. military bases and targeted military exercises.

     The Communist Party of Canada believes it is more important than ever to build an effective, broadly based campaign against NATO, focusing on Canada's immediate and total withdrawal. Pulling Canada out of NATO is an essential step in winning an independent foreign policy of peace and disarmament for Canada.

     The 60th anniversary of NATO which will be marked in April this year will be timely for mass actions against NATO across Canada. The Communist Party of Canada will work for the success of such efforts already being planned in the peace movement and on initiating more activities right across Canada.