COOPERATION 102

 

cooperation [ koh-op-uh–rey-shuhn ]

an act or instance of working or acting together for a common purpose or benefit.

mutually beneficial interaction among organisms [nations] living in a limited area [planet Earth]

 

The members of the military organization NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, held their Summit in Washington D.C. in July of this year, 2024.

 

The Members of NATO and percentage of global population:

Albania – 2.8 million, Belgium – 11.7 million, Bulgaria – 6.6 million, Canada – 39.1 million, Croatia – 3.9 million, Czech Republic – 10.5 million, Denmark – 5.9 million, Estonia – 1.3 million, Finland – 5.5 million, France 64.8 million, Germany – 83.2 million, Greece – 10.3 million, Hungary – 9.9 million, Iceland – 378 thousand, Italy – 58.6 million, Latvia – 1.8 million, Lithuania – 2.7 million, Luxembourg – 662 thousand, Montenegro – 626 thousand, Netherlands – 17.7 million, North Macedonia – 2 million, Norway – 5.5 million, Poland – 40.1 million, Portugal – 10.2 million, Romania – 19.6 million, Slovakia – 5.7 million, Slovenia – 2.1 million, Spain – 47.5 million, Sweden – 10.7 million, Turkey – 86.2 million, United Kingdom – 68 million, United States – 342 million.

Total in NATO: 977,566,000        World: 8,126,000,000        NATO = 12% of World Population

 

NATO’s Washington Summit Declaration can be read here, but its major points are below:

  • Providing the necessary forces, capabilities, resources, and infrastructure for our new defense plans, to be prepared for high-intensity and multi-domain collective defense.
  • Conducting more frequent and large-scale training and exercises of our plans to demonstrate our ability to defend and rapidly reinforce any Ally that comes under threat, including through Steadfast Defender 24, NATO’s largest military exercise in a generation.
  • Taking urgent action to increase capabilities in accordance with the NATO Defense Planning Process (NDPP), including in the short-term, with our initial focus to include battle decisive munitions and air and missile defense.
  • Strengthening our NATO command and control and assigning key leadership roles to nationally provided headquarters.
  • Strengthening our ability to move, reinforce, supply, and sustain our forces to respond to threats across the Alliance, including through effective and resilient logistics and the development of mobility corridors.
  • Training, exercising, and integrating NATO’s Forward Land Forces into the new plans, including by continuing to strengthen our forward defenses on NATO’s Eastern Flank.
  • Taking full advantage of the accession of Finland and Sweden, and the capabilities they bring to the Alliance by fully integrating them into our plans, forces, and command structures, including by developing a NATO presence in Finland.
  • Accelerating the integration of space into our planning, exercises, and multi-domain operations, in particular by strengthening the capacity of NATO’s Space Operations Centre.
  • Establishing the NATO Integrated Cyber Defense Centre to enhance network protection, situational awareness, and the implementation of cyberspace as an operational domain throughout peacetime, crisis and conflict; and developing a policy to augment the security of NATO’s networks.
  • Strengthening the protection of critical undersea infrastructure (CUI), and enhancing our ability to deter, detect and respond to threats, including through continued development of NATO’s Centre for Security of CUI.
  • Investing in our Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear defense capabilities required to effectively operate in all environments.

 

 

The members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the SCO, held their Summit in Astana, Kazakhstan in July of this year, 2024.

 

Participants in the SCO and percentage of the global population:

Belarus – 9.2 million, India – 1.425 billion, Iran – 87.9 million, Kazakhstan – 19.7 million, China – 1.412 billion, Kyrgyz – 7 million, Pakistan – 231 million, Russia – 146 million, Tajikistan – 10.1 million, Uzbekistan – 35.2 million, Afghanistan – 40 million, Mongolia – 3.3 million, Azerbaijan – 10.1 million, Armenia – 2.9 million, Cambodia – 16.5 million, Nepal – 30 million, Turkey – 84 million, Sri Lanka – 22.8 million, Egypt – 109 million, Saudi Arabia – 36 million, Qatar – 2.6 million, Bahrain – 1.6 million, Maldives – 520 thousand, Myanmar – 53 million, United Arab Emirates – 9.4 million, Kuwait – 4.5 million

Total in SCO: 3,807,720,000         World: 8,126,000,000      47% of World Population

 

The Astana Declaration of the SCO can be read here, but perhaps a single sentence from the declaration defines the purpose:

“Taking into account the opinions of Member States, they reaffirm the topicality of initiatives on promoting interaction for creating international relations of a new type in the spirit of mutual respect, justice, equality and mutually beneficial cooperation, as well as forming a shared vision of the idea of creating a community of common destiny for mankind and promoting dialogue on the theme of One Earth, One Family, One Future.”

Further goals and perspectives of the SCO are:

  • to strengthen mutual trust, friendship and good neighborliness between the Member States
  • to encourage the effective cooperation between the Member States in such spheres as politics, trade, economy, science and technology, culture, education, energy, transport, tourism, environmental protection, etc.
  • to jointly ensure and maintain peace, security and stability in the region
  • to promote a new democratic, fair and rational international political and economic international order

“Internally, the SCO adheres to the “Shanghai spirit”, namely, mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality, consultation, respect for diversity of civilizations and pursuit of common development; and externally, it upholds non-alignment, non-targeting at other countries or regions and the principle of openness.”

 

The difference between NATO and the SCO could not be more stark. NATO sees a world filled with enemies and competitors to be conquered and kept down – the SCO sees a world filled with friends and partners for mutual benefit. NATO inevitably leads to destructive relationships between nations and cultures – the SCO leads to constructive friendships, trust, and respect between nations and cultures. NATO is a relic of the 1900’s, a militaristic anachronism with delusional visions of global domination – the SCO is a realistic vision of cooperative endeavor for the future of humanity.

We are living through an unprecedented moment in human evolution, an unprecedented inflection point in history. The United States, the world’s latest – and hopefully last – empire, is leaving the stage. This is inevitable. It is synergetic evolution taking command. For the sake of humanity, it is a good and hopeful necessity. America’s 4.5% of humanity must join the cooperative world community.

Because of the existence of nuclear weapons and the insatiably militaristic nature of America and its bipartisan leadership at this point in time, the transition of our nation from destructive global hegemon to productive, cooperative member of the global community, is fraught with danger. But world organizations like the SCO are placing the guideposts and we as a people can, and must, learn to join them.

Cooperation 103 will continue.