NATO Eyes YouTube Videos to Sell War to Kids

Ads Would "Raise Awareness" About NATO Role

NATO announced today that they will be launching a series of three “unconventional advertisement videos” on the YouTube website. The videos, which cost nearly $700,000 to make, are designed to “raise awareness” of NATO’s actions among Western youths.

The campaign came about after a survey which showed few children in western nations really know what NATO does. The ads will use the tagline “peace and security. That’s our mission.”

NATO seems to be following in the footsteps of the Israeli military, which also used YouTube during its January invasion of the Gaza Strip to bypass conventional media and deliver footage of the attacks directly to the public. NATO had previously announced the release of declassified videos on YouTube in an attempt to win the war of public opinion against an enemy spokesman James Appathurai derided as “cave-dwellers.”

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.