Day: December 13, 2022

NATO Exists To Solve Problems NATO Creates

Since 1992 I have not been a fan of NATO….in the beginning it was to solve the possible expansion of the former USSR…..after the break-up I did not see a threat(at that time) to Europe so I thought Clinton should have dissolved the group and let Europe come up with their own defense plan if ever needed.

I still am not a fan of NATO because I think they are expanding its reach far beyond Europe.

In recent years NATO has created more problems than it solves….

It has become fashionable among the mainstream western commentariat to claim that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had nothing to do with NATO expansion, but as recently explained by Philippe Lemoine for the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology, that’s a completely false narrative that requires snipping past comments made by Putin out of the context in which they were made. Many western experts warned for years in advance that NATO expansion would lead to a conflict like the one we’re seeing today, and they were of course correct.

The recent push to expand NATO in Ukraine along with nations like Finland and Sweden as justified by “Russian aggression” is a good example of what professor Richard Sakwa has called the “fateful geographical paradox: that NATO exists to manage the risks created by its existence.” As the late scholar on US-Russia relations Stephen Cohen explained years before the Ukraine crisis erupted in 2014, Moscow sees NATO as an “American sphere of influence,” and the expansion of NATO and NATO influence as expansion of that sphere. It reacts to this with hostility just as the US would react to China or Russia building up aggressive military alliances on its borders, and arguably with vastly more restraint than the US would.

Other future examples of Sakwa’s fateful geographical paradox are likely to include the push to reconfigure NATO into an alliance dedicated to “restraining” China, which of course means halting China’s rise on the world stage and working to constrict, balkanize and usurp it. A recent Financial Times article titled “Washington steps up pressure on European allies to harden China stance” gives new detail to this agenda:

https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/nato-exists-to-solve-the-problems

I still think that NATO should be replaced with a European lead group….after all it is their necks on the line if Russia is truly the threat that so many think it is these days.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

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Where’s The Need?

This post is about the massive amounts of cash being spent on aircraft that is not needed….first it was the F-35, a plane that has doubled in price for all the fixes that are needed to repair all the problems that pop up almost daily for the last 5 years or so.

A bit of background on the F-35….

The following essay is reprinted with permission fromThe Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research.

The F-35 was billed as a fighter jet that could do almost everything the U.S. military desired, serving the Air Force, Marine Corps and Navy – and even Britain’s Royal Air Force and Royal Navy – all in one aircraft design. It’s supposed to replace and improve upon several current – and aging – aircraft types with widely different missions. It’s marketed as a cost-effective, powerful multi-role fighter airplane significantly better than anything potential adversaries could build in the next two decades. But it’s turned out to be none of those things.

Officially begun in 2001, with roots extending back to the late 1980s, the F-35 program is nearly a decade behind schedule, and has failed to meet many of its original design requirements. It’s also become the most expensive defense program in world history, at around US$1.5 trillion before the fighter is phased out in 2070.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-went-wrong-with-the-f-35-lockheed-martins-joint-strike-fighter/

Now we have a new stealth bomber, the B-21, another massive spending bill for the Pentagon…..again I ask where was the need?

Consistent with today’s trend to render all defense as performance art, the unveiling of the new Northrop Grumman B-21 “Raider” bomber at the Northrop plant in Palmdale on December 2 was designed with the care and production values of a Superbowl commercial. 

The blue backlighting, the sonorous music (One Day, by Caleb Etheridge) the shiny shroud strip-teased off the partly hidden aircraft by shadowy figures, the flyover by the bombers the B-21 will allegedly replace, were military-industrial showmanship at its best, giving us not a scintilla of worthwhile information about the plane. Fittingly, its primary selling point, according to its promoters, is “stealth” – a supposed ability to remain invisible to radar and other sensors. Given that earlier systems advertised as being cloaked from radar scrutiny, such as the F-22 and F-35 fighters, have turned out to be visible after all especially to decades-old low frequency radar systems, the prospects are not hopeful. We do however know that it has the most important characteristic of stealth: invisibility to the taxpayers.

For many years the Air Force declined to release a cost figure for the B-21, claiming the figure was classified on grounds that our enemies would learn valuable secrets if they knew just how much of a wallop it was going to be on our pocketbooks. Now, thanks to Tony Capaccio of Bloomberg, we know the official estimate of the projected cost to develop, produce and operate 100 B-21s for thirty years is a cool $203 billion. However, back when the Air Force were telling us we had no right to know exactly what we were paying for, they did release the most important fact of all: the major corporations – Pratt & Whitney, BAE Systems, Orbital ATK, and others – who would be the major subcontractors in the Northrop-led program. By absolutely no coincidence at all, these turned out to be in congressional districts and states represented by senior figures on important defense committees in the congress. This is known as “political engineering” in which defense programs are rendered politically invulnerable to cancellation or funding shortfalls thanks to the salting of key constituencies with rich contracts. Brazenly, the Air Force announced at the time it was naming the prime contractors on the bomber “in a sign of transparency to gain public trust.”  

The B-21: another Air Force diva that can’t deliver?

With all the problems these models are having how does the defense industry con nations like Germany, Japan, Australia, etc into spending this type of cash on a flying brick?

How and why?

This country needs the money more for our nation than we need another stealth bomber….but lobbyists with buckets of cash will make sure this type of waste continues.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”