Tag: nato

“A fox knows many things, but a hedgehog knows one big thing.” Scott Horton is the liberty movement’s foreign policy hedgehog, endeavoring to convince the American public of one essential truth: the folly of war. But within that sphere, Horton is a fox, weaving an encyclopedic knowledge of various conflicts into an elaborate and convincing tapestry that indicts elites, intellectuals, the military-industrial complex, and—with characteristic vitriol—neoconservatives in pushing the US toward unnecessary wars.

Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine, fits this mold to a tee—not because Horton contorts facts to a preconceived narrative. Rather, because it is often the same people pushing conflict after conflict who, unsurprisingly, resort to the same, well-worn playbook. Horton’s tome is riveting, from beginning to end. Here, I will focus on the early post-Cold War years, since this part of the story is oft-neglected in contemporary debates about the origins of the Ukraine war.

With the closing of the Cold War, and the USSR dissolving, the U.S. faced a crisis of success: what use is the NATO military alliance without the Soviet enemy to align against? More broadly, what grand strategy should the US adopt now that containing communism was obsolete? For neoconservatives, whose answer post-Cold War was benevolent global hegemony, the solution was to adapt NATO. NATO must gradually absorb more European nations, while leaving Russia out in the cold—contained and encircled, in an even worse position than during the Cold War. NATO must expand its mission to keep European peace and expand Western democracy, or wither on the vine.

From George H.W. Bush to today, the record meticulously compiled by Horton demonstrates that U.S. and other Western leaders communicated to Russia leaders and officials that NATO would not expand east—and could even allow for Russian membership in NATO. Various efforts like the Partnership for Peace and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe were promoted to foster this impression that Russia would be included in European affairs, alliances, and institutions, rather than these structures aligning against them. All the while, these same US and Western leaders took virtually the opposite positions internally, with the result that the US willfully misled the Russians. The exact internal and external postures waxed and waned over the years, but this ultimate pattern held firm. This was even though, all along, Russian officials warned about how they and the Russian people would react to NATO advancing east. What we see is, in terms with which Americans are well-familiar, “a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object.”

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Ukraine will still remain a de facto member of NATO so long as its security guarantees with the bloc’s members remain in effect.

Zelensky recently flip-flopped on ceasefire terms by signaling that he’d accept a cessation of hostilities in exchange for Ukraine being admitted to NATO, though without Article 5 applying to all the territory that he claims as his own while the conflict remains ongoing. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry then released a statement about how their country won’t accept any alternative to NATO membership. The Kremlin predictably described this demand as unacceptable.

This coincided with NATO Secretary General Rutte clarifying that his bloc’s focus right now is on arming Ukraine, which corroborated reports from Le Monde that several members such as Hungary, Germany, and even the US oppose Ukraine joining at this time. The larger context concerns Putin finally climbing the escalation ladder after authorizing the historic use of the hypersonic medium-range MIRV-capable Oreshnik missile in combat after the US let Ukraine use its ATACMS inside of Russia’s pre-2014 territory.

Nevertheless, what’s lost amidst the latest news about Zelensky’s flip-flop on ceasefire terms is the fact that this is actually just a faux concession since there isn’t any chance that he’ll capture all of his country’s lost territory, plus he’s still demanding NATO membership, which is at the root of this conflict. At the same time, Ukraine is already arguably a de facto member of NATO after clinching a spree of security guarantees with many of its members over the past year, which resemble Article 5 in spirit.

About that, this clause is popularly misportrayed as obligating countries to dispatch troops in support of allies that are under attack, though it only actually obligates them to provide whatever support they deem necessary. The security guarantees that it clinched institutionalize those countries’ existing support for Ukraine in the form of arms, intelligence sharing, and other aid, which is essentially the same as Article 5 but without any implied (key word) pressure to dispatch troops like full membership carries.

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The NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine might be on the brink of an unprecedented escalation that could easily spiral out of control if Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) is correct in claiming that NATO is planning a 100,000-strong military intervention in Ukraine under the guise of peacekeepers. The purpose is to freeze the conflict, presumably by having these troops function as tripwires for deterring a Russian attack that could spark World War III, and then rebuild Ukraine’s military-industrial complex (MIC).

SVR revealed that Poland will have control over Western Ukraine (like it did during the interwar period); Romania will be responsible for the Black Sea coast (which it seized during World War II via and ruled as the “Transnistria Governorate”); the UK will lord over Kiev and the north; while Germany will deploy its forces to the center and east of the country. The latter’s Rhinemetall will lead the efforts to rebuild Ukraine’s MIC by investing heavily, dispatching specialists, and providing high-performance equipment.

Another important detail is that “NATO is already deploying training centers in Ukraine, through which it is planned to drag at least a million mobilized Ukrainians”, while police functions will be carried out via Ukrainian nationalists that SVR likens to World War II-era Sonderkommandos. The last part is intriguing since it raises the question of why 100,000 NATO troops/peacekeepers would be required. Only a fraction of that is needed for tripwire and training purposes so perhaps those numbers are inaccurate.

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RT reports that the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service has concluded that the West is planning to prevent a Russian victory by sending 100,000 NATO troops to occupy Ukraine.  https://www.rt.com/russia/608376-svr-west-kiev-troops/ 

I doubt the 100,000 NATO soldiers will have any more success than the 600,000 dead Ukrainian ones, but the threat of deploying NATO soldiers is more proof that I was correct that Putin’s slow-moving limited military operation would provide endless time for the West to get involved and progressively widen the conflict until it is spun out of control. We are now at that point with insane Washington, Britain, and France striking Russia with missiles and planning to deploy troops.  All of this could have been avoided if Putin had done what every commander should have done and struck hard and fast to quickly end the conflict.

Putin preferred the goody two-shoes role, and the consequence was that the West was convinced that Russia was too weak or too lacking in confidence to win if the West backed Ukraine.  Putin has let the gradual widening of the conflict go on for three years, and the world has been brought face-to-face with the possibility of nuclear war. To avoid it, Putin has to carefully craft his response to Western missile attacks on Russia and to give advance warning so that enemies in the target area are not killed. These are not responses that the West will find convincing.

Putin is correct to refrain from any decisive action until Trump is in office as there is some hope that Trump is not part of the neoconservative agenda of defeating Russia and discrediting Putin with the Russian people.  There is the danger, however, that the Biden regime will use the time prior to Trump’s inauguration to so poison US-Russian relations as to make any agreement impossible.

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The American film maker and philanthropist who created the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises, George Lucas, once said, “Fear is the path to the Dark Side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.” Within a week of Russia “testing” the Oreshnik hypersonic missile in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine, against which the NATO has no defence, the Western alliance is already transiting through the Dark Side from fear to hatred and hurtling toward unspeakable suffering. 

The Russian Defence Ministry has disclosed that since the Oreshnik’s appearance in the war zone, Ukraine carried out two more attacks on Russian territory with ATACMS missiles. In the first attack on November 23, five ATACMS missiles were fired at an S-400 anti-aircraft missile division near the village of Lotarevka in Kursk Region. The Pantsir missile defense system, which provided cover for this division, destroyed three of them while two missiles reached the target damaging the radar. There are casualties among the personnel. 

In the second attack by 8 ATACMS missiles at the Kursk-Vostochny airfield on Monday, seven were shot down while one missile reached the target. The falling debris slightly damaged the infrastructure facilities and two servicemen suffered minor injuries. The Russian MOD stated that “retaliatory actions are being prepared.” 

The Russian military experts estimate that the attacks were planned for sometime and the Americans handled the targeting. On November 25, White House acknowledged for the first time the shift in policy allowing the use of ATACMS to attack Russian territory. Admiral John Kirby, coordinator for strategic communications at the White House National Security Council, revealed during a press gaggle on Monday, inter alia, saying that “well, obviously we did change the guidance and gave them [Kiev] guidance that they could use them, you know, to strike these particular types of targets.”

Following the attack on Monday, Ukraine sought an emergency meeting of the NATO–Ukraine Council in Brussels at the level of permanent representatives. Oreshnik was the main topic, and the need to strengthen air defence system. The NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said later, “Our support for Ukraine helps it fight, but we need to go further to change the trajectory of this conflict

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is willing to give territory to Russia in exchange for NATO protection in order to stop the “hot stage” of the war.

Zelensky added that after the ceasefire was achieved Ukraine could attempt to “diplomatically” negotiate the return of the territory currently under Russian control, reports The Telegraph.

“If we want to stop the hot stage of the war, we should take under [the] NATO umbrella the territory of Ukraine that we have under our control,” said Zelensky in an interview with Sky News Friday. “That’s what we need to do fast, and then Ukraine can get back the other part of its territory diplomatically.”

Zelensky’s statement is a dramatic shift from previous positions.

More from The Telegraph:

Mr. Zelensky hinted in his interview that the “NATO umbrella” would not be full membership of NATO, something Putin has rejected as part of any peace deal.

Rather, it could mean NATO member states, including Britain, the US, France and Germany, providing individual security guarantees to Ukraine.

This development comes on the heels of reports from Infowars and Alex Jones that President-elect Trump has been working around-the-clock to achieve a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine ahead of his inauguration.

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