CONSIDERING the importance of Nato in international affairs, it feels like there is a real lack of analysis and critique of the US-led military alliance.

Nato: What You Need To Know, the new book co-authored by US anti-war activists Medea Benjamin and David Swanson, therefore fills an important knowledge gap in understanding the now 75-year-old organisation — described by Professor Jeffrey D Sachs in the preface as “a clear and present danger to world peace, a war machine run amok.”

Ian Sinclair asked Benjamin and Swanson about Nato’s founding purpose, the lack of democracy at its heart and the impact of Nato’s intervention in Kosovo on subsequent Western foreign policy.