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From Gladio to Lakenheath, Nato wages war on workers

Speaking to a CND meeting in Cambridge this week, SIMON BRIGNELL traced how the alliance’s anti-communist machinery broke unions, diverted vital funds from public services, and turned workers into cannon fodder for profit

U.S. Army aircraft Lockheed Martin C-130J-30 Super Hercules drops military equipment during a 'Swift Response 2025' military exercises at the Gaiziunai Training Area, some 130 kms (80 miles) west of the capital Vilnius, Lithuania, May 16, 2025

IS NATO a friend of the people? As trade unionists, we should ask: is it a friend to our people — the working class, here and abroad? I wonder how the people of Yugoslavia, Libya, or Iraq would answer that.

To begin answering it ourselves, we need to look back to the period after World War II and the onset of the cold war. It’s there we find the roots of Nato’s creation and the logic behind its continued existence.

Post-WWII, much of Western Europe was devastated economically. The United States, emerging as the dominant capitalist power, had both the capacity and the interest in rebuilding these economies in order to restore global capitalist production and markets.

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