Soon after Russia entered Ukraine, the Pentagon corrected Antony Blinken for saying Kiev would get NATO fighter jets. Blinken was applauded at the NATO summit yesterday for saying F-16s would soon arrive in Ukraine. What changed? asks Joe Lauria.
Blinken at the NATO public policy forum at the NATO summit in Washington on Wednesday. (NATO/YouTube)
By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News
On March 7, 2022, two weeks after Moscow entered the civil war in Ukraine, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told CBS News from Moldova that the U.S. would give NATO-member Poland a “green light” to send Mig-29 fighter jets to Ukraine.
Within days the Pentagon shot down the idea. Then U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer also supported the Polish planes scheme, but the Pentagon rejected it because it “could result in significant Russian reaction that might increase the prospects of a military escalation with NATO,” according to then Pentagon spokesman John Kirby.
But yesterday Blinken was applauded when he told a public policy forum at the NATO summit in Washington: “As we speak the transfer of F-16 jets is underway coming from Denmark, coming from the Netherlands and those jets will be flying in the skies of Ukraine this summer to make sure that Ukraine can continue to effectively defend itself against the Russian aggression.”
It is not quite NATO declaring a no-fly zone over Ukraine, which was dismissed by President Joe Biden in March 2022 because “that’s called World War III, okay? Let’s get it straight here, guys. We will not fight the third world war in Ukraine.”
“President Biden’s been clear that … if you establish a no-fly zone, certainly in order to enforce that no-fly zone, you’ll have to engage Russian aircraft. And again, that would put us at war with Russia,” added Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at the time.
Though not declaring a no-fly zone, these are still NATO fighter jets leaving from NATO countries to operate with Ukrainian pilots against Russian aircraft in Ukrainian airspace. More dangerously, NATO is permitting Ukraine to fly the F-16s to attack inside Russian territory.
Russia says it reserves the right to hit the airfield from which the planes take off, even if it’s in a NATO country, which risks escalation to direct conflict.
So what changed since March 2022 to allow the U.S. and NATO to risk, in the previous words of Biden, “World War III?”
What’s changed is that back then the White House and the Pentagon still thought the strategy of economic and information warfare plus a proxy ground war would defeat Russia in Ukraine, and ultimately bring down Vladimir Putin in Moscow.
But for more than a year now it’s been evident that the U.S. — and NATO — have lost the economic and information war, as well as the proxy fighting on the ground in Ukraine. One year into the war, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at a dinner in February 2023 that he had to face facts: Ukraine would lose the war and should negotiate a settlement with Moscow.
The Wall Street Journal quoted Macron as telling Zelensky that “even mortal enemies like France and Germany had to make peace after World War II.” Macron told Zelensky “he had been a great war leader, but that he would eventually have to shift into political statesmanship and make difficult decisions,” the newspaper reported.
[See: Western Leaders Privately Say Ukraine Can’t Win the War – CN]
The Big Lie
Hitler in Paris, 1940. (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration)
U.S.-led NATO could not launch its economic, information and proxy war against Russia without cause. That cause would be Russia invading Ukraine to defend ethnic Russians in a civil war that had raged since 2014, sparked when the U.S. helped to overthrow the democratically-elected government that year.
The economic war, intended to spur Russians to overthrow their government, has failed spectacularly. The ruble did not collapse despite sanctions on the Russian central bank. Nor has the economy.
Instead an alternative economic, commercial and financial system that excludes the West has arisen with China, India and Russia in the lead, and most of Asia, Africa and Latin America taking part in what appears to be the final chapter of Western colonialism. The sanctions instead backfired on the West, especially in Europe.
The information war has failed across the world. Only the United States and Europe, which consider itself “the world,” believe their own “information.”
The proxy war is being lost on the ground, though more than $100 billion in U.S. aid to Ukraine has created a bloodbath. There will either be a negotiated settlement in which Ukraine loses territory; a total Russian victory; or potentially the final war.
The U.S. pushed Russia to the brink to provoke its intervention. It began with a 30-year NATO expansion eastward with NATO exercises on Russia’s borders while calling for Ukraine to become a member, a call reiterated at the summit yesterday.
In December 2021 the West rejected Russian treaty proposals to roll back NATO troop deployments and missile installations in Eastern Europe, creating a new security architecture in Europe.
[See: Biden Confirms Why the US Needed This War — Consortium News]
NATO’s aim is to regain control of Russian resources and finances as the West enjoyed in the 1990s, when it asset-stripped formerly state-owned industries, enriching themselves and a new class of oligarchs while impoverishing the Russian people. Putin is now standing in their way.
Realizing it is losing, NATO has permitted Ukraine to attack Russian territory with its long-range missiles, which it had previously refused to do, and is now delivering the F-16s, which the Netherlands recklessly will allow Ukraine to fly inside Russia to strike targets there.
Accompanying these dangerous moves, putting the entire world at risk, NATO is ramping up the fantasy that Putin, like Hitler before him, is bent on conquering all of Europe, a continuation of the decades-long exaggerated Soviet threat that justified NATO’s existence to begin with.
Still desperate for direct NATO intervention, Zelensky’s hallucination at the summit was that the line of defense against Russia attacking the West lies in Ukraine. Macron has changed his tune from his dinner with Zelensky, now advocating sending French troops to the battlefield. And Biden, striving to appear lucid, made it a central theme of his address.
Faking Defense for Offense
In his speech to the summit, Biden on Tuesday couched NATO’s aggressive designs as defensive moves to counter a non-existent Russian threat to the rest of Europe. It’s similar to dressing up Israel’s genocide as “self-defence.” He said:
“In Europe, Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine continues. And Putin wants nothing less — nothing less than Ukraine’s total subjugation; to end Ukraine’s democracy; to destroy Uraine’s cul- — Uraine — Ukraine’s culture; and to wipe Ukraine off the map.
And we know Putin won’t stop at Ukraine. But make no mistake, Ukraine can and will stop Putin — (applause) — especially with our full, collective support. And they have our full support.
Even before Russian bombs were falling on Ukraine, the Alliance acted. Or- — I ordered the U.S. reinforcements at NATO’s eastern flank — more troops, more aircraft, more capabilities. And now the United States has more than 100,000 troops on the continent of Europe.
NATO moved swiftly as well, not only reinforcing the four existing battle groups of the east but also adding four more in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia, essentially doubling NATO’s strength on the eastern flank.”
Biden ridiculed Putin recently, saying he couldn’t even take the Ukrainian province of Kharkiv and now we are supposed to believe Putin has the absurd desire and capability to take Paris and beyond.
Somebody Tell Washington the WWII Era Is Over
Left to right: US President Joe Biden with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at NATO summit. (NATO)
Until the U.S. and its Western allies accept that the World War II era is ended they will continue to lead the world towards a Third World War.
At the end of the second one, the U.S. was the only major combatant undamaged at home and left with military bases flung around the world. The U.S. stood astride a devastated globe. It was faced with a choice: make good on its rhetoric of international social progress, or fortify those bases into the nodes of a global military and economic empire. Over the decades since, the U.S. has sought to control world resources by installing the governments they need, through electoral interference, coups or invasions.
World War II was the last just American war. That is why Washington brings it up every time the U.S. is gearing for a fight. It whitewashes its true intent — which is not to spread democracy.
Before the 1989 war on Panama, Gen. Manuel Noriega was called Hitler; before the 1999 attack on Serbia, Slobodan Milosevic was compared to Hitler; as was Saddam Hussein before the 2003 invasion of Iraq. As tensions rose with Russia during her presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton called Putin Hitler, leaving the impression she too was itching for war.
World War II imagery and rhetoric has been so crucial to American imperial leaders since 1945 that they can’t let go. They have little else to sell themselves with.
[See: Misusing the Sacrifices of WW II – Consortium News]
They have also ritually inflated the role the U.S. played in defeating Nazi Germany. The Soviet Union’s outsized contribution to destroying the Nazis has been airbrushed out of history and U.S. allies are relegated to a supporting cast, fitting for the vassals they’ve since 1945 become.
But that era is ending. The U.S. can no longer use the Second World War to justify its aggression and demonize its enemies. Until the U.S. acknowledges it is no longer the preeminent power of the world and instead becomes a responsible international player, it will risk nuclear devastation to preserve its hubris.
NATO’s Dangerous Declaration
Left to right: NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg greeting French President Emmanuel Macron (NATO)
The joint communique of the 32 NATO members reads:
“We stand in unity and solidarity in the face of a brutal war of aggression on the European continent and at a critical time for our security. We reaffirm the enduring transatlantic bond between our nations. NATO remains the unique, essential, and indispensable transatlantic forum to consult, coordinate, and act on all matters related to our individual and collective security. NATO is a defensive Alliance. […]
The People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) stated ambitions and coercive policies continue to challenge our interests, security and values. The deepening strategic partnership between Russia and the PRC and their mutually reinforcing attempts to undercut and reshape the rules-based international order, are a cause for profound concern. We are confronted by hybrid, cyber, space, and other threats and malicious activities from state and non-state actors.
Russia’s boldest red line is Ukraine joining NATO. As former C.I.A. analyst Ray McGovern wrote last week in a piece for Consortium News, Ukrainian negotiators understood this when they reached the outlines of a settlement of the war in April 2022, just weeks after it started. It was scuttled by the U.S. to keep the war going. Despite this, the NATO communicate vows to make Ukraine a member.
That is like challenging Moscow to a nuclear duel.
“We fully support Ukraine’s right to choose its own security arrangements and decide its own future, free from outside interference. Ukraine’s future is in NATO. Ukraine has become increasingly interoperable and politically integrated with the Alliance. We welcome the concrete progress Ukraine has made since the Vilnius Summit on its required democratic, economic, and security reforms.
As Ukraine continues this vital work, we will continue to support it on its irreversible path to full Euro-Atlantic integration, including NATO membership. We reaffirm that we will be in a position to extend an invitation to Ukraine to join the Alliance when Allies agree and conditions are met. The Summit decisions by NATO and the NATO-Ukraine Council, combined with Allies’ ongoing work, constitute a bridge to Ukraine’s membership in NATO.”
The Mad Path to Annihilation
All this adds up to a collective madness. After innumerable wars since history began, the world is being led to perhaps its final confrontation.
At the core is NATO’s apparent belief that Putin is bluffing about using nuclear weapons to defend Russia’s sovereignty. It is simply a bluff that cannot be tested.
The only solution is the two treaties Russia offered in December 2021 and a neutral Ukraine as it was under President Viktor Yanukovych, whom the U.S. helped overthrow in 2014 in part because of it.
NATO leaders haven’t demonstrated a willingness to give up any of their collective or individual power, which is devolving rapidly into collective and individual madness.
They don’t want to lose their role in Biden “running the world.”
Even if realists in Washington prevailed over the neocons in arguing that Ukraine can’t win this war, NATO leaders proclaim they can’t afford to lose it. Not because Putin will be at the Eiffel Tower by Christmas, but because so many political careers in the West would be ruined.
From Keir Starmer to Olaf Scholz, to Giorgia Meloni, Emmanuel Macron and Joe Biden, a defeat in Ukraine would signify that they gambled their personal ambition — as well as their nations’ treasure and the lives of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian men — and lost it all.
Instead of settling, they’re willing to drag us into the existential crisis that could end it all.
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette, the London Daily Mail and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He is the author of two books, A Political Odyssey, with Sen. Mike Gravel, foreword by Daniel Ellsberg; and How I Lost By Hillary Clinton, foreword by Julian Assange.
Clearly Joe Biden has gone catastrophically mad, just flipping insane, spouting nothing but lies in support of his attempt at conquering the entire world. He’s worse than “Big Brother” in Orwell’s masterpiece of what we once assumed was FICTION! Either Joe truly believes “ignorance is strength,” “freedom is slavery,” and “war is peace.” or he is willing to tell any damned lie, no matter how outrageous, to excuse his deranged thinking and pure lust for power. You can see the same disease rotting his brain when it comes to many American domestic policies, such as the country’s current hot potato surrounding abortion and the whole constellation of sexual identity issues, subsuming even children in the mess, underlying the “Woke” philosophy of his fellow Democratic party extremists. On the one hand the man angrily insists that he is probably the most pious and adherent Roman Catholic on the planet (how dare anyone think otherwise!) whilst he goes about routinely refuting his pope and the clearly-stated beliefs and commandments of his supposed church. Who really defines your morality, Joe? Christ or the Devil? Or, perhaps it is the latter’s chief hatchet man who renamed himself Netanyahoo? Or, maybe you really are your own creation who willed himself to simply be that damned bad.
As to all of you lesser fools, clearly, predictably, stridently leading your Nato member countries to certain perdition by supporting Joe’s alleged values and goals, why do you submit to Genocide Joe’s every maniacal wish? Can you really not discern the logical outcome of his relentless, unending escalatory cycles that forecast nothing but total annihilation for every human on the planet when the music finally stops? If you are really so fucking stupid, you do not have the qualities to lead a parade of dunces home from after-school detention. If you know exactly how grievously immoral you are willing to be simply to maintain a grasp on your political power, you really need to spend the rest of your days in a psychiatric hospital. It’s as clear as 2 + 2 = 4, ALWAYS 4 in simple arithmetic, that you are presently serving only evil… under the orders of a senile psychopath foisted into office under highly sketchy circumstances. Why? We know what’s wrong with HIM. Too many dead brain cells. What’s wrong with YOU dummies?
Another chilling aspect of all this is the US public is almost totally unaware of any threat of nuclear confrontation. I have spoken to otherwise informed and intelligent people who are almost totally unaware or believe all this to be hyperbole. The US MassMediaCartel has done a great job of misinforming and conditioning the public. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ “Doomsday Clock” is at 90 seconds to midnight. No problem.
Long have the clandestine, despicable, one-sided rules of the hegemonic Imperial US regime been debasing and destabilizing the international community’s social order and actual thrivance.
By the behind the scenes ‘hands’, and through the support of these western puppet-masters, Joe Biden is now the proxy president on a planet, of his now delusional brains fabrication; called ‘Dizzyland’ in which his – apparent for all to witness, fast unraveling intellect is inextricably trapped.
Stripped to the bare bones message of the essential, invaluable details of the meat in this article, the bottom-line facts are glaringly real: the spineless deceits of the greed of this U.S/NATO (Not Ambiguous Tyrannical Order) led West, have long been evident, to those who have been observing closely, through too many years; eyes opened ever wider, with each passing year!
What has been made abundantly clear, through the years, is the ‘Wests’ assist in the implosion of the USSR in the late nineteen-eighties, and the premeditated, attempted stripping and illegal appropriation of its material assets and natural resources.
What is taking place today is nothing less than a continuation, by other means – proxy, of this attempted theft, on the backs of and devastating detriment to the Ukrainian people.
What is quite apparent today is the grit and determination of all of the people of the Russian Federal State in standing up to the armed-to-the-teeth insane ‘mighty mouse’ rapaciously ‘cannibalist’, so-called civilized West.
The big picture is that NOTHING had actually changed in the conduct of sovereign international relations, until the 7th “October surprise” of 2023 brutally tore the mask away from the facade.
I recommend reading Andrei Martyanov’s Blog and watching his videos.
hxxp://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/
hxxps://www.youtube.com/@smoothieX12/videos
The simple fact of the matter is the F16s do not matter. The F16s are being deployed now because they are not a threat. They will be shot down. They are an annoyance, nothing more.
When Ukraine shot HIMARS at Sevastopol and killed civilians, the U.S. was immediately on the phone apologizing to Russia. The Unites States did not want escalation.
NATO does not matter. The West does not matter. They can do nothing to stop Russia from winning this war. The West does not have the man power, resources or technical capability to stop Russia. To be sure an all out war would be bloody and devastating. But within the confines of Ukraine, there is nothing the West can do to stop this.
This is nothing more than impotent grand standing.
The real fear is an accident happening.
That is Martyanov’s opinion. If a plane takes off from a NATO country and strikes inside Russia, which it is being permitted to do, Russia says it reserves the right to hit the airfield from which the planes take off. This is a reckless move by the West that risks escalation to direct conflict, despite bravado about simply shooting down all these planes.
hxxps://www.rferl.org/a/russia-ukrainian-f-16s-putin-nato-shoot-down/32881357.html
I think we need to continue with analysis of this conflict in viewpoints on how dangerous the current NATO threat is. True, it has also been disturbing lately to find Finland becoming a member of NATO with its having 15 American bases. Finland lies along a border with Russia, and this raises the worry that another Ukraine could be in the offing here, with Finland a new proxy. Word that huge swathes of agricultural land in Ukraine have been bought up by US investors, along with interest in mining significant types of minerals and resources, is another concern. The discussion by now has clearly indicated, as MacGregor says, that “NATO is the vassal states of the great American empire,” so the specter of a mighty set of allies serving Neocon ambitions raises a lot of anxiety. That the driving force is at base economic, engineered out of old 90’s full spectrum dominance projects and cloaked with Putin as Hitler mythology has also been clear now for quite a while.
On the other hand, we have views as with MacGregor and the blog mentioned above that NATO is falling apart, that it is badly divided with evidence people in these states are fed up, that we may be approaching a turning point. Finland is not interested in war, nor even, and perhaps surprisingly is Poland, given its hostilities with Russia for centuries. The Germans and the French are fed up, as indicated recently in elections there. In Hungary Orban represents one side of this rent in the fabric of this bloody sword view of NATO, arguing for peace. Further we have the growth of the BRICS, the development of the SCO, and the growing union of Russia, China, Iran, and the Global South as allies with their economic and military power.
Do you have a personal transcript of the U.S. initiated phone call to Russia apologizing for Ukraines firing HIMARS at Sevastopol and inadvertently killing civilians, or is Andrei Martyanov’s telling of his version of the’facts’ on the ground good enough for you?
“The real fear is an accident happening.”
So this killing of holiday makers on a beach was not just a simple accident, but a more unfortunate accident, which is why the U.S.’s conscience, prompted them to make the call; in order to avoid a more disastrous accident?
After all, accidents are never intentional!
The behaviour of the child-like west is leading us into a collective insanity and the ultimate denouement of complete and utter collapse. We should have learned by now how to overcome those dark and un-controllable forces which are running away with us.
What we are dealing with here is a political system which, essentially, does not appeal to the rational forces. On the contrary it arouses and mobilizes those diabolical forces in which we have believed to be non-existent, or had least to have died long ago.
Listening to Biden Snr. on the TV last night was a lesson of the psychic manipulation of the crowd – both external and internal – it reminded me of the Thomas Mann short Story of the crowd who were manipulated by a mob who were baying for more. Biden an abject non-entity was giving a performance (with a script written by someone else.) He struck me as a complete nonentity. To my mind Biden never had any sound principles or economic principles. But he gave the crowd exactly what they wanted.
In actual fact the ‘beliefs’ had any genuine of a part than the mass appeal – an appeal with no substance – hot air and bullshit. But this in contemporary society. There was a time when witches were burned at the stake or drowned in the ducking stool,
Very good text!
For me, it is hard to understand “the western leaders”, also from the humane point of view.
What is happening with them internally as they listen and applaud demented Joe Biden?
Why is this war so important for them?
More then then the whole humanity, more then their lives.
The western, capitalistic mindset was considered to be rational, calculated, but this is madness.
“It’s all about money.” — Marnie Tynen
Why is it important for NATO and the US to keep this war going and, indeed, fighting it while knowing they will lose in the end as they knew they would lose in Afghanistan? For the US it is because war is a racket. This war is typical in that the US fully intends to lose, as it does in most wars, but the war accomplishes two things: 1) make money for the politically connected from those who work it the National Security State to Congress and beyond; and 2) this war brings Europeans into the fold by re-militarizing (hence money for the MIC) and making it easier for the Euro-leaders to impose austerity and, above all, moving towards a authoritarian (or worse) society where governments use the all-seeing eye of the government to control the opinions of the common people. In this way, everyone is happy. As for this re-militarization of Europe, they don’t really have to even do much in that direction as a practical matter. Also, on the large scale, the neocon philosophy is to give meaning to life which in their opinion is (any) war.
“Even if realists in Washington prevailed over the neocons in arguing that Ukraine can’t win this war, NATO leaders proclaim they can’t afford to lose it. Not because Putin will be at the Eiffel Tower by Christmas, but because so many political careers in the West would be ruined.
From Keir Starmer to Olaf Scholz, to Giorgia Meloni, Emmanuel Macron and Joe Biden, a defeat in Ukraine would signify that they gambled their personal ambition — as well as their nations’ treasure and the lives of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian men — and lost it all. ”
There’s your answer, and it is why Joe concluded this analysis with those thoughts. I do believe he is correct, and it goes even deeper: if these scions and visionary stalwart leaders lose and are seen for the chronological antiques that they are then the whole stinking mess might just come down around their collective ears. And our ears as well.
“Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right, Here I am stuck in the middle with” [NATO WARMONGERS].
— After the great Gerry Rafferty and Joe Egan
Those people who tell us we must give military aid to the Ukraine never say that about Gaza or Yemen.
We are so screwed!
See Carl Jung addressing our existential danger in The Undiscovered Self in 1957:
‘The seemingly omnipotent State doctrine is for its part manipulated in the name of State policy by those occupying the highest positions in the government, where all the power is concentrated. Whoever, by election or caprice, gets into one of these positions is no longer subservient to authority, for he is the State policy itself and within the limits of the situation can proceed at his own discretion. With Louis XIV he can say, “L’état c’est moi.” He is thus the only individual or, at any rate, one of the few individuals who could make use of their individuality if only they knew how to differentiate themselves from the State doctrine. They are more likely, however, to be the slaves of their own fictions.’
hXXps://fleurmach.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/jung-the-undiscovered-self-1957.pdf
P.S. to Duane M
And Joe Lauria would inadvertently become god. LOL
Or a saint, at least. See: “A Canticle for Leibowitz”. :-)
Incredible. Thanks for the link. I’m not a big fan of SF, but i will certainly look out for Mr. Miller’s book.
Excellent synopsis of where we are and how we got there. Thank you, Mr. Lauria. I hope this essay will be inscribed onto clay tablets somewhere, so that an historian some time in the future may unravel the mystery of the collapse of Western civilization. Perhaps a few thousand years after the ashes have cooled.
Those hypothetical tablets might be discovered by some primitive human sub-species (a genetically altered entity resulting from nuclear radiation poisoning) in the future. The discovery will lead the finders to believe they are a sign from a god and will worship this god and create legends and fanciful stories which will start a whole new cult of worshipping invisible people in the sky. And the whole process will begin again.
Reality beneath the non-stop chatter about Biden’s dementia.
I think the only thing that could help to prevent WW3 and bring the US out of the grand delusion is if Mexico joins the BRICS and invites China and Russia to set up a military base each. So Mexico you alone hold the world’s fate in your hands. Otherwise The US and its NATO proxies are bringing an end to human civilisation. God help us all the world has gone mad.!
Well Mexico’s new President Claudia Sheinbaum was at the last international meeting in Russia a few weeks ago and she had a good chat with Putin. Lots BRICS countries were there and lots of wanna be BRIC countries were there, so there is hope . . . Saudi Arabia just dumped the petrodollar – another good sign.
From the moment of a Russian communist revolution they have been the target including weaponizing Germany for WWII and Japan for weakening Chinese communist revolution.
It may well be Napoleon was weaponized as a Roman based religious orthodox war against the Greek based one that moved to Kiev and then to Moscow.
Weaponized monotheism has been raging across the world following one empire after another for world dominance including defamation of peoples when they occupied territory also having impact on world culture for 2000 years. Including genocide and wide spread of disease as a fear of the old Roman baths and water systemsw.
Interesting observation. However, I don’t think Napoleon was weaponized. The French Revolution was certainly being driven by somebody: all that scurrilous propaganda (mostly untrue and exaggerated) aimed at Marie Antoinette year after year in the press is interesting), but I think Napoleon himself was a Black Swan. Why else did the British Empire, the Russian Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Belgium and Holland collude so hard and so long to destroy him?
If Napoleon was a Black Swan, then Hitler was also a Black Swan, who replaced Bonaparte as the bogeyman of the Establishment even today. And yet while disavowing Hitler the person, Biden and the US have continued his policies against the untermenschen, wherever they may be found.
[Mikael Gorbachev called for] a “Common European Home” of cooperation and interchange from the Atlantic to the Ural, in which both NATO and the Warsaw Pact would be dismantled in favor of a Pan-European security system.
The idea was dismissed by the US in favor of expanding NATO, over the strong objections of George Kennan and other statesmen who warned, accurately enough, that this “policy error of historic proportions” would lead to rising and very ominous tensions on the Russian border.
NATO’s mission today is “to manage the risks created by its existence.”
from Noam Chomsky, The Precipice
Graeme:
Thank you for the Chomsky quote from The Precipice, which is new to me. Here are a couple of other quotes that appear to be variants on the same theme.
“NATO’s existence became justified by the need to manage the security threats provoked by its enlargement.” – Richard Sakwa
“Created by the wars that required it, the Machine now creates the wars it requires.” – Joseph Schumpeter
It appears that history provides time-tested recipes for those who wish to stir up conflict.
A bunch of dangerous warmongering clowns, they must be defeated, and will be.
It’s still Socialism vs Capitalism.
Multipolarity vs Unipolarity
Socialism in the sense that, even though most countries these days are in part capitalistic, they are gathering together for the good of each to confront the neoliberal “Rules based order”. Who are only concerned with the health and welfare of a handful of people and Transnational Corporations, allegiance only to themselves, not to country or man. NATO is their “forward facing” military, as required by the wolfowitz doctrine.
I spent many years studying World War One. It amazed me that, once the carnage began, once the leadership saw the cost of the battles, the millions of dead, still they persisted, year after bloody year, continuing the fighting. Why couldn’t they stop? Once they saw how pointless it was, and how great the cost for their people? I understand now that they could not stop because they, the leaders, would lose face, and they would lose power. (Note: they lost power anyway, every one of them. Also, all the countries involved were bankrupted).
Here we are again. We have to find a new relationship with our leaders, so that sociopaths and psychopaths do not remain in charge.
It didn’t help that the major combatants in WWI were dynastic empires (or recent heirs thereof with similar outlooks where raisons d’etat are concerned) long habituated to regard the “lower orders” that made up the bulk of their citizenry disposable, let alone their colonial subjects whom they barely acknowledged as human.
Somehow we’ve managed to replicate this disdain on the part of the elite “citizens of nowhere” for the bulk of their working people whose concerns they dismiss as “populist” — a shocking characterization for states that pride ourselves on “our democracy.” It’s a revolting degeneration back into aristocracy with all of its attendant ills, not least of which are arrogance and lust for war.
Thank You Joe
I agree with you Joe, much of what passes for policy in DC is people desperate for job security. Hundreds of people will lose their cushy jobs if Biden is defeated. Of course there are always places for them in the demented DC think tanks, so all is not lost. I am hearing signs that Ukraine is on the verge of having to surrender, as many troops are refusing orders or are surrendering. It seems possible that the collapse of the Ukraine army is only a couple months away. Good time for Ukrainians to abandon their forward positions and retreat. I think the only thing holding it together in Ukraine now is the NATO troops that are secretly on the ground fighting. If they bug out, the game is up.
They have no better defensive line to retreat to. And they would have to leave their fortified positions, exposed in the open. More likely they mutiny, refuse to fight.
P.S. NATO does the world no good and ought to be disbanded. It is composed of an over the hill gang of cold warriors itching for a hot war that they will be the cause of, and which will do nothing but irreparable harm. Down with NATO!
NATO acts as though it imagines that nuclear war were inevitable and that they can get some sort of mysterious leg up on the opposition by forcing Putin to first the first nuclear salvo.
It may be that Biden’s dementia is the least of NATO’s troubles, psychiatrically speaking.
indeed, realistic scenario’s are bleak. i think nixon used the tactic of the madman before, now there’s no madman at the wheel. it is a mechanical system that is programmed for russia’s demise. russia had better make up a feasible first strike plan (behind mr putin’s back).
“… so many political careers in the West would be ruined …” Brilliant comment by Mr Lauria, and it encapsulates the extraordinary degree of cynicism these psychopaths harbor.
And referring to Drew Hunkins’s comment about the Israeli officials: My guess is they’re busy planning WWIII, indulging the death wish Hannah Arendt wrote about.
Joe Lauria, you summed up the U.S. sponsored strategy for WWIII aptly. My only addition is that the “$100 billion proxy war … has created a bloodbath” in American streets as well. The spending of so much of our tax dollars on the 1%/war” has raised the racial wealth gap to obscene proportions. Black life expectancy, maternal childbirth deaths, Black homelessness to unbearable heights. Joe Biden and the Democrats led us here, everyone please vote independent like our Muslim sisters and brothers have shown us how in Bristol, UK.
P.s. the only candidate that names Israel as a colonial settler state AND fights for federal reparations is Cornel West.
Nothing to add Mr.Lauria. You’ve succinctly covered all the relevant points with your usual aplomb.
The madness virus has clearly infected this feckless institution.
We’re descending into a dangerous utter madness. We have Ziocon psychos running the show who, in their paranoid fantasies, view Russia as their eternal enemy. Add to this ugly paradigm the voracious appetite of the MIC and we have a recipe for a potential World War 3 that could destroy us all.
Recently I read somewhere (I’ve forgotten the source, could be credible, perhaps not) that a couple of Israeli officials were asked about the atrocities they’re committing daily in Gaza, were they worried about world condemnation, facing justice. Their response was instructive and horrifying. They said, paraphrasing here, “we’re not worried about it bc what’s on the horizon for the world is something much bloodier and deadly. It’ll make what we’re doing in Gaza right now look like a picnic, the memory of which will be overshadowed and washed away by the carnage to come on the world stage.”
NATO should have been abolished when the Cold War ended during the Reagan/Gorbachev era in the eighties. Instead, the militarists in the West led by the U.S. National Security State, insisted on continuing it. Hawks in the State Department, the Pentagon and in the mediocre administrations we have had since Bush II have gradually led us back into what will become a Third World War. The almighty U.S. militarist establishment has actually been brazen, stupid and downright criminally insane enough to lead us into a world war with Russia, who has much more advanced missiles than we have. They are not bluffing. And even if they were, it would be the height of irresponsibility to take that chance. They are fighting a war with a state on their border, Ukraine, which the U.S. has been meddling in for the last twenty years. The CIA took out a Russia aligned president and replaced him with a puppet of the West. What if Russia had done the same thing on the U.S. border? Obviously, we would be at war with them. To start an elective war with Russia is a clear sign that the American militarist establishment in the Biden administration has no feeling for the survival of the next generation and even of life as we know it on this planet. The Democratic Party is clearly off the rails and should be voted out in November.
You are correct in that the US/CIA has been subverting democracy in Ukraine since the Orange Revolution in 2005, when elected Yanukovych was replaced by American-trained Yushchenko, married to an American CIA/State Dept official. Yushchenko was a Good US Puppet, integrating UkroNAZIs into police, army and security apparatus. Even though Yushchenko (glorified in the West), who proclaimed NAZI collaborator Stepan Bandera “Hero of Ukraine, received less than 7% of the vote in UN-monitored elections re-running in 2009/2010, he was VP Joe Biden’s favorite, pushing for eradication of the Russian language, Russian culture and ethnic Russia Ukrainians. Yanukovych won (again) but was a Bad US Puppet (ignoring his handlers– the Podesta Group, Greg Craig (Obama’s consul), and Paul Manafort, who was booted from his position as Trump’s campaign manager by the fake Ukrainian Black Ledger). Initially Yanukovych played the EU against Russia for the best deal. Since Ukraine was much more important to Putin than to the EU, Russia gave Yanukovych and Ukraine a much better deal in 2013, and three months later he was overthrown by Biden, Toria, and the UkroNAZIs at Maidan, leading to the civil war.
This is what “American Democracy!” does when the People of a Nation elect the Wrong Candidate. They install a better Puppet.
If the GOP takes over nothing will change.
Chilling. I would very much appreciate it if you run down that source.