Resisting NATO: Oppose NATO’s War Against the People Webinar Recap
On June 21, 2025, 1919 participated as a panelist for a webinar titled “Resisting NATO: Oppose NATO’s War Against the People,” organized by Canada-Philippines Solidarity Organization (CPSO). Other panelists invited by CPSO included organizers from All Peoples Fighting Oppression, Anakbayan Canada, Friends of the Filipino People in Struggle Toronto (FFPS), and a statement provided by the Caribbean Solidarity Network. The webinar began with a case study on NATO and the Canadian imperialist strategy in the Philippines by FFPS, followed by a panel discussion on NATO’s ongoing military incursions and expanding imperialist sphere of influence worldwide.
As a Pan-African and anti-imperialist community organization operating out of Calgary, AB, and Toronto, ON, 1919 eagerly joined this initiative in solidarity with other organizations advancing anti-imperialist struggles from across the global south. Both 1919 and fellow Panelist Caribbean Solidarity Network (CSN), are member organizations of the Black Alliance for Peace, a peoples-centred human rights project against war, repression, and imperialism. CSN and 1919 and have collaborated on a number of community related programs and events in Toronto and hopes to build opportunities for further partnership and solidarity work with all organizations who participated in this panel.
The following compilation of questions and responses aims to summarize some of the discussion points 1919 brought to the panel, but is not representative of the entire discussion or other panelists' responses. We share this summary for those in our larger community who may not have been able to attend the event and are curious to learn more about NATO, who and what it is, and how it functions to maintain Western hegemony and imperialist control over large swaths of the globe.
The timing of the webinar also contributed to our interest in bringing this conversation to our digital platform. On the day the webinar was held , the United States and its NATO proxy, Israel, violated Iranian sovereignty for the second time in ten days. This farcical attack on Iranian nuclear sites posed a potential and imminent health risk to all those inhabiting nearby areas and violates the international post-World War II principle of non-intervention. Simultaneously, in another NATO state, the British regime was attempting to proscribe Palestine Action (PA), a direct-action protest group, under a terrorist designation that not only sets a dangerous precedent but further suppresses international forms of solidarity with the Palestinian struggle.
Weeks following the panel, the proscription of PA was successful, and protesters are now being arrested under the terrorism act for protesting the Israeli genocide and condemning the starvation and massacre of Palestinians. The proscription has effectively allowed arbitrary police arrests for any solidarity work that appears to be aligned with ‘terrorist’ organization Palestine Action, essentially becoming a tool to silence and contain dissenting voices against British complicity in the Israeli genocide.
Palestine Action has consistently set the standard in the imperial core for imposing a material cost on weapons manufacturers and war criminals for their ongoing crimes against the Palestinian people. Their recent targeting is no accident. 1919 is in solidarity with PA’s struggle against proscription and all of the Palestinian people facing genocide via starvation and massacre sponsored and financed by the Western imperial order.
Why is it important to resist NATO?
NATO is an unelected, US-controlled military alliance that is widely utilized as an institution of aggression for the achievement of Western hegemony and US geopolitical interests. NATO was founded around the same time many African states were decolonizing from their colonial administrations. Africa’s principal colonizer states, the UK, France, Belgium, and Italy, to name a few, were part of NATO’s original 12-member states alongside the USA, which founded NATO in 1965. Since its original formation, NATO has grown to 32 member states, including US proxies Ukraine, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, to name a few. As an unelected body accountable to no one, its workings and decisions lack transparency and are far from the eyes of citizens who elect the leaders of its members. Further, the unfettered and total subjugation of all 32 member states to US influence and foreign policy in this military ‘alliance’is reinforced by the NATO clause that states that, all member countries are obligated to join all US wars, but the US is not obligated to do the same.
NATO was initially created to curb the growing socialist and communist movements that were gaining support within the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), a movement founded to support the growth of developing nations during the Cold War. Following the end of the Cold War, the non-aligned pact and the Soviet Union deteriorated, and instead of disbanding, NATO grew to 32 states and has been a fundamental tool of violent wars and destruction for the maintenance of the Western imperial order.
People often describe NATO as serving an important function in global politics. What are some of the realities of NATO interventions?
In all the regions where NATO has been deployed under the guise of combatting terrorism, NATO has created more destruction and promoted more terrorism than existed before their intervention. Whether by direct NATO involvement or through a proxy agent, the NATO forces have supported regime change, funded genocide, and plundered natural resources in states that represent critical geo-political policy objectives to maintain key facets of US imperial hegemony.
14 NATO countries joined the invasion of Libya in 2011 as “Operation Unified Protector,” including Sweden, Jordan, Qatar, and the UAE. Western NATO countries were not impressed with the anti-colonial positions of Gaddafi and acted militarily to neutralize the threat he presented to the subjugation of the African continent. Gaddafi sought to establish common markets with a single currency and common military alliances around a pan-african ideology. The legacy of NATO in Libya has left behind an ungoverned territory, rampant with arms dealers and social deterioration, which has been a fertile ground for the development and spread of unruly forms of terrorism and insurgencies. NATO’s direct or indirect involvement in Libya, Somalia, and Sudan via proxy agent UAE as well as the role of AFRICOM in these regions were analyzed and discussed in response to this question as institutions used to reduce African nations into battle grounds of social chaos and disfunction for the development of US strategic geo political aims.
In addition to NATO, soft tools of US imperialism and diplomacy, such as the UN and USAID, offer a different means of state intervention, notably through ‘peacekeeping’ and ‘peacebuilding missions’ and protecting human rights violations. Haiti, a country pillaged and terrorised since its birth as the first Black republic in the western hemisphere, has had to manage the continuous violation of its territorial sovereignty by instruments of US foreign policy.
While an in-depth critical examination regarding the underdevelopment of Haiti is critical for all principled organizers, in this panel, we briefly discussed the toxic runoffs that were released into Haitian drinking water sources. In 2010, a cholera outbreak occurred where over 10,000 deaths were reported due to the contamination of the largest fresh water source in the country, due to the dumping of feces bacteria by UN peacekeepers. While the UN ‘peacekeepers’ are not a military alliance like NATO, making note of their role in interventions in the global south critically represents the interconnectedness of Western imperial institutions that subvert sovereignty for their foreign policy gains. Where one international institution like NATO or the UN can be found, others will follow.
What might be some alternatives led by the people/the masses to meet their own needs?
The Alliance of Sahelian States (AES) has begun to demonstrate what a movement dedicated to the people's development and sovereignty may look like on the African continent. The AES has begun to cut ties with the Western imperial order and its military agendas and has created a blueprint for other African countries to follow suit. The AES formed in 2024 and consists of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger. While reviving the Pan-African spirit of sovereignty and self-determination, the AES has also made concrete steps towards decolonization. The AES states have evicted both French and American foreign military personnel and have begun retaking control of their natural resources and minerals such as uranium and gold found within their territories. The removal of external influences from internal affairs in the AES has allowed all three member states to begin to assume control of their development and begin to redistribute their wealth to their citizens. A clear distinction from the syphoning of African wealth by African neo-colonialists to foreign pockets that we are accustomed to.
What are some of the ways that your organization or movement has effectively organized against NATO?
As displaced Africans situated in the imperial beast and away from the struggle being waged on the continent and in Palestine, our organisation is focused on building political education and consciousness in our community and organising programs that confront our compromised position. 1919 takes pride in supporting and defending Africa's liberated zones, workshopping seminars for our community to engage in political education, and creating spaces to learn about imperialism in the various programs we offer in our office.
In partnership with the Coalition for the Elimination of Imperialism in Africa (CEIA), we joined the Kwame Nkrumah Fellowship for African Organizers Initiative. This annual fellowship supports African organisers on the continent by building capacity for their organizations, movement building, initiatives, and to sustain themselves as they participate in revolutionary struggle. In the summer of 2024 we held a report-back event with comrades from the CEIA who travelled to the liberated zones in the AES and returned to share their learnings with us based on their frontline experience. Recently, 1919 was a signatory of Pan African greetings and a Declaration in support of the Alliance of Sahel States Confederation organized and delivered by the CEIA to the governments of the AES states.
We organize political education in our community through our youth programs as well as regular office hours events for community gatherings. Internally, we also practice collective study through our community syllabus program, where 1919 members engage in collective learning around subjects such as NATO, AFRICOM, etc. We have also organized panels on neo-colonialism in the Horn of Africa region, teach-ins on the Sudan War and Genocide, a Pan-Africanism radio series, and discussions on 1919 Radio analyzing the blatant violations of Haiti's sovereignty throughout their history in collaboration with the Caribbean Solidarity Network and the Black Alliance for Peace.