Ukraine: NATO in the Constitution
Manlio Dinucci
The day after the signature of NATO’s membership protocol with North Macedonia as its 30th member, Ukraine did something without precedent: it included in its Constitution the engagement to enter officially into NATO and the European Union at the same time.
On 7 February, on a proposition by President Petro Poroshenko – the oligarch who made himself rich by plundering public properties, and who is once again a candidate for the presidency – the Kiev parliament, by 34 votes to 35 with 16 abstentions, approved these amendments to the Constitution.
The Introduction pronounces “the irreversible movement of Ukraine towards Euro-Atlantic integration”; articles 85 and 116 state that it is a fundamental duty of the parliament and the government to “obtain Ukraine’s full membership of NATO and the EU”; article 102 stipulates that “the President of Ukraine is the guarantor of the strategic decisions of the State aimed at obtaining full membership of NATO and the EU”.
The inclusion in the Ukrainian Constitution of the engagement to enter officially into NATO bears with it some very serious consequences.
On the interior, it alienates the future of Ukraine from this choice, by excluding any alternative, and outlaws de facto any party or person who might oppose the “strategic decisions of the state”. Already, the Central Electoral Commission has forbidden Petro Simonenko, director of the Ukrainian Communist Party, to participate in the Presidential elections to be held in March.
The merit for having introduced into the Ukrainian Constitution the engagement to enter officially into NATO goes in particular to Parliamentary President Andriy Parubiy. Co-founder in 1991 of the Ukrainian National-Socialist Party, on the model of Adolf Hitler’s National-Socialist Party; head of the neo-Nazi paramilitary formations which were used in 2014 during the putsch of Place Maïdan under US/NATO command, and in the massacre of Odessa; head of the Ukraine National Security and Defense Council, which, with the Azov Battalion and other neo-Nazi units, attacked Ukrainian civilians of Russian nationality in the Eastern part of the country and used his squadrons for acts of ferocious abuse, the plunder of political headquarters and other auto-da-fés in a truly Nazi style.
On the international level, we should keep in mind that Ukraine is already linked to NATO, of which it is a partner: for example, the Azov Battalion, whose Nazi character is represented by the emblem copied from that of the SS unit Das Reich, has been transformed into a special operations regiment, equipped with armoured vehicles and trained by US instructors from the 173rd Airborne Division, transferred to Ukraine from Vicence, and seconded by other NATO members.
Since Russia has been accused by NATO of having illegally annexed Crimea, and of launching military operations against Kiev, should Ukraine officially join NATO, the 30 other members of the Alliance, on the basis of article 5, would be obliged to “assist the party or parties under attack by adopting immediately, individually and in agreement with the other parties, any action that it should deem necessary, including the use of armed force”.
In other words, they would have to go to war with Russia.
These dangerous implications of the modification of the Ukrainian Constitution – behind which are most certainly strategies by the USA and NATO – have been met with political and media silence. Including that of the Italian parliament, which, in 2017 established an agreement with the Ukrainian parliament, supported by Laura Boldrini and Andriy Parubiy. Thus cooperation has been reinforced between the Italian Republic, born of resistance against fascism and Nazism, and a régime which has created in Ukraine a situation similar to that which brought about the arrival of fascism in the 1920’s and Nazism in the 1930’s.
This article was originally published on Il Manifesto. Translated by Pete Kimberley for Global Research.
Manlio Dinucci is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
SUPPORT OFFGUARDIAN
If you enjoy OffG's content, please help us make our monthly fund-raising goal and keep the site alive.
For other ways to donate, including direct-transfer bank details click HERE.
”…the Kiev parliament, by 34 votes to 35 with 16 abstentions, approved these amendments to the Constitution.”
This is an unfortunate typo. The result appears to be 334 against 35.
That is even worse.
Nukraine the cookie land ruled by the Neo-Nazi Baron Von Chocopie.
A land where Uncle Sam spent $5 billion of his tax paying citizens money bringing Amerikan style democracy in bus loads to the capital. You know the exceptional system we’re talking about, the one riddled with corruption where the sock puppets command 5 – 10% of public support on a good day. That’s a cool half a billion $ for every 1% up-tick in the pollsters hand book. Money well spent for the MIC and make Americka Grate lobby yet again…
So the stick-up that was the heavenly hordes convention in down-town Kiev, ended up in a totally undemocratic coup to which St Toria Nukeland gave her blessing, she being of course a totally unelected technoid from the planet NED. All paid and endorsed by Uncle Sam and the Exceptionals. So now Neo-Nazis have the right to hold torch-lit lynchings whenever they chose while receiving mutual support and financial insolvency from the Bank of Lagarde.
Of course as just William and son Gav the Chav rightly said to bring on WWIII all the more quickly “Why don’t you shut up and go away!” He’s obviously sticking with his porky pal as HMS Brexit sinks slowly in the west. Except one is leaving as one wants to join. Now for my money Amerikan democracy seems like it might work after all bringing together such diametrically opposed EU trad-jectories.
Ukraine is far away from the North Atlantic, and so so is Turkey. Pakistan became a major non-NATO ally in 2004!. The US cabal will join up anybody any where on the planet if it suits them.
The Warsaw pact was dissolved in1991, why not NATO too? They signed up many allies after 1989: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_non-NATO_ally#List_of_MNNAs
What a fecken farcical mess. These fascists are playing with fire big time. Its long overdue people in Europe started standing up and shouting Ya Basta! Enough. No more. Refuse to accept Ukraine as a member of NATO. We all know what NATO’s real purpose is anyway. And what are the odds that Poroshenko somehow miraculously is re elected? Or the elections are ‘postponed’ due to a (confected) state of emergency. Complete morons. This situation as Manilio Dinucci is incredibly dangerous.
“What are the odds that Poroshenko somehow miraculously is re elected?”
…without a squeal from the West about vote rigging and corruption. As with the rigged and corrupt Haitian elections, Trump would be the first on the phone to congratulate P. on his success in ‘truly democratic elections’.
“Trump would be the first on the phone to congratulate P. on his success in ‘truly democratic elections’”
Preferably before the elections are held.
By inserting the amendments into the Constitution, that is exactly what Poroshenko wants: an eleventh-hour rescue of his failed Presidency. Challengers in the upcoming Presidential elections must agree to work towards EU and NATO membership in their election campaigning or they and their campaign programs will in effect be declared illegal, even treasonous.
If this is not desperate on Porky Pig’s part to regain the Presidency, then I’m not sure what is short of a giant iceberg suddenly materialising off the southwest coast of Ukraine for the entire nation to turn and crash into and sink.
Idiot Ukrainians – don’t forget it is still a smouldering radioactive zone of hundreds of square miles which will be dangerous for thousands of years and need plenty of remidial containment work for millenia – they want to go full frae?
Idiots didn’t learn from the nazi german, Iraq or Isis, all Banker set up proxies, that the plan is to destroy themselves.
Yeah, after all the tyres the Banderites burned in the Kiev Maidan, all their nightly torchlight parades carrying icons of Stepan Bandera, Yuri Stetsko and Roman Shukhevich, and having had their gas and hot water cut off so they now have to chop down trees and burn wood, all those toxic chemicals and soot they have to breathe in through their mouths will have long-term effects on their health and genetic inheritance.
Oh sorry, I didn’t realise you were talking about Chernobyl. 🙂
Suppose though that both the EU and NATO continue to refuse Ukraine’s applications to join their august (snark) memberships – would their rejections not lead to major constitutional crises? What would the President and the Rada do each time the applications are knocked back – resign or shoot themselves?
Could General Porkchop possibly be re-elected despite an 8% approval rating?
According to http://www.infocenter-odessa.com, a vote for him will earn the destitute of Odessa, whom he has made destitute, 1000 UAH, or $36..
However, the illustrious Yulia the Gas Princess tops the polls with an ‘electrifying’ 14%, yet was this week sued for un-reported income from usa “lobbyists”.. Her party is reported to be offering 500 UAH per vote, about $18..
After what the recent admittance of Macedonia has shown us, there is no bar too low for admittance, with a NATO sign-up bonus tossed in next day.
Letting all these shitty little Nazi countries into the EU, let alone NATO, is a ticking time bomb, a disaster waiting to happen. They are economic basket cases, hopelessly corrupt, politically and socially unstable, and led by third rate clownish figures and/ or rabid US neocon dual nationals of the Nuland/ Freeland variety parachuted in by the State Department deliberately to stir up trouble.
Latvia-Lithuania-Estonia-Macedonia-Montenegro-Georgia-Ukraine.
They are a complete liability in economic and military terms.
Because of past grievances, real and imaginary, they spend most of their time trying to discover new ways of being as deliberately and grossly offensive and insulting as possible to Moscow.
The Baltic Nazis delight in desecrating the graves of Soviet soldiers and war memorials, holding big Nazi rallies and denying citizens of Russian heritage the right to vote, hold a passport, or obtain any government job.
Like the Zionist Apartheid Regime, they do this in the belief that if these provocations go wrong, Washington will have their back and ride to the rescue. Whether they are right or wrong in this is an open question.
People like Porky and the Gas Princess (who threatened to nuke Russia) would stage some kind of provocation or false flag without a moment’s hesitation to provoke a wider war and divert attention from economic collapse, corruption, and their own unpopularity. Then Gavin Williamson may have to don his tin hat on their behalf to go and sort out Johnny Russian.
@Mark: “Letting all these shitty little Nazi countries into the EU, let alone NATO, is a ticking time bomb, a disaster waiting to happen.”
Letting the EU, let alone NATZO, slide inexorably toward fascism — as Europe did before WW2 — is a ticking time bomb much bigger than any particular European country. Not only your “shitty little Nazi countries in the Baltic” such as Sweden and Norway but also bigger shitty countries such as Great Britain, France and Germany will find themselves swept up once more into World War; unless the sheeple awaken and shake off a century of Anglo Zio Capitalism.
“I never saw a war my sons did not like”. — Big Mama Rothschild
I voted for ‘Brexit’ (wisely or otherwise) solely on a point of principle. I was challenged by friends to explain my ‘racist’ beliefs. I explained to them – and I shall paraphrase making use of @mark’s very succinct phraseology – that I didn’t want my country (albeit a lost cause in many other respects) to be part of the ever increasing cabal of ‘shitty little Nazi countries’ and ‘shitty little neo Nazi EU dictators’ who are more than happy to encourage, and throw our money at, these ‘shitty little wastrel Nazi countries’ and to promote confrontation with any country that doesn’t follow their script. My friends had no clue what I was talking about and obviously thought I must be ‘off my rocker’. They had no knowledge of the big wide world out there or even any thoughts about the economic implications of a Brexit outcome… their main concern was to ensure that they didn’t appear to be ‘racist’, ironically by voting to continue to be part of an institution whose current and future representatives are inherently racist and confrontational.
Unfortunately many things have happened since the ‘Brexit’ referendum which make me realise that the UK, whether or not it is part of the EU, is – at least under its current ‘management’ – already a fully fledged ‘shitty little’ corrupt and incompetent dictatorship, particularly whilst it continues to a**e-lick to the US. Unless there is a radical changing influence somewhere out there, I really do fear what the future holds for all of us.
I didn’t vote in the referendum because I now live in the US (I’m originally from England) but I understand the difference between the original conception of the European Community, a customs union between countries that had similar economies and values, and the European Union, a pan-European superstate. The customs union was a good idea, a natural progression for Western Europe, but it got ruined by the political greed of politicians who recklessly expanded to the East, absorbing countries that were never culturally or economically part of Western Europe. Its these political types that have turned the UK into a backwater state, another state leaning on past glories rather than looking to the future, and in doing so have made Brexit a disaster for the country (but not, as we find out, for themselves personally).
We appear to be in the middle of a cultural meltdown that’s got a distinct “Fall of Rome” feel to it. In the US the Federal government is now so disconnected from the lives of ordinary Americans that it seems to exist in another universe. This is the government that’s obsessed with Empire, not the government that provides for the day to day welfare of the people (like the EU this is left up to the individual states almost as an afterthought). This isn’t sustainable and there are signs that we are running out of resources; my fear is that we will lose the race to reorient our government towards peace and progress once the dying Empire realizes its got nothing to lose.
JudyJ and Martin, you voice my own anguish, we are a chorus:
“Cry, cry upon death — but may the good prevail”. — the Agamemnon of Aeschyles, tr.Louis MacNeice
Aeschyles put his faith in the ability of reasoned discourse to arrive at a just compromise in a Democratic state. I put my faith in the EU having learnt from the horrors of WW2. For a while these ideals were realized in ancient Athens and postwar Europe. Having lived in the latter, I still think with Wordsworth in post-Revolutionary France: “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive”.
The mortality of our constructs does not vitiate the validity of our ideals.
“Es irrt der mensch solang er strebt”. — Goethe, Faust.
”Latvia-Lithuania-Estonia-Macedonia-Montenegro-Georgia-Ukraine. They are a complete liability in economic and military terms. Absolutely. And there are those foreign policy realists in the US who know exactly that this is the case and exactly what is going on. ”
Exactly so. And there are a number of US (sane) foreign policy realists who are cognisant of this – for example Doug Bandow in The National Interest.
”Of course, the “Russian threat” is not so great as the Poles would have others believe. For all of Warsaw’s concern for “central and eastern Europe,” there have been no real Russian threats against those states. Nor has Vladimir Putin done anything to suggest his interest in an aggressive war to conquer the region. No one imagines a revived Red Army heading toward Montenegro, recently invited to join NATO.
Even Poland appears secure. Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union grabbed Polish territory at the conclusion of World War II, but Putin’s Russia gives no indication of wanting more. Moscow is unpleasantly aggressive, yet its ambitions appear bounded, largely limited to preventing further NATO expansion up to Russia’s borders. To achieve that end he will weaken border states friendly to the West and absorb areas with significant numbers of Russians. However, nothing suggests that he wants Russia to try to digest millions or tens of millions of Georgians and Ukrainians, let alone Poles living in historically Polish territory.
Even the Baltics, with varying populations of ethnic Russians, don’t appear to be of much of an immediate concern to Russia. They already are in NATO but possess de minimis militaries and are security nullities. Attempting to grab a majority-Russian city or other territory would offer few benefits at high cost. In fact, when Putin shifted his gaze from Ukraine, it went not north, but south to Syria.
Washington should call a halt to the European game of playing the United States. Of course, American officials always have been complicit. The Europeans want to leave the dirty work of defending their continent to Washington, and Washington wants to be in charge. Everyone is happy.
Except the American people.”
And it is the American people who are more aware of what the US national interests in fact are; its the neo-cons who are compromising America’s strategic interest with their insane policies.
Previously….politicians have said Ukraine will not qualify to be an EU member because of their financial shennanegans and absolute failures to comply with EU directives re corruption…systems of justice etc….considering EU has funded hundreds millions for small business generation yet Ukraine economy is collapsing…and Mogherini and Merkel idiots and friends and EU still insisting on sanctions against Russia…Gavin W exercising his lethality jingoism…it would not surprise me if they were later members..
Ye gods.
“attacked Ukrainian civilians of Russian nationality in the Eastern part of the country” – I presume Russian
ethnicity was intended here, not Russian nationality.
Indeed. More accurate to state ‘Lvov neo-nazis murdered 10,000+ UA civilians in Donbas’. All Ukranians speak Russian; some also speak Ukranian.
” …the Kiev parliament, by 34 votes to 35 with 16 abstentions, approved these amendments to the Constitution.”
That tells you all that you need to know about this farce in Kiev- Constitutional amendments at the drop of a hat.
The Ukrainian Parliament is giving RADA a bad name.
The reality is that Ukraine is not, as apologists claim, merely a forum in which expired Nazis play silly games but a full blooded fascist regime staggering towards a mad denouement of the sort illustrated in Odessa two years ago.
In the meantime Canada, the UK and The United States-in declining order of official enthusiasm- back this ‘democracy’ in which the only opposition allowed is that which agrees with the regime, to the hilt. There is a brigade of Canadian soldiers, commanded by a Ukrainian Canadian dual citizen, playing with fire near the Don basin and training fascist militias in Galicia (where the desire to return to the warm embrace of a German dominated Empire is ineradicable) and large amounts of Canadian arms, munitions and other subsidies have been poured into the bottomless hole of oligarch feeding corruption.
On the other hand, the people of Ukraine live in fear of famine, cold and hopelessness, but they dare say or do nothing for fear of the fascist death squads that have been roaming the land since they carried out the Maidan coup.
The contrast between Ukraine and Venezuela is stark, the similarities between Ukraine and Haiti could hardly be clearer.
At least people in Haiti are now openly rebelling against their corrupt president Jouvenel Moise after one too many trips of his and his cronies to the PetroCaribe fund to push their snouts around, hoovering up money, and for supporting intervention in Venezuela to remove Maduro.
“Haiti’s Unfolding Revolution Is Directly Linked to Venezuela’s”
https://haitiliberte.com/haitis-unfolding-revolution-is-directly-linked-to-venezuelas/
This is clearly an action intended to incite war with Russia.
Why?
Every NATO member must respond to any act of war carried out on any member. So clearly the Us will try and incite war in Ukraine to turn the whole of NATO against Russia.
I wish to make it clear that NATO can no longer accept new membership without a referendum in current member states authorising it.
Why?
NATO cannot become an organisation with far right nazi governments in member states.
I remain 100% confident that the UK people would reject Ukraine joining NATO and would rather leave NATO than support global US warmongering. But the wastrel Williamson will do absolutely anything the Americans tell him to do.
So we must have a referendum.
I call all major European nations to leave NATO rather than admit Ukraine.
Europe should cast America aside decisively and make it clear that they will not go to war with Russia.
Somewhat encouraging that a recent poll in Germany found only 2% of those polled agreeing that Russia posed a threat. Could we count on Germans to rise up against their government if the latter tried to endorse Ukraine’s accession?
This is a classic situation requiring a Europe-wide popular referendum. There is such an instrument: the European Citizens’ Initiative.
‘Every NATO member must respond to any act of war carried out on any member. So clearly the Us will try and incite war in Ukraine to turn the whole of NATO against Russia.’ – spot on, while the MSM response to 9/11 tells us they will almost certainly cheer on the impending armegeddon between East & West.
https://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/13/us/after-attacks-alliance-for-first-time-nato-invokes-joint-defense-pact-with-us.html
Can we expect any sort of serious diplomacy from Britains minister for dodgy wars?
Of course we can’t – its Gavin fucking Williamson.
I saw Gavin Williamson in the checkout queue at Tesco the other day, stocking up for the long haul. Then I realized it was only Juan Guaidó.
Gavin Williamson in the checkout queue at Tesco, stocking up on pet food for his beloved Cronus? Unlikely – he’d be visiting the pet cemetery in the dead of night to get pet food.
Who said anything about pet food? Oh, right, this is BTL O-G…
Gav was a leading agitator and Russophobe after declaring Russia guilty of biological warfare without due process – our lives in their hands, eh. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLr-jfbX0zM
I think something is going to have to give soon regardless of what the implications are of joining NATO for Ukraine, Russia and the West, This constant pushing is not going to end up well. It’s taking place all over the world, pushing China this week, in Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Venezuala and threats against Iran. Personally I think the only way this will have a positive outcome is if MSM suddenly desert their paymasters and all the warmongers are cleared out in the warmongering/terrorist supporting scandals
The Ukraine situation reminds me a little of the far-right of Croatia in the 1990s. NATO also supported terrorists of the KLA in Kosovo. And in both cases the Croatian government/neo-Nazis and KLA were actively trying to drag NATO in to support them.
The USA and UK are not afraid of supporting Nazis in power,Nazis out of power, Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups to get their way. What is most galling is that the criminals in Washington, Macron and Williamson still seem to be controlling a narrative that they’re the good guys in all this. Support for extremists and terrorists dressed up as support for democracy and liberal values. It’s so obvious but for once people just need to ignore distractions about Jeremy Corbyn and ‘ISIS brides’ and open their eyes.
As reported this week a BBC researcher confirmed what we all knew – Douma was a fake. An encouraging sign maybe that the narrative could turn on this and so many other events. If the public could just get their head around this one event – that we helped Al Qaeda fabricate an attack, manipulating children (possibly dead childen) and then bombed Syria, directly leading to more innocent deaths.
In my eyes, after millions dead in Iraq, Libya and Syria that’s more than enough scandal to clear out all our war criminal, terrorist supporting leaders.
regarding:- I wish to make it clear that NATO can no longer accept new membership without a referendum in current member states authorising it.
I would add to your comment that. In the same way the IMF amended their own rule book on lending in order to finance Ukraine, so will NATO ignore the need for a referendum on whatever pretence they deem “acceptable” to public approval. It is an extremely naive person that believes American dominated institutions work for the benefit of any society other than the big business and political elite of the USA.