The Swiss Peace Movement held its annual meeting and took a stand against the NATO summit in Madrid, which will take place from June 28 to 30. As part of the international mobilizations of the World Peace Council, the Swiss Peace Movement used the slogan «Dissolve NATO! Advance Peace!» to draw attention to the fact that there can only be sustainable peace without the NATO war alliance.
This week, the representatives of the NATO members will meet in Madrid. Also present will be the heads of state of Finland and Sweden, whose applications for membership will be discussed. It will be the first NATO summit since the start of the war in Ukraine. Already in the run-up to the summit, Secretary General Stoltenberg announced to increase the current NATO Response Force almost ten times from 40,000 to 300,000 soldiers. NATO is an aggressive war alliance of the imperialist countries of the West. Its history is full of crimes, wars, coups, invasions and occupations. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the war alliance has expanded further into Eastern Europe – despite agreements to the contrary with the Soviet government of the time. In 1999, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic became NATO members, and in 2004, the Baltic countries as well as Romania and Bulgaria. In many cases, NATO is already right on Russia’s border. Now Sweden and Finland want to join NATO, which will not strengthen the security of these countries, but will further increase tensions with Russia. The military conflict in Ukraine is also being exploited to push through huge military spendings in NATO countries and in allied countries like Switzerland. In Switzerland, military lobbyists and the arms industry succeeded to raise the military budget by about three billion francs and to bring Switzerland closer to NATO.
Critical voices against NATO will be silenced in many cases. In Spain, protests against the NATO summit were partially suppressed by the government. A demonstration planned on Wednesday under the slogan «No to NATO, No to War, For Peace» in Madrid was outright banned. The World Peace Council called for people to join the protests and organize actions and rallies internationally to denounce NATO’s imperialist plans and actions. As part of these international mobilizations, the Swiss Peace Movement denounced the NATO war alliance under the slogan «Disband NATO! Advance Peace!». We pointed out that NATO is making the world unsafe and increases tensions internationally. The Swiss Peace Movement demands the dissolution of NATO and the immediate withdrawal of Switzerland from the current NATO partnership. There can only be sustainable peace without NATO!
Swiss Peace Movement