Open letter to Swedish and Finnish citizens men and women, and especially young people, who do not decide but will have the consequences of this decision about what joining NATO in 1949 meant for Italy.
It is not easy to clarify to citizens of Northern Europe, of countries that moreover have enjoyed the status of neutrality up to now, what “Atlantic allegiance” has entailed for Italy, but in general for the countries of Southern Europe: in two words, although one may find it hard to believe, it has provided security-guarantee for the international strategy of the United States, but on the contrary insecurity-threats for our countries! Do not forget that the countries of Southern Europe had strong labor and popular movements in the postwar period, which the U.S. saw as the “threat of communism” that had to be contained or repressed. In Greece, a military coup was necessary that established the “dictatorship of the Colonels,” 1967-1974. In Italy the story was no less violent, bloody attacks, conspiracies, “black plots” (fascists), attempted coups, mysteries never cleared up, in which the active complicity (if not direction) of NATO is proven beyond any reasonable doubt.
We will necessarily be schematic: there are too many investigations and publications on these matters (which even many Italians ignore!) to be even listed.
The NATO treaty entailed surrenders of sovereignty, a true militarization of territory (perhaps you ignore that we have more than 100 U.S. military bases in Italy!). In 1959, 30 missiles with nuclear warheads were installed in Apulia in great secrecy (speaking of democracy), capable of striking the Soviet territory (it was necessary to wait the “Cuban Missile Crisis” of 1962 for them to be withdrawn).
A crucial political point is that Atlantic allegiance has been the condition placed on all left-wing forces that have had institutional or governmental ambitions: it happened for the opening to the Italian Socialist Party in the early 1960s (center-left government); it was repeated for the Italian Communist Party in view of the Historic Compromise in the 1970s; it happened after the fall of the Franco regime for the Spanish Socialist Party; it happened to the young Slovenia, whose pro-nuclear disarmament positions reentered when it came to joining NATO.
Behind NATO was the secret Stay Behind network, there was the Gladio military network, of which many aspects are still shrouded in mystery: perhaps you have never heard of it.
In Italy during the 1960s a sequence of subversive plots and bloody attacks intensified, which on the one hand forever barred Italy’s path to an autonomous development, to overcome the subordinate international role it had been assigned in the postwar period (and guaranteed by NATO). And on the other hand inaugurated what is now called the “strategy of tension,” with extensive international complicity, within the Atlantic context: a plot, never fully clarified, of complicity of state apparatuses (carabinieri, army, secret services), with arms supplies and NATO endorsement, Italian fascist organizations (1966 “Ordine Nuovo”) and international ones. But there probably existed a larger international clandestine structure that we do not know about, with different chains of command, incorporated of the NATO defense apparatus.
Tension rose with a crescendo in 1969, from the spring-summer train bombings to the Piazza Fontana massacre on December 12: behind the subversive plots was the coordination of Ordine Nuovo and Alleanza Nazionale, but the superior direction came from the Confidential Affairs Office of the Ministry of the Interior and was linked to NATO and piloted by the US. It is worth mentioning that in the last trial for Piazza Fontana, in the Supreme Court in 2005 (36 years later!), all the defendants were acquitted, and the relatives of the victims of the massacre were ordered to pay court costs!
It opened a season of coup attempts (1970, attempted coup by the fascist commander Junio Valerio Borghese; 1974 Edgardo Sogno’s attempted white coup was planned) and massacres: Italicus train massacre; Piazza della Loggia, Brescia May 28, 1974, 8 dead, 102 wounded.
We think you all know Pier Paolo Pasolini, but you may not know his dramatic accusation in the newspaper Corriere della Sera of November 14, 1974: “I know. I know the names of those responsible for what is called a ‘coup’ (and which in reality is a series of ‘coups’ instituted as a system of protection of power). I know the names of those responsible for the Milan massacre … the Brescia and Bologna massacres. … I know the names of the “top leadership” that maneuvered, therefore, both the old fascist “coup” masterminds … I know all these names and I know all the facts … I know. But I don’t have proof. I don’t even have clues.” Pasolini was assassinated 11 months and 18 days later! November 2, 1975. He was working on an explosive book, Petrolio (Oil).
You probably know the story of the kidnapping of the statesman Aldo Moro in March 1978: his fate was sealed when he began to reveal unspeakable secrets of Gladio and the NATO defense system.
The Atlantic mysteries and mortgages did not end there. For the Ustica massacre (June 27, 1980, Itavia flight shot down, 81 victims), our country’s role in the international context allowed foreign military ships and planes to roam our skies and seas, provoking real war scenarios: this subalternity of ours still allows France and the United States to remain silent to any request for clarification, they know the truth. A little more than a month later (August 1, 1980), a terrifying explosion at the Bologna train station killed 85 people and injured more than 200, the most serious terrorist attack carried out in Europe in the 20th century: after 41 years, full light has still not been shed!
This was repeated for the “Moby Prince” disaster of April 11, 1991, and the now undoubted as well as mysterious presence of warships that night in the Livorno roadstead. It is evident that the United States and NATO know perfectly well the truth, not only about this mystery, even about the Ustica massacre and all the Italian mysteries.
There is also a very heavy consequence of NATO membership: the European partners agreed to host U.S. nuclear weapons on their territory (Nuclear sharing). The number of these warheads reached a high of about 7,000 in the 1960s, and by the mid-1980s it was about 4,000. It is difficult to interpret this as security.
But the situation worsened after the fall of the Belino Wall in 1989: the Warsaw Pact was disbanded, but on the contrary NATO literally changed its skin, became a very different thing with the approval in 1991 of the “New Strategic Concept,” which provided for NATO interventions “outside the Alliance’s territory,” projecting to even distant regions interests in control of strategic areas and resources. The concepts of peacekiping developed, the abnormal one of “humanitarian warfare,” which in reality legitimized the wars in the Balkans (1992-1999) that resulted in the dissolution of the Republic of Yugoslavia, the disastrous intervention in Afghanistan (NATO since 2003), the war in Syria (2012), and the attack on Libya (2011) with the killing of Gaddafi, who had been Italy’s great ally. NATO’s participation has been massive. It is hard not to recognize neo-colonial objectives behind these interventions.
There would be many other important points to make, but at least one other point is important. You know that NATO is an alliance with nuclear weapons, not only those of the U.S., France and Britain, but also those that, due to the condition of nuclear sharing, are still deployed in 4 European countries (Belgium, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands – plus Turkey): would you argue that it is for our security? If a nuclear war ever breaks out, Italy with 35 warheads would be one of the first targets! Keep in mind that the warheads at the Italian base in Ghedi Torre would be operated by Italian Air Force aircraft, and that shortly the B61s will be replaced with the more modern and accurate B61-12s (see Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, H. Kristensen & M. Korda, “How many nuclear weapons does the United States have in 2022?”). You know that NATO is absolutely opposed to the TPNW, the only European countries that have ratified it are Austria, Ireland, the Vatican State, and San Marino, which do not belong to NATO.
Listen to us who have had this experience for 73 years, NATO membership is definitely not advisable!/p>
