As NATO leaders conclude their summit in Ankara, once again proclaiming their commitment to "security," "stability" and the so-called "defense of democracy," the peoples have every reason to reject the mythology surrounding an alliance whose history is inseparable from imperialist aggression, intervention and war.
Behind the carefully orchestrated communiqués, diplomatic handshakes and declarations of unity stands an organization created not to defend peace, but to defend the strategic interests of the dominant capitalist powers.
NATO has never been merely a defensive alliance. It constitutes the military expression of the Euro-Atlantic imperialist system, created to defend the interests of monopoly capital and secure the geopolitical dominance of the United States and its allies. The disappearance of the Warsaw Pact therefore did not render NATO obsolete; it merely removed one obstacle to the pursuit of its global strategy.
From the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 to the occupation of Afghanistan, from the destruction of Libya to interventions, military deployments and proxy wars across several regions of the world, NATO has repeatedly demonstrated that its operations extend far beyond the territorial defense of its member states. Entire countries have been devastated, civilian populations displaced and states reduced to permanent instability under the banner of "humanitarian intervention," "counterterrorism" or the "responsibility to protect."
Only the pretexts changed. The class interests it served remained exactly the same.
Imperialism is not simply an aggressive foreign policy. It is, as Lenin demonstrated, the highest stage of capitalism. Military alliances such as NATO constitute the coercive framework through which capitalist powers defend markets, transport routes, spheres of influence and profitable investment opportunities. Whenever the interests of the dominant capitalist states require military force, NATO has repeatedly served as the principal instrument through which such policies acquire collective legitimacy.
The ongoing militarization of Europe illustrates this trajectory with particular clarity. Military expenditures continue to rise while governments impose austerity, privatize public services and erode social rights won through generations of working-class struggle. Vast resources are directed toward armaments while hospitals, schools, housing and public infrastructure are treated as fiscal burdens.
For working people, these are not separate policies. Bombs abroad and austerity at home are products of the same capitalist system.
The Ankara Summit is therefore far more than another diplomatic gathering. It confirms NATO's role as the principal military pillar of the Euro-Atlantic imperialist alliance, coordinating its strategy amid sharpening inter-imperialist contradictions, intensifying competition for markets, energy resources and trade corridors, and preparations for new military confrontations.
History, however, teaches another lesson: no military alliance, however powerful, is invincible.
NATO was not created by the will of the peoples. It was created by capitalist states to defend capitalist interests. Its future will likewise not be decided solely in conference halls or military headquarters, but in the struggles unfolding in factories, universities, neighborhoods, workplaces and streets across the world.
The struggle against NATO cannot be reduced to choosing one imperialist center against another, nor can it be subordinated to the geopolitical ambitions of emerging capitalist powers or interstate alliances that seek only to reshape the existing balance of power. NATO will not be defeated by a rival imperialist pole, by bourgeois governments presenting themselves as "anti-imperialist," or by the illusion of a more "multipolar" capitalist world. None of these offer an alternative to imperialism; they merely express different interests within the same international capitalist system.
The only social force capable of confronting NATO consistently is the organized working class, in alliance with the popular strata, through an independent anti-imperialist struggle inseparable from the struggle against capitalism itself. Only a movement directed toward socialist transformation can remove the economic and political foundations that give birth to imperialist alliances, militarism and war.
Those who expect NATO to disappear through diplomatic goodwill misunderstand imperialism. Those who expect another capitalist bloc to dismantle it misunderstand capitalism itself. NATO will ultimately be defeated not by the victory of one group of capitalist states over another, but by the common struggle of the peoples against the capitalist system that created it. The road to peace does not pass through a different imperialist alliance; it passes through the struggle for socialism.
History has repeatedly demonstrated that no military alliance created to defend exploitation and imperialist domination is eternal. NATO is no exception. As long as capitalism survives, it will continue to generate wars, militarism and new confrontations. But history is not written by military alliances. It is written by peoples who refuse to surrender, by workers who organize, by communists who struggle, and by all those who challenge the rule of capital.
The defeat of NATO will not mark the triumph of one imperialist center over another. It will mark a victory for the peoples themselves—a victory won through the relentless struggle against capitalism and for socialism, the only social system capable of abolishing exploitation, militarism and the imperialist wars that give birth to alliances such as NATO.
Only then will NATO take its rightful place in the dustbin of history, together with the capitalist system that gave birth to it.
* Nikos Mottas is the Editor-in-Chief of In Defense of Communism.