On Saturday protesters from the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) stood outside Northwood Base, the home of the Joint Forces Command and a major NATO base to protest.

The CND organised the protest to coincide with the 70th anniversary of NATO, a military alliance between 29 North American and European countries initially created to oppose the Soviet Union and its satellite states, The Warsaw Pact, during the Cold War.

NATO still exists to this day and has been an active alliance with interventions such as in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya – the CND argue one of the problems of the alliance is its willingness to get involved in other countries and is campaigning for Britain to leave it.

The CND’s pressing concern is what they consider the encirclement of Russia and continued aggression to the nuclear power.

Ian Chamberlain, a spokesperson for the CND said: “We don’t mind bilateral cooperation between Britain and its European partners, but we see NATO as a hierarchy where the United States is forcing countries to take a stance against Russia which could lead to conflict.

“Britain is a major partner in NATO and frankly the alliance is an outdated model which is only going to cause problems.”

When asked about interventions by Russia Mr Chamberlain responded by evoking the past wars carried out by NATO.

Mr Chamberlain said: “We talk about Syria and Ukraine, but we must remember NATO’s intervention into Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.

“We predicted that the intervention into Libya would cause problems such as the refugee crisis and now we have the same member states of NATO happy to let people drown in the Mediterranean because it is not their problem.

“Changing the word intervention into no-fly zone doesn’t change anything.”

Mr Chamberlain then discussed the nuclear weapons as a reason for dissolving NATO especially with the rise of more aggressive leadership.

“We spend billions on our Nuclear weapons and Trident and now with a more aggressive leadership (Trump) we now have the Americans pulling out of the INF so what does Russia do? They go back to stockpiling nuclear weapons

“We don’t buy the idea that the world is a safer place because of nuclear weapons.

“If you really look at the world and the wars since the second world war you will realise that it hasn’t been very peaceful.”