Zarah Sultana’s NATO stance doesn’t add up

Zarah Sultana’s call for Britain to withdraw from NATO is the latest example of moral outrage turning into strategic confusion.

In a tweet this week, the Labour MP wrote: “NATO isn’t about ‘peace’ or ‘security’. It’s an imperialist war machine. Just look at Afghanistan and Libya… We must withdraw from NATO immediately.”

It is a sweeping denunciation that fits comfortably within a certain left-wing tradition of anti-imperialist politics. But when you read it alongside Sultana’s own words from the early weeks of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it makes little sense.

On 24 February 2022, the day of the invasion, she tweeted: “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is deplorable. Putin must immediately withdraw Russian forces and cease his bombardment.” Two days later she praised “incredibly courageous anti-war protestors in Russia who are risking repression to stand up for peace and against Putin’s invasion.”

Those were clear statements of solidarity with a people under attack and a recognition of who was responsible. Yet the position she takes today, treating NATO as the true source of global instability, sits awkwardly beside that earlier clarity.

The uncomfortable truth is that the only reason Ukraine’s neighbours have not shared its fate is because they are part of the alliance Sultana wants Britain to leave. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland have been secure because NATO’s collective defence guarantee deters invasion. Countries outside that shield, such as Georgia and Ukraine, have not been so lucky. The difference is not theoretical; it is visible on the map.

To understand how she arrived at this contradiction, it helps to recall that in February 2022 Sultana was one of eleven Labour MPs who signed a statement by the Stop the War Coalition. That statement questioned NATO’s legitimacy and suggested that the alliance’s “eastward expansion” had contributed to the tensions leading to the war. The Labour leadership immediately warned that any MP who continued to back it would lose the whip. Sultana and the others withdrew their signatures within hours.

She has never herself said that NATO provoked the invasion. But by endorsing and then retracting a statement that made that argument, she placed herself briefly on the side of those who see Western power as the main driver of conflict rather than the Russian regime that launched it. Her current call for withdrawal from NATO repeats that same one-sided framing, stripped of any recognition of what deterrence actually does.

Her domestic argument fares no better. “Wages, not weapons. Welfare, not warfare,” she wrote this week. It is a catchy slogan but a misleading one. Britain’s defence budget is around two per cent of GDP. Even if it were cut dramatically, it would not come close to fixing the structural problems of the NHS or reversing child poverty. The idea that disarming would somehow fund social justice is politically convenient but economically shallow.

Last year Sultana laid a wreath in Coventry’s War Memorial Park “in memory of all those from Coventry and around the world who have died in the horrors of war.” Her instinct to seek peace is sincere, but peace is not secured by hope alone. It depends on the ability to deter those who use force to achieve their goals. NATO, for all its flaws and misjudgments, has provided that deterrence for three generations.

When Sultana denounces the alliance as imperialist while condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, she ends up attacking the very structure that keeps most of Europe safe from similar aggression. It is not a position grounded in realism or evidence. It is a moral gesture that collapses under scrutiny.

In my view, the whole thing is baffling. You cannot demand solidarity with Ukrainians fighting for survival and then call for Britain to leave the alliance that prevents such invasions elsewhere. It is incoherent, detached from reality and, frankly, really strange.

She condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as “deplorable” and expressed solidarity with Ukrainians under attack. Yet she now demands that Britain withdraw from NATO, the only institution that has successfully deterred further Russian aggression in Europe. If NATO were dismantled or if Britain left it, states like Poland and the Baltic countries would become far more vulnerable. In effect, her policy would make the kind of invasion she condemns more likely. That is a fundamental contradiction.