The year 2010 is an important one for the future of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It is also an important year for the development of the European Union’s defense force.

Last April at a summit held in Strasbourg/Kiel, nato’s secretary general was directed by the organization’s heads of state and government to develop a new nato Strategic Concept. This exercise should be completed by the time of nato’s next summit, expected to take place toward the end of 2010.

This is not the first time nato has been tasked with changing its agenda. nato’s original mandate largely ensured the maintenance of the balance of power of the Cold War years during which the United States and Russia’s Soviet Union each stared down the other across the Atlantic Ocean and an even greater ideological divide. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, it seemed to many that nato became redundant. However, certain European elites had a different view. nato’s role changed dramatically when it acceded to pressure to engage in the illegal Balkan wars of the 1990s. “Germany ensured a big enough conflict in Kosovo to provide a pretext for intervention” (Freedom Today, October/November 1999).

The Anglo-Saxon nations dutifully followed through as willing lackeys of German imperialism acting out its part under cover of the EU common foreign policy. nato was put to work overseeing the horrible little wars that broke the Yugoslav Republic asunder, introduced the term “ethnic cleansing” to the foreign-policy lexicon, and ended with the former Yugoslavia’s constituent states becoming virtual colonies of the rising EU empire.

Occasionally one comes across a paper on this subject that is noteworthy for its sharpness of focus. Few are written by academics. Most are written by clear-thinking realist citizens of the world. The piece from which the above quote and subsequent quotes are rendered—unless otherwise indicated—was written, in its time, by a subject of the Crown. Sadly, as of Jan. 1, 2010, the writer may no longer claim to be so, for he, like all residents of British heritage resident within the United Kingdom, is now a citizen of the European Union.

That aside, the article published under the headline “nato’s Malign Metamorphosis to Aggressor” in the October/November 1999 edition of Freedom Today is profound in that what it warned of a decade ago is so rapidly becoming a reality today. The year 2010 is set to even more rapidly accelerate the process toward the most dangerous change of all in nato’s remit.

The illegal Balkan wars, commencing under combined UN and nato jurisdiction, soon became nato’s campaign when the United Nations withdrew from the scene. At that point, Edward Spalton wrote, “nato changed its character utterly, in contradiction of its own charter. In concert with the developing Western European Union (the supra-national, united armed forces of the European Union) it … became an imperial entity, waging its first war of conquest.” Unseen by most at the time, this was in fact the first territorial war of the seventh and final resurrection of an ancient entity—the Holy Roman Empire (read our booklet Germany and the Holy Roman Empire for more details).

Spalton mused on the fact that, at the time he wrote the above article, the citizens of the European Union did not fully grasp “the enormity of this metamorphosis” of nato to the role of imperialist aggressor rather than defender of freedom. And they still haven’t today! Least of all have their compatriots across the Pond.

The reality of what obtained 10 years ago has become even more entrenched over the past decade. It is set to be more fully consolidated under nato’s new Strategic Concept. Citizens of the 27 nation-states of the European Union were, in 1999 (and are now even more so since the implementation of the Lisbon Treaty on January 1 this year), but “pieces in the great game being played with their countries by the unaccountable, undemocratic, supra-national agencies of new nato and the EU.”

There is a great contrast between those two entities, nato and the EU, in respect of their individual original mandates. The one, nato, was established as a protector and defender of the free democracies of the U.S., Britain, Canada and the democracies of Western Europe. It was the sole bastion of organized international resistance to the forces of tyranny. The other, the European Union, from its earliest beginnings, was never intended to be democratic. As Edward Spalton so rightly pointed out, “From its inception the EU worked to destroy the sovereignty of European democracies.” In that effort it has now succeeded by virtue of the ratification and implementation of the Lisbon Treaty/EU constitution.

Imperialist in motive and intent, the EU is patently, by definition of its present state, an empire, an expansionist imperialist entity of 27 nation-states and a collection of Balkan colonies. The third edition, revised, of the Oxford Dictionary defines an empire as “a large group of states ruled over by a single … ruling authority.” That is an apt description of the EU monolith within the context of the unreadable EU constitution in the guise of the Lisbon Treaty. In Spalton’s words, the British people, unknown to themselves, have become “accomplices in the creation of an old-style continental land empire.”

If you check the history of those European continental land empires, you will find that they have, since Charlamagne, been a continuing string of resurrections over the past 1,200 years of one cruel old enterprise: the Holy Roman Empire! And what we now see as the latest of European continental land empires is none other than the seventh such resurrection of that same ancient system.

As originally conceived, nato was, as Spalton so rightly pointed out, “an organization of sovereign states cooperating under international law for a limited purpose.” But since the Balkan wars, that role has been confined to the dustbin of history. Today’s nato “has arrogated to itself the right to go adventuring in other states.”

It would be a grave enough danger to the world should such an enterprise be permitted to continue to exist. But a far greater danger is posed to the remaining free democracies of the world should nato, in its present imperialist guise, become linked with the EU empire in pursuing that empire’s strongly Romish/Teutonic objectives.

That, in fact, is what is now happening.

Commenting on EU-nato relations being on the agenda for discussion at today’s meeting of the EU Foreign Affairs Committee, EUobserver points out that “nato and the future of EU defense are closely intertwined” (January 22). That is really understating the reality of the situation. As Edward Spalton pointed out, fully a decade ago the EU’s Western European Union (weu) was already “defined as the EU wing of nato. Under the guise of closer cooperation, this is nothing less than the creation of an EU army, navy and air force.” Using Britain as an example, Spalton rightly stated that individual EU member nations are sacrificing their national military powers to the point that “their command will be so integrated with the weu as to be beyond control or recall by Parliament.”

In the very year that the Bundeswehr engaged German forces in combat for the first time since World War ii—deployment of the Luftwaffe in the Balkans—Supreme German Military Commander Gen. Klaus Naumann “gave a strong hint of weu and new nato thinking when he said: ‘German troops will be engaged for the maintenance of the free market and access without hindrance to the raw materials of the entire world.’ The implication is that if the entire world does not agree, so much the worse for it. We have ways of making you trade!” That startling observation will have our long-time readers instantly recalling powerful Bible prophecies that speak of a great northern power that will impose its devastating will on international trade for a brief moment in the near future (Daniel 11; Revelation 13).

The extent to which General Naumann’s prediction has already advanced to fulfillment may be judged from the fact that the Bundeswehr, under various EU, nato and UN mandates, has, since 1999, deployed its forces in 13 theaters outside German borders. These have all been to the south and the east—from Bosnia to the Horn of Africa, from Gibraltar to Afghanistan and right on up to the Mediterranean approaches to “the pleasant land” (Daniel 8:9). Long-time Trumpet readers will grasp the prophetic significance of this strategy.

Now, let’s bring this scenario right up to date.

The next two weeks will have great bearing on “nato’s malign metamorphosis to aggressor.” The key is the war in Afghanistan. Check the following very busy calendar of related events:

January 23—Chancellor Angela Merkel issues a public statement confirming German government support to strengthening the German presence in Afghanistan.

January 25—Germany’s defense minister, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, addresses a town hall meeting in Washington on the subject of the war in Afghanistan. The same day, Germany’s Chancellor Merkel meets with senior government ministers to discuss Germany’s strategy on the war. EU Foreign Affairs Committee also meets to discuss EU-nato relations.

January 26—nato meets with Russian representatives to discuss the war in Afghanistan.

January 28—A nato-led summit of senior representatives of all parties involved in the war in Afghanistan convenes in London to discuss the future direction of the war.

February 6-8—The annual Munich Security Conference convenes, with the war in Afghanistan and the weu/nato’s role high on the agenda.

February 11—EU summit held, with the war in Afghanistan again prominent on the agenda.

The outcome of these meetings will influence the development of nato’s new Strategic Concept, which is due to be tabled at the nato summit in October. What is guaranteed in October is that nato’s new Strategic Concept will reflect a stronger than ever symbiosis between the strategic military goals of the German High Command under the cloak of the weu, and nato’s new mandate. One of the greatest supporters of this relationship is none other than Germany’s Defense Minister Guttenberg.

War and Germany’s relation to that term are now assured of regular headlines in Europe throughout 2010 due to the “crisis” that the German press and mass media have been all too readily complicit in dubbing—and keenly popularizing—as the “Kunduz affair.” As we have noted before, the German elites are expert in creating a “crisis” and then imposing their solution on that “crisis.” Thus it is with the Kunduz affair. It presents these elites with the classic opportunity to finally bring the argument for the revival of German militarism out into the open.

Guttenberg is on record, even prior to being drafted into Chancellor Merkel’s government, as having declared that two things are necessary for Germany to find its true role in European and global security and defense: a change in public opinion in Germany and an acceptance by the German government of the necessity for the Bundeswehr to deploy in expeditionary combat roles. The Kunduz affair presents Guttenberg and the German elites who pull the strings behind the scenes in the EU with the ideal opportunity to shape both parliamentary and public opinion to meet both these goals within the current year.

The inquiry into the Kunduz affair is likely to last the best part of the year. In the meantime, the U.S. is applying heavy pressure to the German government to get it to commit to a greater role in Afghanistan. This is right up the German elites’ alley. For years they have publicized, via the German media machine, the image that Germany is extremely reluctant to break the “war” taboo from which they claim the “German public” seek to hide under the image of shame for atrocities committed in two world wars. To have the Americans wheedle away and cajole Germany into accepting the role of aggressor in combat is tantamount to having Germany’s old enemies invite the Germans to take up arms in anger yet again. As Herbert Armstrong prophesied, when they do, ultimately the Germans will say to their Anglo-Saxon enemies, “You made us do it!”

There’s a masterful psychology at work here that is destined to see the instigator of the previous two world wars seemingly pushed by the victors in those horrible conflicts into a repetition of its role as aggressor yet once again. Totally complicit in this grand game of strategy is the enterprise that the Anglo-Saxons created to, as nato’s first secretary general, Lord Ismay, declared, “keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.”

The great paradox is that it is highly likely that nato’s new Strategic Concept will result in pushing the Americans out, and elevating the Germans to the lead position in concert with Germany concluding a non-aggression pact with Russia. Such a scenario would leave the European combine leeway to continue its territorial expansion not only south and east, but to also suddenly pose a strategic threat west of the Atlantic.