2013 Jan 16 - 7:00pm
7pm, Public Forum $10
6pm, Reception $50
Phyllis Bennis serves as a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies and the Transnational Institute and has long been a leading figure in the U.S. peace movement and serves on the steering committees of the US Campaign to End Israeli Occupation. Her books include UNDERSTANDING THE PALESTINIAN-ISRAELI CONFLICT and CHALLENGING EMPIRE: HOW PEOPLE, GOVERNMENTS AND THE UN DEFY U.S. POWER. She is a frequent contributor to al Jazeera TV, Democracy Now, Grit TV, BBC and more, and currently and the United for Peace & Justice anti-war coalition. She is co-author of ENDING THE US WAR IN AFGHANISTAN: A PRIMER.
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Despite its recent dubious military triumph in Libya, NATO is an alliance in crisis. With the rise of China and other BRIC nations and the Western economic crisis, U.S. economic power – and thus its ability to maintain historic levels of military spending and mobilization – is in relative, if not absolute, decline. NATO’s “new strategic concept”, formally adopted last year in Lisbon, was designed to compensate for this loss by increasing both the influence and burden-sharing of Washington’s European allies. In exchange for assuming greater financial and war-fighting burdens, privileged European partners are to have a greater say in the alliance’s policies and a larger share of the booty. With Europe’s economic crisis threatening to pitch the world – as IMF Managing Director Christine Legard warned – into a 1930s-like Great Depression, Europeans are understandably in no rush to financially reinforce the alliance.
