An interview with Sevim Dağdelen
By Natalia Marques
In July, the United States hosted the 75th NATO Summit in Washington, DC. Although a prominent topic on the agenda was “defense and deterrence,” much of the Summit was spent pushing for more escalation, aggression, and militarism worldwide, especially in relation to the Russia-Ukraine War.
The alliance sent a shipment of F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, pressuring member nations to increase defense spending, which has historically been at the expense of social spending, all the while hurling accusations at China for supposedly enabling the war in Ukraine.
To speak more about the influence of NATO in Europe, especially in member nation Germany, Peoples Dispatch spoke to Sevim Dağdelen, a member of the German Bundestag since 2005. In 2023, Dağdelen broke away from German left party Die Linke to form a new alliance with nine other members of parliament, the “Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance: Reason and Justice” (BSW), which explicitly stands against sanctions against Russia and weapons shipments to Ukraine.
Dağdelen just authored a new book titled “NATO: A Reckoning with the Atlantic Alliance,” published by New Delhi-based LeftWord Books, which addresses the harm that the alliance has inflicted on the people of the world and the need for peace, not NATO.
Peoples Dispatch: Last month, people across Europe participated in the European Parliament elections. We saw the rise of the far right in these elections, largely. What do you think accounts for this?
Sevim Dağdelen: The most important message we got from the European Parliament election results was that the majority of the population of the European Union don’t trust the current governments, the establishment parties. We face a crisis. We have in many countries in the European Union, a majority [of people] against the ongoing war in Ukraine, and against the strategy of fueling this war with more and more weapons and more and more money. And on the other side, of course, [people face] social cuts and less money for the people in the countries.
That’s why people are getting more critical of the strategy of the governments. They would like to have more political engagement here, diplomacy, negotiations, rather than more weapons and more money for the war in Ukraine. And I think you can see this from the results of the European parliamentary elections as well.
PD: What is the impact of Europe’s allegiance to NATO, politically and militarily, on the people of Europe?
Dağdelen: We face a really deep crisis in the strategy of escalation of NATO, of their proxy war in Ukraine against Russia. As we have seen now at the Washington NATO summit, there are three main things at stake. One is the escalation, deepening the strategy of more weapons, more money for the war in Ukraine. Then the second is the NATO-ization of Asia. So besides the escalation against Russia in Ukraine, you have the expansion strategy against China. All the mistakes of the past that NATO has [made] towards Russia, in the enlargement and encircling of Russia, ignoring the security interests of Russia. They are now doing it against China, in having client states like the Indo-Pacific Four, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, but also adding these countries with challenger states against China, like the Philippines or Singapore. They are more in confrontation against a nuclear power, China.
Many people in Europe have the impression that the United States, as the leading country in NATO, would throw their allies, Europe, under the bus for their own interests, like they have, especially regarding the war in Ukraine. Because the United States wants to use their allies resources without using their own resources themselves for this war in Ukraine against Russia.
This has the risk of economic downfall of Europe. And that’s the reason, for example, that many people in Germany, 55 percent, are against the NATO membership of Ukraine.
PD: What has been the approach of the left in Germany in regard to NATO? And how has this changed after the escalation of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine?
Dağdelen: The labels right and left are a little bit irritating at the moment, in not only Germany, but in Europe.
Die Linke was my former party, which I left in October 2023. In January, I launched a new party with nine other members of Parliament: the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance for Reason and Justice. Our former party, Die Linke, is in favor, for example, of more sanctions against Russia.
And we, as the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, we reject economic sanctions, especially this economic warfare against Russia. The German foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock once said in 2022 that the sanctions against Russia have the goal to ruin the economy of Russia. She wants to destroy the economy of Russia.
And as we can see, according to the forecast of the IMF, which is not a left radical or anti-imperialist institution, the economic growth of Russia is 3.2 percent. And in Germany, for example, 0.2 percent. That means the economy of Russia is growing, and the economy of Germany is shrinking, despite the war, sanctions, and the economic warfare of the European Union and United States against Russia.
And in that a left party is now in favor of sanctions and instead of being against the sanctions, is saying we need more sanctions against Russia, is for me not a left policy as is to be even partly in favor of weapon deliveries to Ukraine.
And we as the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance are strictly against weapon deliveries. We are in favor of diplomacy, a politics of détente. We need a politics of disengagement in Europe and to stop the weapon deliveries. We need a ceasefire. We need peace negotiations in Ukraine to stop this killing on both sides and to stop, of course, the shrinking of our economy, which hits the working class people in Germany.
So that’s why the labeling of left and right is just irritating at the moment. So many on the left in Europe have lost their track [by not] being against weapon deliveries, being against wars, being against sanctions.
Sanctions are nothing less than weapons of mass destruction. It’s always the population which gets affected in the suffering by economic sanctions, like we’ve seen in Cuba for decades. We see it in Syria, in Venezuela.
PD: What can people of conscience across the world do to combat NATO and NATO policies which serve to spread violence?
Dağdelen: The most important thing is to know what NATO is. That’s why I wrote this book, because it was important to me to show that 75 years of NATO is 75 years of denial, 75 years of propaganda, of lies.
It’s not a defense alliance. 25 years ago, NATO started their aggression against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. They attacked Libya in 2011. They attacked for 20 years in Afghanistan with so many civilian casualties, so many war crimes. The leading nation of NATO, the US, attacked Iraq. According to Brown University, more than 4.5 million people have been killed in this war led by the US and their allies. The idea that NATO would be an alliance of democracies is also a historic lie. Just one example, one founding member of NATO was Portugal under the fascist dictatorship of Salazar. Salazar tortured Africans in the colonies and in concentration camps in Mozambique, in Angola, in the colonial wars. So NATO had no problem at all with fascist dictatorships like Salazar’s Portugal or Franco’s Spain, or with military coups in 1967 in Greece and 1980 with Turkey.
The third myth of NATO is that they are an alliance for human rights. Until today, [the US] has their torture camp in Guantanamo Bay where people get tortured without a fair trial. [There is also the example of] 14 years of political persecution of the journalist Julian Assange, whose crime was only to show the world the war crimes of the US in Iraq and the war crimes of NATO states in Afghanistan. Long before war, truth is knocked unconscious, and we have the task to get truth on its feet again.
Especially for people like me in the Global North, it is important to have solidarity, to work together, to coordinate our forces, our strength, our energy with the people of the Global South.
Natalia Marques is a writer at Peoples Dispatch, an organizer, and a graphic designer based in New York City.
Source: peoplesdispatch.org, July 15, 2024