Tag: nato

NATO summit’s documents show that West stands against supporting peace — Kremlin

Documents signed at the recent NATO summit in the United States show that the West is not supporting a dialogue and the alliance itself is an instrument of confrontation, Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday.

“We see that our opponents in Europe and in the United States are not in favor of a dialogue,” Peskov noted.

“Judging by the documents signed at the NATO summit, they are not supporters of peace,” the Kremlin spokesman said, adding that “the North Atlantic Alliance is an instrument for confrontation and not a tool for security provision.”

Peskov also pointed out that India was fully sharing Russia’s stance on its readiness to launch a dialogue on the conflict settlement.

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China slams NATO’s ‘provocations, lies, smears’ over its Russia ties

China has warned NATO against “provoking confrontation” over its ties with Russia after the Western military alliance accused Beijing of being a “decisive enabler” of Moscow’s war against Ukraine.

The warning on Thursday came as NATO leaders meeting in Washington, DC, promised to bolster Ukraine and Europe’s defences against Russia and made clear that China was also becoming a focus of the alliance.

A spokesperson for Beijing’s mission to the European Union said NATO should “stop hyping up the so-called China threat and provoking confrontation and rivalry, and do more to contribute to world peace and stability”.

China, which has deepened strategic ties with Russia, has refused to condemn Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. It has presented itself as a neutral party in the war and says it is not sending lethal assistance to either side, unlike the US and other Western nations.

Beijing, however, has offered a critical lifeline to Russia’s isolated economy, with trade booming since the conflict began.

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NATO’s 75th Anniversary: The Broken Promises That Led to War

If diplomacy can pave the path to peace, then broken diplomatic promises can lead to war. Since the hopeful end of the Cold War, four key promises were made by the West. Each of them was intended to pave the path to the new and stable era of peace, but each of them was broken by the West and served instead to pave the path to war in Ukraine.

The 75th anniversary of the founding of NATO is a good time to reflect not only on its accomplishments but also on the lost opportunities that still haunt us today.

First Broken Promise: “Not One Inch to the East”

The war in Ukraine is being fought in part over Ukraine’s and Russia’s need for security guarantees. But that concern was not created out of nothing in 2022.

On February 9, 1990, US Secretary of State James Baker famously offered Gorbachev a choice: either a united but independent Germany outside of NATO or a united Germany connected to NATO “but with the guarantee that NATO’s jurisdiction or troops will not spread east of the present boundary.” Baker later disavowed these words, saying it was merely a hypothetical question, but declassified documents refute Baker by adding his next statement. After Gorbachev replied, “It goes without saying that a broadening of the NATO zone is not acceptable,” Baker responded, “We agree with that.”

Meeting with Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs Eduard Shevardnadze on the same day, Baker even refers to “iron-clad guarantees that NATO’s jurisdiction or forces would not move eastward.” Later that day, Baker famously told Gorbachev and Shevardnadze, “If we maintain a presence in a Germany that is a part of NATO, there would be no extension of NATO’s jurisdiction for forces of NATO one inch to the east.”

Simultaneously, German officials pointedly told Shevardnadze, “For us it is clear: NATO will not extend itself to the East.” On February 2, standing beside Baker at a press conference, German Foreign Minister Hans Dietrich Genscher announced that he and Baker “were in full agreement that there is no intention to extend the NATO area of defense and the security toward the East. This holds true not only for GDR… but that holds true for all the other Eastern countries… whatever happens within the Warsaw Pact.” On May 17, 1990, NATO General Secretary Manfred Wörner called this a “firm security guarantee” for the USSR.

But the West soon broke that promise. Despite signing the NATO-Russia Founding Act on Mutual Relations in May 1997, pledging to “build together a lasting and inclusive peace in the Euro-Atlantic area on the principles of democracy and cooperative security,” the Clinton administration had already decided two years earlier in 1995 to extend NATO eastward. In 1999, NATO expanded eastward to Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. In 2004, it added Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. In 2009, Croatia and Albania joined, followed by Montenegro in 2017, and North Macedonia in 2020.

The West’s insistence that NATO continue its “open door” policy toward Ukraine and Georgia led directly to Russia’s demand on December 17, 2021, that the door be closed and that mutual security guarantees that included Russia be developed instead, or Russia would respond by “military-technical means.”

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NATO SUMMIT: Alliance’s Endgame Appears to Be Nuclear War

The world is at its most dangerous moment since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Back then, however, the fear of total destruction consumed the public; today, few people seem even to be aware of this possibility.

It is easily imaginable that nuclear war could break out between Russia (and perhaps China) and the West, yet politicians continue to escalate tensions, place hundreds of thousands of troops at “high readiness,” and attack military targets inside Russia, even while ordinary citizens blithely go on with their lives.

The situation is without parallel in history.

Consider the following facts. A hostile military alliance, now including even Sweden and Finland, is at the very borders of Russia. How are Russian leaders — whose country was almost destroyed by Western invasion twice in the 20th century — supposed to react to this? How would Washington react if Mexico or Canada belonged to an enormous, expansionist, and highly belligerent anti-U.S. military alliance? 

As if expanding NATO to include Eastern Europe wasn’t provocative enough, Washington began to send billions of dollars’ worth of military aid to Ukraine in 2014, to “improve interoperability with NATO,” in the words of the Defense Department.

Why this Western involvement in Ukraine, which, as Barack Obama said while president, is “a core Russian interest but not an American one?”

One reason was given by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) in a recent moment of startling televised candor: Ukraine is “sitting on $10 to $12 trillion of critical minerals… I don’t want to give that money and those assets to Putin to share with China.” 

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New NATO Command Will Assist Ukraine With Training, Equipment Donations

NATO’s leaders are set to approve a separate command at Wiesbaden, Germany, to coordinate training and equipment donations to Kyiv’s forces, a senior administration official told reporters last week.

The command will have about 700 personnel from NATO countries and partner nations assigned to the center, an alliance news release said. The administration officials, speaking to the press Friday, said the center would increase the interoperability among Ukrainian forces and NATO.

As an example of the drive to make Kyiv’s military more interoperable with NATO’s, the administration official said, “the U.S. for more than a year [have] been training Ukrainians on F-16 platforms,” as have other alliance members.

NATO will also facilitate equipment logistics and provide support through the center to the long-term development of Ukraine’s armed forces, the release added.

Last month, the alliance’s defense ministers approved the motion for consideration at the summit in Washington.

Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said recently that creating the center does “not make NATO a party to the conflict, but they will enhance our support to Ukraine to uphold its right to self-defense.”

The administration official said, “the alliance stood up to President [Vladimir] Putin.” He added that 23 of the 32 nations in NATO are spending more than 2 percent of their gross domestic product on their own security, and some members are calling for a 3 percent threshold. Overall, the alliance has boosted its defense spending by more than $180 billion each year since 2020, he added.

At the defense ministers’ meeting last month, Stoltenberg said, “Over the next five years, NATO Allies across Europe and Canada plan to acquire thousands of air defense and artillery systems, 850 modern aircraft – mostly 5th generation F-35s – and also a lot of other high-end capabilities.”

The center’s creation also could be seen as a means of “institutionalizing” the long-term commitment of Western and Indo-Pacific nations, such as Japan, Korea and Australia, to Ukraine. The support would continue despite changes in administrations as would occur in the United States if Donald Trump is elected and, and changes in governments, as happened in the United Kingdom with Keir Starmer becoming prime minister.

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“Five Aditinsthghga Air Degeeens Shystems!” — Joe Biden an Incoherent Rambling Mess at NATO Summit

Joe Biden on Tuesday evening almost stayed up past his bedtime to deliver remarks on the 75th anniversary of NATO.

Biden opened the NATO Summit by announcing new air defenses for Ukraine – Ukraine is NOT a member of NATO!

“The United States will make sure that when we export critical air defense interceptors, Ukraine goes to the front of the line,” Biden said.

“They will get this assistance before anyone else gets it,” Biden added.

“The US, Germany, and Romania will each provide a Patriot battery of their own, while the Netherlands will work with other countries to enable an additional Patriot battery, each country announced in a joint statement. Meanwhile, Italy would also provide a SAMP-T long-range air defense system.” – CNN reported.

“The statement said the air-defense systems “will help to protect Ukrainian cities, civilians, and soldiers, and we are coordinating with the Ukrainian government so that these systems can be utilized rapidly.”” – CNN reported.

Nurse Jill sat in the front row.

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75 Years of NATO = 75 Years of Denial

Just in time for its 75th anniversary, NATO has dropped its mask. And the NATO summit beginning Tuesday in Washington is one particularly illuminating moment in this revelation. 

The history of the Enlightenment teaches us never to accept a person’s or an organization’s self-image at face value. So do the early sources of Enlightenment ideas in ancient Greece. The Greeks already possessed that insight. Inscribed above the Temple of Apollo was the maxim: Know thyself.

If we take that injunction not lightly as a gentle reminder of the limits of human thought but also as meaning what the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclis insisted — that “It belongs to all men to know themselves and think well” — then we must regard self-knowledge as an essential human quality, which perhaps also ought to apply to our organizations.

With NATO, however, it seems to be exactly the reverse.

For NATO, denial of its true nature is part of the essence of the organization. Or to put it another way, an almost meditative immersion in its own self-image is part of the essence of the military alliance.

It is all the more astonishing, then, that Western media are so often content to reflect a thousand iterations of this self-image back to the public, without question and without pausing to consider whether the image adequately represents reality.

In fact, 75 years of NATO is equivalent to 75 years of denial, albeit with a dramatic expansion of scale and scope in recent years.

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‘Elements in West’ want World War III – NATO member state

Certain Western powers appear hell-bent on turning the Ukraine conflict into an all-out world war, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said. He added that he hoped peace would prevail in spite of this.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has recently made a number of proposals aimed at ending hostilities in Ukraine, insisting that Moscow has always been open to dialogue. However, these proposals have been rejected by Ukraine and its Western backers as unrealistic and insincere.

Speaking to reporters on board the presidential jet as he returned from a Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Astana, Kazakhstan on Friday, Erdogan lamented that “unfortunately, there are countries and elements in the West that espouse an approach which paves the way for World War III.” 

He blamed arms manufacturers for pushing their own agendas as Western powers continue to funnel military aid to Ukraine. “It is obvious that arms dealers need money. And the market for arms dealers is the West,” Erdogan said.

The Turkish head of state said that, in contrast, Russia has been promoting dialogue and a peaceful resolution of the Ukraine conflict. He said Ankara was keeping its finger on the pulse in relation to the conflict, and he hopes that Kiev and Moscow will seal a peace agreement soon. 

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Ukraine Will Be Told It’s Too Corrupt To Join NATO at Next Week’s Summit

Ukraine will be told that it is too corrupt to join NATO at the alliance’s summit in Washington next week, The Telegraph reported on Tuesday.

The report cited a US State Department official who said Ukraine needed to take “additional steps” before talks on its NATO membership could progress. “We have to step back and applaud everything that Ukraine has done in the name of reforms over the last two-plus years,” the official said.

“As they continue to make those reforms, we want to commend them, we want to talk about additional steps that need to be taken, particularly in the area of anti-corruption. It is a priority for many of us around the table,” the official added.

President Biden has frequently cited corruption as a reason for not admitting Ukraine into NATO, but that has not stopped him from spending over $100 billion on military and economic aid for the Ukrainian government with virtually no oversight.

The position is expected to be outlined in a NATO communique issued during the summit. During last year’s NATO summit, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was looking for a clear roadmap to membership, but the alliance’s communique only offered a vague statement that it would invite Ukraine to join “when Allies agree and conditions are met.”

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Russia Says It Will Respond to Finland Giving US Access to Bases

On Wednesday, Russia said it would respond to Finland’s move to allow the US access to military bases inside the Nordic nation, which joined NATO last year and shares an over 800-mile border with Russia.

Under a new Defense Cooperation Agreement that was ratified by Finland’s parliament on Monday, the US can access 15 bases in Finland, including a border guard base only 20 miles from the Russian border.

“I can only confirm that Russia will not leave unanswered the NATO military buildup on our border, which threatens the security of the Russian Federation,” said Andrei Nastasin, a deputy spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry.

“We will also take the necessary measures, including of a military-technical nature, to counter aggressive decisions by Finland, as well as its NATO allies,” Nastasin added.

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