Unmaking NATO: Transnational resistance to the Euro-Atlantic military alliance

As the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has expanded its membership over the past thirty years, so has resistance to the Western military alliance. Since the end of the Cold War, there have been protests and peace camps outside of NATO meetings and summits across Europe, Canada and the United States. Large-scale demonstrations were held in Washington D.C. in 1999 for the alliance’s 50th anniversary and again in 2019 for its 70th anniversary. As well, major rallies were held in Istanbul in 2004, Chicago in 2012, London 2019 and Madrid in 2022. Yet, mainstream media and academia have largely ignored these public acts of resistance and important critiques of NATO. In this paper, I explain the making of NATO as a U.S.-led military alliance after the Second World War and its remaking based on new norms to justify its continued existence during the post-Cold War period. I then describe and analyse the intersectional coalition of peace, labour, socialist, queer, immigrant justice and women’s groups that have come together to plan public actions to oppose the alliance at four NATO summits. These transnational advocacy networks are facilitating a process of unmaking NATO. They critique the alliance’s use of force in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya and rising military budgets and call for NATO’s abolition. This growing international resistance deserves greater attention as it represents a direct challenge to Euro-Atlantic domination and presents the possibility of an emancipatory politics based on common security, economic justice and global solidarity.