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Posts Tagged ‘NATO’

How to Stop the Escalation to War

Posted by M. C. on September 29, 2022

By Thierry Meyssan

The Ukrainian conflict is turning into a war between the West on one side and Russia and China on the other. Each side is convinced that the other one wants its loss. And fear is a bad advisor. Peace can only be preserved if each side recognizes its mistakes. This must be a radical change, because today neither Western discourse nor Russian actions correspond to reality.

https://www.voltairenet.org/article218093.html

No political leader wants a war on his territory. When they do, it is usually out of fear. Each side fears the other, rightly or wrongly. Of course, there are always a few elements that push for a cataclysm, but they are fanatical and in the minority.

This is exactly the situation in which we find ourselves. Russia is convinced, rightly or wrongly, that the West wants to destroy it, while the West is identically convinced that Russia is conducting an imperialist campaign and will eventually destroy its freedoms. In the shadows, a very small group, the Straussians, want confrontation.

This is not to say that World War III is just around the corner. But if no political leader radically changes his or her foreign policy, we are walking directly into the unknown and must prepare for absolute chaos.

To clear up misunderstandings, we must listen to the narratives of both sides.

Moscow believes that the overthrow of democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych was a coup d’état orchestrated by the United States. This is the first point of divergence as Washington interprets the events as a “revolution”, the “EuroMaidan” or “Dignity” revolution. Eight years later, numerous Western testimonies attest to the involvement of the US State Department, the CIA and the NED, Poland, Canada and finally NATO.

The people of Crimea and Donbass refused to endorse the new power, which included many “integral nationalists”, successors of the defeated of the Second World War.

Crimea, which had already voted in a referendum to become part of the future independent Russia when the USSR was dissolved, six months before the rest of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic declared its independence, voted again in a referendum. For four years, Crimea was claimed by both Russia and Ukraine. Moscow argues that between 1991 and 1995, it and not Kiev was paying pensions and salaries of officials in Crimea. In fact, Crimea was always Russian, even if it was considered part of Ukraine. In the end, it was Russian President Boris Yeltsin who, in the midst of a severe economic crisis, decided to abandon Crimea to Kiev. However, Crimea then voted for a constitution recognizing its autonomy within Ukraine, which Kiev never accepted. The second referendum, in 2014, overwhelmingly proclaimed independence. The Crimean Parliament then called for the attachment of its state to the Russian Federation, which the latter accepted. To strengthen the continuity of its territory, Russia built, without consulting Ukraine, a gigantic bridge linking its metropolis to the Crimean peninsula across the Sea of Azov, effectively privatizing this small sea.
Crimea is home to the port of Sevastopol, which is indispensable to the Russian navy. The latter represented nothing in 1990, but became a power again in 2014.

The West recognized the Soviet referendum in Ukraine in 1990, but not the one in 2014. Yet the right of peoples to self-determination does apply to the Crimeans. The West argues that many Russian soldiers were present without wearing their uniforms. True, but the results of the two referendums in 1990 and 2014 were similar. There is no room for suspicion of fraud.

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“Joe Biden’s” Last Stand

Posted by M. C. on September 26, 2022

“Joe Biden” (looking like the ghost of Konstantin Chernenko) answered in a speech to the UN General Assembly the next day, a maundering recitation of sanctimonious bluster, larded with climate hysteria to alarm and bamboozle the UN’s scores of Third World delegates, with not a word about any possible peace talks — because peaceful resolution of the conflict is the last thing that our government wants. It wants war, meaning we citizens of this land will get it, good and hard, if the puppeteers working “Joe Biden’s” mouth get their way. Prepare to live in an ashtray.

Historians of the future, grilling spatchcocked plovers over their campfires, will need not ponder for even a New York minute who started World War Three in the rockin’ 2020s. They will point straight to the waxy, furtive, larval figure known as “Joe Biden,” by then judged a moral weevil of such epic low degree that he became an embarrassment to all the other sewer-dwelling denizens of the dank DC underworld, including the roaches, the rats, the humble shipworms eating through sunk oaken foundations of buildings long forgotten, the writhing maggots rinsed from a thousand restaurant dumpsters, the slithering hellgrammites, millipedes, silverfish, pillbugs, termites, dung-beetles, woodlice, and, not least, the scaly lawyers spawned out of the infestation beneath K Street called Perkins Coie LLP. Even these would loathe and disdain the thing that came into this world as “Joe Biden.”

Let us agree that the place called Ukraine was never any of America’s business. For centuries we ignored it, through all the colorful cavalry charges to-and-fro of Turks and Tatars, the reign of the dashing Zaporozhian Cossacks, the cruel abuses of Stalin, then Hitler, and the dull, gray Khrushchev-to-Yeltsin years. But then, having destroyed Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia and sundry other places all on a great hegemonic lark, the professional warmongers of our land and their catamites in Washington made Ukraine their next special project.  They engineered the 2014 coup in Kiev that ousted the elected president, Mr. Yanyukovich, to set up a giant grifting parlor and international money-laundromat. The other strategic aim was to prepare Ukraine for NATO membership, which would have made it, in effect, a forward missile base right up against Russia’s border. Because, well, Russia, Russia, Russia!

An early beneficiary of these arrangements, you might recall, was one Hunter Biden, the drug-addicted, sex-obsessed, no-account son of Barack Obama’s no-account vice-president then known simply as Joe Biden sans quote-marks — because in 2014, he was a closer approximation of a real person than is sadly now the case. In fact, he was known as “The Big Guy” among Hunter’s business coterie (though listed as “Pedo Peter” on Hunter’s speed-dial). After the 2014 coup, and for years beyond, Hunter pulled a steady revenue stream out of Ukraine’s Burisma Holdings, a natgas distributor (among other things), serving as a know-nothing, no-show board member. When this monkey business came to the attention of President Trump, and he made a telephone inquiry about it, he was instantly beset by swarms of DC swamp vermin hoisting writs of impeachment.

Fast forward through the past eight years and you have Kiev’s persecution of the Russian-speaking Donbas provinces, the constant shelling and harassment by Banderite Nazis. Between that and the ever more strident urgings for Ukraine to join NATO, President Putin of Russia, Russia, Russia apparently had enough. In February of this year, he started the Special Military Operation to put an end to these hostilities. By April, when whole battalions of Ukrainian Nazis had been exterminated, a call to peace talks was issued by Mr. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister. This was shot-down without ceremony by “Joe Biden” (that is, by the junta behind him). The genius strategists in Foggy Bottom aimed to “weaken” Russia. To what end? (you might ask). Okay: Reasons….

Hence, many hard-fought battles on-the-ground later, Ukraine has lost roughly 70,000 troops killed to Russia’s roughly 6,000 KIA. The USA pours $10-billion-a-month into this venture, including missiles aplenty and other ordnance, in a stupid effort to prolong the conflict and bankrupt our own land. Thus, Mr. Putin has decided to stop pussyfooting around Ukraine, and declared an upgrade in Russia’s effort to put a conclusive end to these shenanigans. He set this forth clearly in a sober speech Wednesday, which included a reminder to the geniuses in the White House basement game room that Russia is a nuclear power.

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Will The United States and NATO Wake Up To What Happened at the Meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization?

Posted by M. C. on September 22, 2022

By Larry Johnson
Gateway Pundit

I am certain that most Americans do not have a clue what transpired this week at the meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (aka SCO). It is a clarion call, a defiant declaration, that the countries, which account for over half of the world’s population, are no longer going to defer to the United States. The attendees included Russia, China, India, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

The speeches by Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping are especially noteworthy. Both countries put the United States on notice that the United States and NATO will be treated as a sponsor of terrorism because they supply weapons to Ukraine that are being used to attack civilian targets.

I am certain that most Americans do not have a clue what transpired this week at the meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (aka SCO). It is a clarion call, a defiant declaration, that the countries, which account for over half of the world’s population, are no longer going to defer to the United States. The attendees included Russia, China, India, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

The speeches by Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping are especially noteworthy. Both countries put the United States on notice that the United States and NATO will be treated as a sponsor of terrorism because they supply weapons to Ukraine that are being used to attack civilian targets. You may accuse me of exaggerating because neither Putin nor Xi mention the United States or NATO by name. But the actions of the NATO allies in Ukraine are seen by both Russia and China as acts of terrorism. I am reprinting the salient portions of each speech below.

Russia and China also put the west on notice that Iran is no longer going to be treated as a pariah state. Iran is welcomed emphatically by both Putin and Xi as a member of the SCO. Going forward, this means that Iran will do business with all members of the SCO under the rubric of a new financial order being organized by Russia, China, India and Brazil.

I am sure this is jarring news to the western allies. They have enjoyed the luxury of the dominance of the U.S. Dollar as the international reserve currency. It was the Golden Rule at work–those with the gold make the rules. The United States faces a dilemma because it insists on levying international sanctions on any nation or leader who refuses to toe Washington’s line, but the blow back effects of those sanctions are savaging the European economies and will hurt America as well.

China and Russia now realize and affirm that the United States is no longer a reliable, trustworthy partner. They see the United States as a petulant child that, in the past, coerced others by throwing temper tantrums and launching ill-conceived, foolish foreign military operations.

Most important, but not said, the leaders of the SCO realize that Washington is leaderless. Biden is a demented buffoon. Putin demonstrated this in his press conference. He did not have a podium to lean on. He did not have a cheat sheet of journalists that instructed him who to call on. And he spoke intelligently off the cuff. Pay attention to what he says:

President Xi’s speech lays out in detail the future of the SCO:

Under these new conditions, the SCO, as an important constructive force in international and regional affairs, should keep itself well-positioned in the face of changing international dynamics, ride on the trend of the times, strengthen solidarity and cooperation and build a closer SCO community with a shared future.

First, we need to enhance mutual support. We should strengthen high-level exchanges and strategic communication, deepen mutual understanding and political trust, and support each other in our efforts to uphold security and development interests. We should guard against attempts by external forces to instigate “color revolution,” jointly oppose interference in other countries’ internal affairs under any pretext, and hold our future firmly in our own hands.

Second, we need to expand security cooperation. A proverb in Uzbekistan goes to the effect that “With peace, a country enjoys prosperity, just as with rain, the land can flourish.” The Global Security Initiative put forward by China is to address the peace deficit and global security challenges. It calls on all countries to stay true to the vision of common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security and build a balanced, effective and sustainable security architecture. We welcome all stakeholders to get involved in implementing this initiative.

We should continue to carry out joint anti-terrorism exercises, crack down hard on terrorism, separatism and extremism, drug trafficking as well as cyber and transnational organized crimes; and we should effectively meet the challenges in data security, biosecurity, outer space security and other non-traditional security domains. China is ready to train 2,000 law enforcement personnel for SCO member states in the next five years, and establish a China-SCO base for training counter-terrorism personnel, so as to enhance capacity-building for law enforcement of SCO member states.

Third, we need to deepen practical cooperation. To deliver a better life for people of all countries in the region is our shared goal. The Global Development Initiative launched by China aims to focus global attention on development, foster global development partnership, and achieve more robust, greener and more balanced global development. China is ready to work with all other stakeholders to pursue this initiative in our region to support the sustainable development of regional countries.

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Leaked Paper Shows UK Cops Preparing For “Greater Civil Unrest” This Winter

Posted by M. C. on September 6, 2022

Tyler Durden's Photo

BY TYLER DURDEN

Europeans are finally waking up to how bad Western sanctions on Russia have backfired, as their governments sacrificed ordinary people over NATO’s proxy fight against Russia in Ukraine. 

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/uk-cops-prepare-greater-civil-unrest-winter

New Prime Minister Liz Truss may have only weeks to deliver a confidence turnaround in the UK economy or face a surge in violent crime and breakdown in public order caused by a cost-of-living crisis.

The Times revealed police chiefs fear “economic turmoil and financial instability” has the “potential to drive increases in particular crime types,” such as shoplifting, burglary, vehicle theft, and online fraud and blackmail, as Brits face one of the worst collapses in living standards in a century amid energy hyperinflation. 

“Prolonged and painful economic pressure” could spark “greater civil unrest,” similar to the 2011 London riots, the leaked national strategy paper read. 

“Greater financial vulnerability may expose some staff to a higher risk of corruption, especially among those who fall into significant debt or financial difficulties,” it continued. 

One police chief noticed increased violent crime as inflation is stuck at multi-decade highs. This comes as energy regulator Ofgem increased the cap on power bills to a record £3,549 ($4,189) beginning Oct. 1 from £1,971 ($2,330). That cap is expected to rise to £5,439 ($6,427) by January and £7,272 ($8,594) by spring. 

Besides police, energy executives warned that mass civil unrest looms as people cannot afford their heating and electricity bills this winter. 

About 160,000 Brits have joined a movement against skyrocketing electricity bills, vowing not to pay come Oct. 1

Last Friday, Russia’s energy giant Gazprom PJSC halted flows via Nord Stream 1 to Europe, sending EU natural gas and electricity prices soaring on Monday. This means Truss hardly has any time to deliver a coherent strategy to save households from energy poverty and businesses from failing

The massive protest in Prague this past weekend, where tens of thousands of Czechs flooded the streets, offers a glimpse of the impending social unrest that could hit the street of the UK if power bills continue rising without government intervention. 

Published last week was a new report via Verisk Maplecroft, a UK-based risk consulting and intelligence firm, warning there’s a high risk of social unrest in Europe later this year due to rising inflation. 

Europeans are finally waking up to how bad Western sanctions on Russia have backfired, as their governments sacrificed ordinary people over NATO’s proxy fight against Russia in Ukraine. These protests could spread like wildfire across Europe, and it appears the UK is preparing for the worst-case scenario. 

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How Trump Caused A Meltdown At The FBI

Posted by M. C. on September 1, 2022

One US State Department Memo Be How Trump Beat The Trump Raid

George Webb

https://georgewebb.substack.com/p/how-trump-caused-a-meltdown-at-the

Donald Trump very well may have stopped the Trump Raid witch hunt with one memo from a University in Texas to the US State Department that was Top Secret, then delassified.

The document in question was written by a University of Texas Medical Branch researcher named Virginia Benassi to the US State Department to trigger a “Germ Team” to travel to Wuhan in September 2019 to start collecting biological samples and blood.

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Upon information and belief, the author, George Webb Sweigert, believes Virginia Benassi sent this email to the US State Department from her World Health Organization email, benassiv@who.int, not her UTMB email, to mask the fact she worked at UTMB. The author has four witnesses at the Defense Threat Reduction Agency at Ft. Belvoir that can verify the existence of such a 9/11 memo.

After six years of research and world travel, I can say that email connected to the NATO dropbox benassiv@who.int. The benassiv@who.int dropbox was used to destroy Trump’s economy and throw a Chicago Fire of pandemic into the lap of Trump by Deep State Trump Russia fanatics. This dropbox was used to hide the virus and vaccine truths from Trump, and this same dropbox was used by a NATO cabal at the Atlantic Council to profit in the billions while keeping these facts from Donald Trump.

See the rest here

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‘More Billions to Ukraine as America Falls Apart’

Posted by M. C. on August 23, 2022

What is seldom asked, is what is in this deal for those Americans who suffer to pay for our interventionist foreign policy. Do they really think a working American in Ohio or Pennsylvania is better off or safer because we are supposedly protecting Ukraine’s borders? I think most Americans would wonder why they aren’t bothering to protect our own borders.

There is a way out. It’s called “non-interventionism.” The war in Ukraine was caused by the US regime change in 2014 and the neocon insistence that Ukraine join NATO.

https://mailchi.mp/ronpaulinstitute/fallapart?e=4e0de347c8

Ron Paul

Aug. 22 – There is a video clip making the rounds showing President Biden speaking at a recent NATO summit about the seven billion dollars the US government had – at that time – provided to Ukraine. Attached to that is another clip showing the horrific state of several US major cities, including in Pennsylvania, California, and Ohio. The video of American cities is shocking: endless landscapes of filth, trash, homelessness, open fires on the street, drug-addicted zombies. It doesn’t look like the America most of us remember.

Watching Biden bragging about sending billions of dollars to corrupt leaders overseas with American cities looking like bombed-out Iraq or Libya is US foreign policy in a nutshell. The Washington elites tell the rest of America that they must “promote democracy” in some far-off land. Anyone who objects is considered in league with the appointed enemy of the day. Once it was Saddam, then Assad and Gaddafi. Now it’s Putin. The game is the same, only the names are changed.

What is seldom asked, is what is in this deal for those Americans who suffer to pay for our interventionist foreign policy. Do they really think a working American in Ohio or Pennsylvania is better off or safer because we are supposedly protecting Ukraine’s borders? I think most Americans would wonder why they aren’t bothering to protect our own borders.

A reported 200,000 illegals crossed the border into the US in July alone. You can believe they are learning quickly about the free money provided by the US government to illegals. They’ll probably get a voting card as well.

Last Friday the Pentagon announced that yet another $775 million would be sent to Ukraine. As Antiwar.com reported, it was the eighteenth weapons package to Ukraine in six months. Has there ever been a more idiotic US intervention in history?

Supporters of this proxy war may celebrate more aid to Ukraine, but the reality is that it is in no way aid to Ukraine. That’s not how the system works. It is money created out of thin air by the Fed and appropriated by Congress to be spent propping up the politically-connected military-industrial complex. It is a big check written by middle America to rich people who run Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. Americans watch their budget being stretched to the limit while the Beltway fat-cats loosen their belts to continue enjoying the gravy train.

Bloomberg reported earlier this summer that inflation is costing the average American household more than $5,200 this year. Inflation is a tax on middle class and poor Americans. The wealthy – like those who run Raytheon and Lockheed Martin – always get the new money first, before prices go up. The rest of us watch as the dollar buys less and less.

As Washington salivates over fighting Russia in Ukraine, the rest of America feels like we’re becoming Zimbabwe. How long until it takes a trillion dollars for a loaf of bread? Will there be a run on wheelbarrows?

There is a way out. It’s called “non-interventionism.” The war in Ukraine was caused by the US regime change in 2014 and the neocon insistence that Ukraine join NATO. The State Department and CIA thought it was a great victory to overthrow the elected government, but meanwhile the rest of us get the bill. No NATO and not one more penny for Ukraine!



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Germany Can Save Itself, and Possibly the World, by Abandoning Four Failed Policies

Posted by M. C. on August 9, 2022

Conclusion: What’s Good for Germany Is Good for the World

https://mises.org/wire/germany-can-save-itself-and-possibly-world-abandoning-four-failed-policies

Patrick Barron

The following is a plea to Germany—the war is over and has been for three-quarters of a century. It’s time to stop prostrating yourself for the supposed “good” of Europe. It’s time to take complete control of your domestic and foreign policy, without interference from haughty, busybody world elites, and do what is best for yourself. You will be pleasantly surprised that what is good for yourself is also good for your neighbors and the world.

Here are four failed policies that must be ended:

  1. The green energy projects.
  2. Membership in the European Monetary Union (EMU).
  3. Membership in the European Union.
  4. Membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and economic sanctions against Russia.

None of these policies are working. As American humorist and political sage Will Rogers said, “If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.”

  1. End the green energy projects. This is a good place to start, since your hardworking citizens are likely to freeze this winter. The green energy project, born of the global warming / climate change hysteria, will never power Germany or any other country, that matter. It has failed and cannot succeed. Simply scrap all the publicly funded green energy projects, end all “green energy” subsidies, and wish the private ones well. Sure, maybe there’s a niche here and there for wind and solar, but the national goal to replace fossil fuels must be abandoned. You cannot heat your homes and run an industrial economy on green energy.
  2. Abandon the euro and reinstate the deutschmark. If ever there were a competition for the world’s most foolish currency bloc, the European Monetary Union (EMU) would win all the prizes. As Claudio Grass explained recently, the euro is worse than even a state-sponsored fiat currency. It has no one national owner but nineteen, and a majority want to print more euros. It is the tragedy of the commons applied to currency.  See the rest here

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Ukraine: The War Between Germany & The United States Continues

Posted by M. C. on July 26, 2022

By Alexandra Bruce
Forbidden Knowledge TV

With the US bleeding Ukraine out, just keeping them alive, they will get what they want – Ukraine begging for permanent US bases. Putin keeps agitating, demanding Berlin keep to its end of the deal. He will be valuable as a cudgel to keep Europe in line and US bases in the region. A big ‘Growly Bear’, though we can debate whether he is toothless and clawless in comparison to US technology. As long as he growls, thats ok.

Australian YouTuber, Brendon O’Connell states that the psychological operations being inflicted on our society, from the Drag Queen Story Hour to the fake pandemic and death shot, while these may be dangerous and even lethal, they are all distractions from the global realignment into the Multipolar World Order.

He says, “This is not a war between Russia and NATO – otherwise known as The United States. This is a war between the United States and ultimately Germany, looking to make itself what Adolf Hitler came so close to achieving – ruling the Eurasian landmass and therefore, ruling the world. WWII is not over, it did not end, it started in 1914 and has been ongoing ever since.”

The US, which has been the capital of the banksters’ (Rothschild, City of London, East India Trading Company, Khazarian Mafia) global financial empire for much of the past century is now being replaced by the Multipolar World Order of the pan-Eurasian superstate trading block of Russia and China, with Israel at the center of it.

O’Connell claims that China is not leading the Belt and Road Initiative, Israel is; Israel is supplying China with the technology, much of which it has been systematically stolen from the US. Israel is to have a central role as the data collection point for the fiber optic cables that will cross from Europe, North and South Asia and Africa, which will be vital for the future of Artificial Intelligence – as in, the autonomous Boston Dynamics robots and armed drones that, in ten years’ time, will be deployed to exterminate survivors of the biowarfare and economic collapse – unless we stop these plans.

He says, “The plan was always, always under Donald Trump – Kissinger & Associates got him in…He gets in what was his job? Pull back out of NATO, bring the United States out of Eurasia, out of Afghanistan and the Middle East and bring it back home, redevelop the United States, build critical infrastructure, allow Israel in, as they’re still doing right now.

“That was the plan and they would build North America, South America with the North American Union – and it’s already being talked about, right now…

“Remember, turn the United States into a welfare state, use its energy to set up the international banking cartel central bank, smash the place up…then, reintroduce this rebuilding program, under a Roosevelt-style rule-building program and of course, introduce Communitarian Law, the UN Smart Cities program, lock people up…

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Biden Doubles Down On Forcing Americans To Fund Europe’s Security

Posted by M. C. on July 19, 2022

While the United States declines, President Joe Biden is sending troops and materiel to defend a continent that can defend itself.

The idea that German foreign policy is derived from pacifism and war guilt, not one of the cleverest instances of strategic “buck passing,” is perhaps the most debilitating assumption of Anglo-American grand strategies. It’s a misjudgment that German strategists are more than happy to see continue, because they are smart.

BY: SUMANTRA MAITRA

https://thefederalist.com/2022/07/06/biden-doubles-down-on-forcing-americans-to-fund-europes-security/

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s secretary general confirmed NATO is boosting its forces in Europe to “well over 300,000” from the current 40,000, a 650 percent increase. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg claims it’s to respond to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Setting aside the obvious ridiculousness of NATO boosting a deterrence force, however, at the very same time Russia is failing to conquer even Ukraine and is increasingly bogged down, such euphemisms from NATO are jarring. Everyone understands this means U.S. taxpayers will carry an additional burden for European security.

Consider the details: President Biden will deploy additional troops to Romania and the Baltic states, establish and maintain the permanent Fifth Army Corps in Poland, send two F-35 squadrons to the United Kingdom and air defenses to Germany and Italy, and increase the number of destroyers stationed in Spain from four to six.

The new additions are so bizarrely out of proportion to the threat that it provoked one of the most hawkish Republicans, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, to question why Biden is reinforcing Europe at the cost of the Pacific: “Russia’s military is in no condition to invade anyone else right now and its China & North Korea who are threatening military aggression,” Rubio tweeted.

In a time of inflation and with a rapid Chinese military build-up in the Indo-Pacific, Biden is doubling down on providing security for Europe when the United States should be “burden-shifting,” especially with relatively finite naval assets and as rich European economic powerhouses like Germany already free-ride on American taxpayers.

The question of Germany is crucial in this regard. As former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Elbridge Colby recently tweeted, “It’s a commonplace in American discussion that German foreign policy has been ‘naive.’ Well, Germany spends almost nothing on defense and has peacefully become the economic hegemon of Europe. Meantime we’ve had failed Middle East wars and enabled China’s rise. Who’s naive?”

Colby is, of course, correct. The idea that German foreign policy is derived from pacifism and war guilt, not one of the cleverest instances of strategic “buck passing,” is perhaps the most debilitating assumption of Anglo-American grand strategies. It’s a misjudgment that German strategists are more than happy to see continue, because they are smart.

Only nine countries reach the required defense spending within NATO, even after four years of President Trump pushing and an invasion of Ukraine.

See the rest here

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Is a US-Russia War Becoming Inevitable?

Posted by M. C. on July 15, 2022

Will joining NATO be a death sentence for Finland?

By Patrick J. Buchanan

At the NATO summit in Madrid, Finland was invited to join the alliance. What does this mean for Finland?

If Russian President Vladimir Putin breaches the 830-mile Finnish border, the United States will rise to Helsinki’s defense and fight Russia on Finland’s side.

What does Finland’s membership in NATO mean for America?

If Putin makes a military move into Finland, the U.S. will go to war against the world’s largest nation with an arsenal of between 4,500 and 6,000 battlefield and strategic nuclear weapons.

No Cold War president would have dreamed of making such a commitment — to risk the survival of our nation to defend territory of a country thousands of miles away that has never been a U.S. vital interest.

To go to war with the Soviet Union over the preservation of Finnish territory would have been seen as madness during the Cold War.

Recall: Harry Truman refused to use force to break Joseph Stalin’s blockade of Berlin. Dwight Eisenhower refused to send U.S. troops to save the Hungarian freedom fighters being run down by Soviet tanks in Budapest in 1956.

Lyndon B. Johnson did nothing to assist the Czech patriots crushed by Warsaw Pact armies in 1968. When Lech Walesa’s Solidarity was smashed on Moscow’s order in Poland in 1981, Ronald Reagan made brave statements and sent Xerox machines.

While the U.S. issued annual declarations of support during the Cold War for the “captive nations” of Central and Eastern Europe, the liberation of these nations from Soviet control was never deemed so vital to the West as to justify a war with the USSR.

Indeed, in the 40 years of the Cold War, NATO, which had begun in 1949 with 12 member nations, added only four more — Greece, Turkey, Spain and West Germany.

Yet, with the invitation to Sweden and Finland to join as the 31st and 32nd nations to receive an Article 5 war guarantee, NATO will have doubled its membership since what was thought — certainly by the Russians — to have been the end of the Cold War.

All the nations once part of Moscow’s Warsaw Pact — East Germany, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria — are now members of a U.S.-led NATO — directed against Russia.

Three former republics of the USSR — Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania — are now also members of NATO, a military alliance formed to corral and contain the nation to which they had belonged during the Cold War.

Lithuania, with 2% of Russia’s population, has just declared a partial blockade of goods moving across its territory to Kaliningrad, Russia’s enclave on the Baltic Sea.

To Putin’s protest, Vilnius has reminded Moscow that Lithuania is a member of NATO.

It is a dictum of geostrategic politics that a great power ought never cede to a lesser power the ability to draw it into a great war.

In 1914, the kaiser’s Germany gave its Austrian ally a “blank check” to punish Serbia for its role in the assassination of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne. Vienna cashed the kaiser’s check and attacked Serbia, and the Great War of 1914-1918 was on.

In March 1939, Neville Chamberlain issued a war guarantee to Poland. If Germany attacked Poland, Britain would fight on Poland’s side.

Fortified with this war guarantee from the British Empire, the Poles stonewalled Hitler, refusing to talk to Berlin over German claims to the city of Danzig, taken from her at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference.

On Sept. 1, 1939, Hitler attacked and Britain declared war, a war that lasted six years and mortally wounded the British Empire.

And Poland? At Yalta in 1945, Winston Churchill agreed that a Soviet-occupied Poland should remain in Stalin’s custody.

Putin is a Russian nationalist who regards the breakup of the USSR as the greatest calamity of the 20th century, but he is not alone responsible for the wretched relations between our countries.

We Americans have played a leading role in what is shaping up as a Second Cold War, more dangerous than the first.

Over the last quarter-century, after Russia dissolved the Warsaw Pact and let the USSR break apart into 15 nations, we pushed NATO, created to corral and contain Russia, into Central and Eastern Europe.

In 2008, neocons goaded Georgia into attacking South Ossetia, provoking Russian intervention and the rout of the Georgian army.

In 2014, neocons goaded Ukrainians into overthrowing the elected pro-Russian regime in Kyiv. When they succeeded, Putin seized Crimea and Sevastopol, for centuries the home base of Russia’s Black Sea fleet.

In 2022, Moscow asked the U.S. to pledge not to bring Ukraine into NATO. We refused. And Putin attacked. If Russians believe their country has been pushed against a wall by the West, can we blame them?

Americans appear dismissive of dark Russian warnings that rather than accept defeat in Ukraine, the humiliation of their nation, and their encirclement and isolation, they will resort to tactical nuclear weapons.

Is it really wisdom to dismiss these warnings as “saber-rattling”?

Be seeing you

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