by Renee Parsons
As if the US contribution of “roughly” 75% of NATO’s budget was not enough of a gift, the American public and much of Congress have remained oblivious to collaborators within the US government who have relinquished the Norfolk Naval Station to NATO forces. With its military forces led by a NATO Supreme Allied Commander at Norfolk’s Joint Warfare Centre and hundreds of new nation member resident-families, NATO has its roots firmly ensconced at the Norfolk facility since at least 2020.
How this stunning transgression occurred with no public knowledge, deliberation, debate or approval by the Executive Branch or Congress and with no national media inquiry remains a puzzlement.
The NATO presence is a strong signal that Neocon forces within the US will continue its leadership in maintaining the unipolar world that has plagued the planet since NATO’s existence in 1949. Established to be a deterrent to the threat of Soviet expansion in Europe after World War II, the United States saw NATO as a tool to prevent the resurgence of nationalist tendencies in Europe and to foster political integration on the continent.
It is fair to suggest that the world’s largest and most sophisticated naval facility was stealthily and deceitfully conveyed to NATO by more than just a sleight of hand. The deed had to have been committed with the leadership of treasonous, embedded members of the government’s Senior Executive Service (SES); those who had access to the necessary military documentation, records, files and dossiers to unobtrusively pull off a monster accomplishment of this magnitude.
The SES are part of the Federal government’s Administrative State which ranks as those most senior public servants, those at the highest management of the bureaucracy with indisputable credentials, unquestioned authority and are largely unaccountable.
How did this massive reorganization of the nation’s most prodigious Naval facility slip past the House and Senate Armed Services Committees which have legislative oversight and responsibility for naval affairs? It is the Armed Services Committees which have produced the massive and controversial National Defense Authorization Act annually since 1962. It is possible that buried deep within the bowels of a long-forgotten NDAA may contain an obscure reference granting NATO permission, at some future time, to relocate to the Norfolk Naval Base.
Given NATO’s presence as a foreign military agent, it is critically important to understand how NATO’s Article 4 and Article 5 could potentially affect the United States as a constitutional republic given the current national turmoil as the Biden Administration tightens its tyrannical grip on the very dominion of the United States of America.
Most prominent within the NATO Treaty is Article 5 which guarantees a collective defense by all NATO members in the event of an attack on one member nation. The only example of invoking Article 5 came in the wake of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. NATO collectively responded as its member nation allies were deployed to Afghanistan under the Resolute Support Mission. Bringing the wrath of God down on one country which was not a participant to the 911 attack destroys the concept that the ‘collective defense” strategy is a valid vehicle for a peaceful world.
The oft-neglected Article 4 has been invoked several times during NATO’s history and with its loose verbiage that states “The parties will consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the parties is threatened.” In other words, any one NATO member nation can invoke Article 4 to trigger an organization-wide discussion if its “territorial integrity” is threatened as is currently occurring along the southern borders of the United States, or if its “political independence” defined as the freedom from external political influence which is open to interpretation or if the “security” of one NATO member is under threat. At which point, activating Article 5 would be an easy slide.
The question remains with NATO’s presence in Norfolk, what would it take to create a crisis for intervention and activate more of an Article 5 power grab on behalf of the international deep state order? Will either Article provide the necessary incentive to respond to what may be perceived as an internal threat to US ‘territorial integrity” rather than an external attack or mass detention to quell a civil political disturbance or a domestic revolt if Donald Trump is arrested or trigger suspicious cyber threats?
At what point might a Continuity of Government be implemented and by whom to restore civil order with NATO-Norfolk contributing its military to protect the Deep State structure. While earlier such civil disturbances by Antifa and BLM in Portland, Seattle and elsewhere resulted in no significant penalty or punishment, a different standard as applied to those who may be arbitrarily labeled white supremacists.
And unbeknownst to most Americans, the US-NATO relationship established the US Army NATO Brigade by General Order #46 in December, 1950. For the first time, NATO’s war in Ukraine has provided the cover for thousands of US Army troops to be deployed under the US Army NATO Brigade banner and to serve under NATO’s direct command. As Air Force Gen. Tod Wolters, head of the U.S. European Command and the NATO Supreme Allied Commander in Europe stated, “We are grateful to our allies Canada and the United States for their recent commitments to deploy an additional 7,460 troops, including an armored brigade combat team, artillery units, a naval frigate, and surveillance aircraft, to support this Alliance-wide effort.”
Finally, is there any assurance that constitutional demands from Congress or the Executive Branch have more authority to supersede Articles 4 and 5 or will US laws and obligations be secondary to NATO’s Orders? One way to eliminate NATO from Norfolk is for the United States to remove itself from NATO.
Renee Parsons served on the ACLU’s Florida State Board of Directors and as president of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in Colorado, staff in the Office of the Colorado State Public Defender, an environmental lobbyist for Friends of the Earth and a staff member of the US House of Representatives in Washington DC. She can be found at reneedove3@yahoo.com.