This week marks NATO, or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's 75th year.

This military alliance is playing such a huge role as a U.S. proxy in

Ukraine and putting us on the brink of World War, but I think it's really crucial to unpack what

NATO really represents and exists to do from its inception until today. To talk about NATO's

sorted history and the existential threat it poses for the future, I'm joined by Pavel Wargan, researcher and coordinator for the Secretariat for Progressive International.

Thank you so much for coming on the Empire Files podcast. Pleasure to speak to you, Pavel.

Great to hear with you. Thanks for having me all.

So you recently wrote a script for this mini documentary that I presented for Progressive International in collaboration with Jacobin.

I think the final piece was really excellently produced. I think it's the most insightful explainer I've ever seen about NATO.

It's called How to Stop World War III with Abby Martin. I'll put the link in the notes to this episode on SoundCloud, but I really recommend everyone go to Jacobin's YouTube channel and watch it.

So why is this important right now? Because even though NATO is painted as this equal democratic alliance, it's really an appendage of the U.S. Empire and almost entirely run and

controlled by the United States. The United States funds 70% of its operations. It runs the entire

military command. And the U.S. also solely maintains and controls the conventional and nuclear

capacity to deter, quote unquote, deter and defend against

existential threats to the alliance. So I want to get into everything that's happening with NATO

today, of course, with the proxy war in Ukraine. But Pavel, I think that first we should give

some context about NATO's foundation so we can analyze the present a little bit better.

Because understanding how and why NATO emerged and why it still persists,

I think really is insightful for us to understand why it also needs to be abolished today

to secure an actual peaceful existence on the planet.

So let's talk about that post-World War II period where the United States Empire reigned

a supreme global hegemon after being deranged enough to drop two nuclear bombs on civilian

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