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Posts Tagged ‘NATO’

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Russia Showed Its Doom’s Day Weapon In Action

Posted by M. C. on February 17, 2025

Apparently, Moscow warned the NATO countries about the impending strike in advance. That is why there was hysteria in Kiev the day before. Russian revenge was not long to wait but Kyiv and its patrons were surprised by its scale, target and timing.

No foreign air defense system is technically able to intercept it.

Not a good look for the country running the show.

https://southfront.press/russia-showed-its-dooms-day-weapon-in-action

On November 21, the modern warfare entered its new stage. The war between Russia and the West has changed forever. The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation launched their advanced medium-range ballistic missile.

The missile struck the State Factory “Southern Machine-Building Production Union”, officially abbreviated as Pivdenmash or Yuzhmash in the city of Dnipro (Dnepropetrovsk). According to local reports, the large industrial facility suffered strategic destruction. All communications and traffic were blocked in the area, a lot of ambulances arrived on the spot. Officers of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) came to the area. The scale of destruction is likely to be shown by the satellite imagery soon.

The Ukrainian military claimed that Russian hypersonic Kinzhal missiles were also used in the attack. Another Patriot, the US most advanced air defense system, was reportedly destroyed on the outskirts of the city before the main blow.

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Moscow showed its Doom’s Day weapon in action. The RS-26 Rubezh ballistic missile was reportedly launched from the Kapustin Yar test site in the Astrakhan Region of Russia. The flight time to the target located about 800 kilometers away is estimated to be less than 5 minutes. The speed of the combat units at the final stage of the flight was about 5-7 kilometers per second.

The RS-26 Rubezh is a medium range ballistic missile, which is normally designed to carry nuclear warheads. It was developed by the Moscow Institute of Thermal Engineering as part of the Avangard program. It was created on the basis of the RS-24 Yars ballistic missile. Information about this mobile missile system, like its rocket, is strictly classified.

The RS-26 Rubezh reportedly has a starting weight of about 40-50 tons and is capable of delivering 4 separate combat units at a distance of 2,000 to 6,000 kilometers. It is three times larger and much more powerful than the Iskander mobile short-range ballistic missile system.

It has an advanced protection against the missile defense system and reportedly four individual thermonuclear warheads with a capacity of 150-300 kilotons each. No foreign air defense system is technically able to intercept it.

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What Part of Mandate Don’t You Understand?

Posted by M. C. on December 2, 2024

“This version of Trump knows what buttons to press, he knows where the bodies are buried, he’s absorbed their worst and now he is about to throw it right back at them.” — Jeff Childers

James Howard Kunstler

You understand, of course, that the federal bureaucracy is a perverse reincarnation of the old 19th century “Spoils System,” an entrenched, self-replicating matrix of parasites. Both parties have nourished it, but the Democrats have made it their extra-special pet since Mr. Obama was in charge of things. He and his AG Eric Holder arranged for the DOJ to target their political enemies and for the to FBI mutate into a US-KGB,

https://jameshowardkunstler.substack.com/p/what-part-of-mandate-dont-you-understand

You have every reason to believe that this arrogant, malicious, leviathan government, and the vicious intel / lawfare blob at its vanguard, is about to be turned upside-down, inside-out, and sideways. Every appointment by Mr. Trump is a dose of chemotherapy to this malignant beast, aimed at all its diseased organs. The rogue cells within are going to die hard, struggle against their extinction, shriek and thrash as the treatment proceeds. That is, if it is allowed to proceed.

And so: rumors arise of a coup to prevent it from happening. The benchmark version goes like this: “Joe Biden” keeps up his stupid provocation of Russia with those medium-range ATACMS missiles until Mr. Putin is forced to respond with a strike against a NATO member, say, a military base in Poland used to stage and target the ATACMS. Under NATO’s Article Five — an attack against one is an attack against all — Europe and the US must go to war against Russia. This becomes the pretext for “Joe Biden” to declare an extraordinary emergency (or Kamala Harris, if “JB” can be shoved out under the 25th Amendment). The inauguration of the newly-elected government must needs be postponed. . . .

Such a move would surely provoke a domestic insurrection against the leviathan and Civil War Two would be on. Or else you might expect a swift counter-coup out of the US military not playing along. Mr. Putin, too, could demur from playing the game, that is, just not go for the bait, refrain from striking any NATO territory. After all, his beef is officially with Mr. Zelensky’s Kiev government. Russia could just pound Kiev until that government ceases to exist. So far Mr. Putin has carefully refrained from destroying the historic city center, mainly hitting power plants to turn off the heat and light to make life extremely uncomfortable in the Ukraine capital with winter coming on. But he could level the city.

The choice is Mr. Zelensky’s, and has been for months as his forces, armaments, and prospects dwindle. He could suspend hostilities, go to talks, even raise a white flag and put an end to the needless suffering. Under no circumstances will he get the Donbas or Crimea back. I doubt that Russia wants to take over the rest of Ukraine, considering the cost of having to support it indefinitely. Better that it should remain a sovereign state and look after itself — but neutral, demilitarized, and, if you like, de-Nazified. You understand that these will be Russia’s final terms? And that there is nothing unreasonable about them?

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A Political Price is Being Paid for Being in the West

Posted by M. C. on November 18, 2024

by Ted Snider

But key among Germany’s economic challenges is the hammering Germany’s energy intensive industrial sector has taken by the energy crisis caused by the war in Ukraine. German industry has struggled to adjust to the higher price of energy caused by U.S.-led sanctions on Russian oil and by the blowing up of the Nord Stream pipeline. Being the largest economic supporter of Ukraine has further strained the economy.

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/a-political-price-is-being-paid-for-being-in-the-west/

depositphotos 285880598 s

The concept of “the West” is a complex and difficult one. At times it excludes countries in the geographical west, like Cuba and Venezuela and sometimes Brazil. At times it includes countries not in the geographical west, like Japan and Australia. As Richard Sakwa has explained, the West can refer to a 500 year old civilizational West or to a cultural or historical West of which Russia considers itself to be a core member.

The twin ticket admission into the political West is membership in the U.S.-led, post-Cold War security community built around NATO and in a cultural community allegedly built around free trade, freedom and democracy. The political West, by definition, excludes Russia and, now, China.

But recently, there seems to be a political price being paid by governments in the political West. It is being exacted at the polls by their citizens.

On November 6, the government of Germany, Europe’s most populous country and its largest economy, collapsed when Chancellor Olaf Scholz fired his finance minister, the leader of one of his two coalition partners, dissolving the coalition government. The government will limp along until a confidence vote is held in parliament in January. If Scholz’s Social Democrat Party does not survive the confidence vote, that would trigger early elections in March.

The catalyst of the collapse is disagreement by the coalition partners over a weakening economy and budgetary struggles. There are multiple reasons for Germany’s economic decline, including competition from China in the automotive industry. But key among Germany’s economic challenges is the hammering Germany’s energy intensive industrial sector has taken by the energy crisis caused by the war in Ukraine. German industry has struggled to adjust to the higher price of energy caused by U.S.-led sanctions on Russian oil and by the blowing up of the Nord Stream pipeline. Being the largest economic supporter of Ukraine has further strained the economy.

All three members of Scholz’s already unpopular coalition have been losing support. Scholz’ Social Democrats are polling only around 16% and the combined support of their coalition hovers around 30%, while the opposition Christian Democrats by themselves have 32.5% support. Two fringe parties, the far right populist Alternative für Deutschland and the populist leftwing Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance are both gaining support in part because they oppose further support for Ukraine.

Though not the only cause of the price the German government is paying at the polls, the war in Ukraine, and their policies on it, are contributing to the cost. Molly O’Neal, a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, has pointed out that opponents of governments’ stances on Ukraine have fared well, not only in Germany, but in France and elsewhere in Europe.

Several members of the political West have been punished in elections recently, including Italy, Austria, Finland, Portugal, Slovakia, Australia and Japan. While many members in good standing among the political West have fallen, governments outside of the political West, including all the original members of BRICS, who have taken alternative policy approaches to the war in Ukraine have fared better. Some have done worse than they traditionally have, and though not all meet the West’s criterion for democracy, Russia, China, India, and South Africa have all re-elected their governments. Brazil returned Lula da Silva to power, a man strongly supportive of BRICS and, along with China, has played a leading role, unlike the political West, in advocating for a diplomatic solution to the war in Ukraine.

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To Promote Peace, You Must Fight Statism

Posted by M. C. on September 24, 2024

The necessity of the state is undoubtedly one of the worst myths that still persists in the public mind.

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/to-promote-peace-you-must-fight-statism/

by Oscar Grau

international day of peace or world peace day, symbol of peace

U.S.-Zionist imperialism in the Middle East is far from coming to an end. The Hamas attack of October 7 on Israel triggered a highly murderous phase in the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The subsequent retaliation of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and their killing tens of thousands of innocents and continual provocations has elevated the possibility of a soon-to-come war between Israel and Iran, with the additional chance of involving the United States. To make matters worse, the American relationship with Israel in all these decades has made possible an unfortunate tolerance of the Gazan genocide to many conservatives.

The American ability to produce humanitarian disasters, either with NATO or the IDF, is anything but new, proving over and over again that freedom and human rights do not matter to the U.S. government, which has supported the slaughter of innocents in the Middle East or done the killing itself. Besides, the creation of many more millions of refugees has provoked social turmoil in several European countries suffering from subsidized immigration. And yet, all this is actually assisted by the political leadership of these European countries. Meanwhile, in the Russia-Ukraine war, every time the U.S. government and its allies help President Volodymyr Zelensky with arms and money, they contribute to the death of ever more people by fueling a war provoked by NATO.

The necessity of the state is undoubtedly one of the worst myths that still persists in the public mind. Who demands the manufacture of weapons capable of simultaneously killing thousands of people? Who forces or convinces thousands of people to dress in uniform and shoot others? Who builds military bases all over the world? These situations would be impossible without the state. While technology is always advancing, it begins as a neutral tool, and only becomes a factor when the state’s ends are mass weapons of war.

It’s because of ideology that wars in the past century have been more devastating and total than those of previous eras. These destructive ideas include democratic nationalism, the fiat-money system, the abandonment of old ways in warfare, and the increasingly disregarded methodological individualism embodied in the concept of justice. In reality, democratic nationalism became one of the most important causes of the real Hobbesian war of all against all manifested in World War II, which destroyed tranquility, subjected the national economy of several countries to the prerequisites of war, and annihilated the lives of millions. So it is certainly not enough for states to murder or oppress their own subject populations; indeed, which crimes do states pursue and punish most intensely in their own territorial monopolies? Economist Murray Rothbard responds:

“The gravest crimes in the State’s lexicon are almost invariably not invasions of person and property, but dangers to its own contentment: for example, treason, desertion of a soldier to the enemy, failure to register for the draft, conspiracy to overthrow the government.”

In the meantime, a new arms race came into being post-war. States competed in the development, innovation, and growth of their armies and weapons, qualitatively and quantitatively, making them more powerful and more effective. The race is materially based on the unique ability of states to externalize their costs. As inflation, taxation, and the manipulation of money and credit helps states, the richer they become, the easier it is to afford the race, which underpins the enrichment of the military-industrial complex and solidifies the preparation for war. And although not all states are involved with the same eagerness, all are involved by extension and definition in this arms race, equipping their military forces and purchasing on the global arms market. In fact, industries specializing in technology for mass destruction are established and thrive because states are their only financiers, diverting market resources to militaristic and warmongering initiatives. The military-industrial complex as we know it is not the result of free-market capitalism, but of statism—its intervention, its central banks, and so on.

Linked to the understanding of justice as an individual matter, private defense removes the need or diminishes incentives for military-sized weapons aimed at large destruction rather than individual execution. In the private world, where we have not yet forgotten how to live in peace, virtually no person or security company would ever consider the manufacture and use of highly destructive weapons. The need to avoid collateral damage, the concern for personal justice and defense, the search for profitability, and the private and voluntary financing of customers wanting to live in peace, happen naturally. Indeed, human tendency toward cooperation is so obvious that it suffices to realize that interpersonal conflict is actually rare and not a predominant feature of social life.

True, there will always be a global arms market, since defense and justice are not needs that appear with states, but exist independently. In reality, neither requires the existence of states. But unlike states, which do not compete or worry about the loss of voluntary customers, private security and justice services have incentives to be managed in a way that is not only economically profitable, but also peaceful. They cannot externalize the cost of their aggression or negligence as states do, nor do they have the legal means to systematically commit crimes and escape unscathed from the consequences or risks common among private individuals. Thus, private security and justice services lead people to care more about peace and the rights of others than is possible under statist terms.

The approach to justice and defense as an exclusively individual and private matter is precisely something that statism has no way of emulating.

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From Caracas to Paris and Puccini, Zelensky’s acultural clowns are in retreat

Posted by M. C. on August 8, 2024

Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves and NATO and its North London fellow travelers have inflicted untold sufferings on all Venezuelans because it wants to rob Venezuela’s oil.

From Caracas to Paris and Puccini, Zelensky’s acultural clowns are in retreat

Declan Hayes

Although Russian soprano Anna Netrebko now heads Myrotvorets’ list of assassination targets, before making any informed comment on her case or that of a gaggle of Venezuelans and Belarusians who have also found themselves in NATO’s cross hairs, we must first acquaint ourselves with the 101s of Venezuelan, Russian and Belarusian society as well, of course, as to how the opera and related worlds work.

Netrebko is a Kuban Cossack, who worked her way up from being a lowly janitor to being an international operatic superstar, and good on her for that and for, in her role as a global superstar, meeting Russian President Putin on several occasions. For any NATO shill, who thinks any such meeting is suspicious, all they need to do is look at the Paris Olympics, where politicians of all stripes are brown nosing their athletes in the hope that some of their sheen might rub off on their brown noses.

Although Netrebko has stated that she would have preferred that the Ukrainian war had not occurred, she is also on record as stating that it is what it is and that forces, other than her, must conclude it. Although elements of the Russian Duma, as well as the Nazi nutcases, who sit in the Ukrainian Parliament, have both denounced her, and though NATO’s fascistic European Parliament has sanctioned her, Netrebko has quite rightly described those NATO shills forcing her to express her political position as “human shits.”

She’ll get no argument from me on that or, I imagine, from Ivan Litvinovich and Viyaleta Bardzilouskaya, the two Belarusian athletes, who respectively won gold and silver medals at the Olympics and who thereby put to shame the “human shits” of under-performing Ukraine, who tried to dehumanise them and their Belarusian compatriots.

Although Netrebko likewise just wants to do her operatic thing, because Netrebko won’t call for the murder of Russian civilians NATO, as the mafia would say, wants her gone.

Norman Lebrecht, NATO’s go-to idiot on such matters, has called our attention to the fact that Netrebko has been booked to star in a new Tosca production in January of next year in Rome’s eternal city and, to add insult to NATO’s injury, that “the half-banned Russian soprano” is also due to perform in Florida in February 2025.

Although the Ukrainian Nazis are having a canary about all this, the fact of the matter is Netrebko has Puccini‘s Tosca gig well and truly sewn up. Because the Rome gig is to celebrate the 125th anniversary of the first performance of Tosca, it would be unthinkable for anyone, except for the Nazis of Ukraine and their North London fellow travelers, to even entertain the idea that the performance would go ahead without Netrebko being centre stage.

Opera, even more so than all similar arts, works on their tried and trusted maxim that the likes of Callas, Cabellé, Caruso, Corelli, Netrebko and Pavarotti get the limelight and the rest get the leftover peanuts. Without Netrebko, you cannot have Puccini. Simple as!

If all of that is too highbrow for you, just think how the Chinese recently rioted because Messi did not play in a friendly against them. But Messi is a footballer, not a circus performing bear, there to do tricks and handstands, even if the Chinese, who paid fortunes to see him, thought otherwise. Just as the Chinese went to see Messi, so also do the Italians, the Vatican’s big wigs and Rome’s diplomatic corps go to see the Kuban Cossack, Anna Netrebko. It is as simple as that.

And, as with the Kuban Cossacks, so also with the Venezuelans, who are not performing monkeys either, contrary to what these same NATO charlatans might wish.

A case in point is 43 year old Venezuelan conductor and violinist Gustavo Adolfo Dudamel Ramírez, who is currently the music director of the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and who is scheduled to become the Music and Artistic Director of the New York Philharmonic in 2026. To see how steeped Dudamel is in the music of Venezuela and beyond, recall that his father is a trombonist and a voice teacher of some note, and that Dudamel himself began his ongoing involvement with El Sistema, the famous Venezuelan social action music programme, at the age of five.

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NATO, like Biden, is a senile danger to world peace

Posted by M. C. on July 15, 2024

It was never about purported defense, but rather as a seemingly plausible arm of Western warmongering against the Soviet Union and the rest of the planet to serve Western capitalist global domination.

NATO, like Biden, is a senile danger to world peace

Western imperialism has reached another degenerative existential crisis and the same nefarious process of regeneration through world war has resumed. This could all go catastrophic.

How fitting that a doddering, senile American president should officiate at the NATO summit this week. At 81 years old, Joe Biden is older than the transatlantic military alliance founded 75 years ago in 1949.

The 75th-anniversary gathering in Washington DC was meant to extol the NATO bloc as a guarantor of security and peace.

However, all the cloying, ridiculous hype and fanfare amplified by the Western corporate media could not hide the fact that the American-led military organization has emerged as the biggest threat to world peace.

The disconnect with reality was scathingly summed up by our columnist Martin Jay who surveyed the “lies, double-think and duplicity” spouted by Biden and other leaders of the 32-nation bloc.

Declaring NATO to be a champion of democracy, human rights and international law is an abomination. The organization has evolved as an instrument of U.S. hegemonic imperialist violence ever since its inception. It was never about purported defense, but rather as a seemingly plausible arm of Western warmongering against the Soviet Union and the rest of the planet to serve Western capitalist global domination. The Cold War was always a propaganda construct to give the blatant warmongering a pretense of noble purpose.

To be sure, the docile Western news media, academia and think-tanks wrap up the absurd deception into a plausible narrative. That illustrates the power of propaganda. But the chasm with brutal reality has made the narrative untenable and prone to outright denigration.

After more than three decades since the end of the Soviet Union and the supposed end of the Cold War, the U.S.-led NATO bloc has expanded both in member nations and also in flagrant belligerence. The so-called Cold War never ended. That’s because the need and accompanying pretexts for Western imperialist violence and lawless aggression were always present.

And so at the redundant age of 75 years of aggression, the NATO alliance is expressing more unhinged belligerence than ever before towards Russia, China, Iran, North Korea and any other nation that is deemed to stand in the way of U.S.-led global domination.

This week NATO issued a joint statement that reads like a shocking manifesto of war-making laced with Orwellian bombastic language of self-virtue.

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Ukraine War Appears Permanent While NATO Summit Underway in Washington

Posted by M. C. on July 12, 2024

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Lunatic NATO Leader Declares That the Western Military Alliance Exists To Promote Degenerate LGBT Values

Posted by M. C. on May 20, 2024

NATO is a vehicle for creating instability.

Try and put the comment about “degenerate” aside…NATO Secretary Jens Stoltenberg is willing to go to war over LBGT issues!

Is this a Stoltenberg desperation move to justify himself and an organization that was obsolete 30 years ago? Maybe he thinks someday soon he will be named emperor of the NATO empire.

https://bigleaguepolitics.substack.com/p/lunatic-nato-leader-declares-that

José Alberto Niño

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is committed to spreading degenerate values abroad. 

With Russia seemingly making major gains against NATO-backed Ukrainian forces in Eastern Ukraine, NATO leaders have been engaging in bizarre virtue signaling to divert attention away from the abject failure of this proxy war against Russia. 

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 24, 2022, NATO Secretary Jens Stoltenberg has been particularly vocal about NATO’s values and why it’s an institution that has to be trusted despite its long track record of causing instability abroad — from Serbia all the way to Libya. 

On May 17, 2024, Stoltenberg, reinforced NATO’s commitment to LGBT values by dropping an unhinged post on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter: 

NATO exists to defend 32 nations, and our peoples’ right to live freely & in peace. On the International Day against Homophobia, Biphobia & Transphobia, and every day: all love is equal. LGBTQ+ people deserve respect & dignity, and I am proud to call myself your ally. #IDAHOBIT

Founded in 1949, NATO was ostensibly founded to counter the Soviet Union’s influence on the European continent. However, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO has worked to remake the world in America’s increasingly dysfunctional image. Its interventions in the Balkans all the way to Libya have brought nothing but harm and instability. 

On top of that, NATO teams up with a consortium of non-profit organizations to promote values such as sexual deviancy through soft power means. 

In effect, any country that gets in bed with NATO catches the STD of multiculturalism, sexual degeneracy, and societal decay. More importantly, NATO is an entangling military alliance with a crusading ideology that is a threat to world peace. 

Rational nations, especially the US, would be wise to exit this alliance altogether and chart their own paths on the world stage. 

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Iran on the Rise: Retaliation, “Important Military Targets”. Peter Koenig

Posted by M. C. on April 17, 2024

By Peter Koenig

Strategically speaking, can the US afford this “unwavering” support for an outright genocide nation? And secondly, Washington knows that Iran has full support from Russia and China, Iran’s BRICS allies. BRICS association has similar meaning to that of NATO’s: Attack one country means you attack them all – and retaliation may be massive.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/iran-on-the-rise/5854744

The warning was on the wall. Ever since Israel attacked “out of the blue” on 1 April 2024 the Iranian Consulate in Damascus, Syria, killing 7, including two generals, an Iranian retaliation was to be expected. 

The New York Times (NYT) reports

“Iran mounted an immense aerial attack on Israel on Saturday night, launching more than 200 drones [other sources talk about 300 drones] and missiles in retaliation for a deadly Israeli airstrike in Syria two weeks ago, and marking a significant escalation in hostilities between the two regional foes.” 

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) say there were over 300 areal threats, including some 200 drones, 100 ballistic missiles, and 30 cruise missiles. See this.

Israel and her Western friends claim that many of the drones were intercepted by IDF and the help from allied military support. The latter apparently include the UK, France, and Jordan – and most likely also US-NATO forces that have long been stationed in the region.

Nevertheless, according to several RT reports, a large-scale missile and drone attack against Israel has been a success, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has said in a statement published by IRNA news agency. The Islamic Republic’s military managed to “hit and destroy” some “important military targets,” it added, without providing any further details.

Short video clips published by Iranian media on social networks, viewing Islamic Republic’s missiles hitting their targets in Israel. Several missiles appeared to have been striking targets in a settlement, RT reports, however without being able to confirm the veracity of the clips.

The Guardian informs, that it was the Islamic Republic’s first-ever direct attack on the Jewish State, a development that brings the two countries to the brink of all-out conflict after more than a decade of shadow war and soaring stress six months into Israel’s war in Gaza, following the Hamas attack last October.

It was reported on Israeli television that Iran had launched more than 100 drones as well as cruise missiles towards Israel, and Iran later said it had fired a “first wave” of ballistic missiles. See this. 

This latest war theatre is in full development. At this point it is unclear what exactly happened and to what level the conflict may escalate.

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The Growing Fissures in NATO Unity

Posted by M. C. on April 6, 2024

Nothing that a US taxpayer cash infusion won’t cure.

by Ted Snider

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/the-growing-fissures-in-nato-unity

nato. flags of members of north atlantic treaty organization and

Despite the damage done in Ukraine and NATO’s now apparent inability to support Ukraine’s defense against Russia strongly enough, one item in the western win column is the claim that NATO is more unified following the damage done by Donald Trump. Even aside from NATO preparing for the possible consequences of a second Trump term, that win may not be so unequivocal.

Vladimir Putin “thought NATO would fracture and divide. Instead, NATO is more united and more unified than ever—than ever before,” President Joe Biden said on February 21, 2023 and again in Europe on July 13. “I would argue NATO is stronger than it’s ever been,” he said. “President Putin’s war continues to be a strategic failure,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on February 8, 2023. “In fact, that alliance—NATO—is stronger and more united than it’s ever been.”

But fissures have appeared. The smaller NATO powers are mad at the larger ones, as are the middle powers, and the large NATO powers are mad at each other.

The smaller and newer NATO countries have recently raised the divisive question of “whether there are first-rank and second-rank countries in NATO.” “Are we equals or are we not equals?” asked Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas.

The Eastern European members of NATO feel passed over in two ways. First is their lack of representation in the top NATO jobs. The second is the dismissal of their more aggressive stance against Russia and their dismissal of Russian and NATO red lines.

Senior officials in the small Baltic nations of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, which were all once part of the Soviet Union, maintain that the big NATO powers in Western Europe push them off to the side because of their more aggressive position in support of Ukraine against Russia. They complain that the large Western powers “do Russia policy without consulting people who know far more about Russia than [they] do.”

The Eastern European members of NATO have consistently seen themselves as dragging a reluctant, Western-centric NATO into the battle against Russia in defense of Ukraine. The East, led by Poland and the Czech Republic, has much more aggressively pushed for maximally arming Ukraine and dismissing the risk of escalating the war. Poland led the campaign to send tanks and fighter jets to Ukraine. The Czech Republic recently announced that it was on the verge of purchasing 300,000 artillery shells from countries outside of Europe to make up for European Union shortfalls and has said that the EU could obtain half a million more. By percentage of GDP, Estonia is the leading donor to Ukraine with Lithuania third, Latvia fifth, and Poland eighth. That is ahead of the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Germany.

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