Tag: NATO

NATO Moves East

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has decided to open an office in Japan to help deal with the growing threat from China and other future problems.

NATO is planning to open a liaison office in Japan next year, the alliance’s first in Asia, Nikkei Asia reported Wednesday.

In recent years, NATO has turned its gaze toward the Asia Pacific region and named China a “systemic challenge” in its 2022 Strategic Concept. As part of its strategy against China, the alliance is deepening cooperation with countries in the region.

According to Nikkei, the purpose of the liaison office in Japan is to “allow the military alliance to conduct periodic consultations with Japan and key partners in the region, such as South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand as China emerges as a new challenge, alongside its traditional focus on Russia.”

The report said NATO and Japan will take more steps to increase cooperation by signing an agreement known as an Individually Tailored Partnership Programme ahead of the NATO summit that will be held in Vilnius, Lithuania, in June. Japan also plans to open an independent mission to NATO, separate from the Embassy in Belgium.

In response to the news, China warned of NATO’s plans to expand into Asia. “Asia is an anchor for peace and stability and a promising land for cooperation and development, not a wrestling ground for geopolitical competition,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning.

“NATO’s continued eastward foray into the Asia Pacific and interference in regional affairs will inevitably undermine regional peace and stability and stoke camp confrontation. This calls for high vigilance among regional countries,” she added.

(antiwar.com)

With the move into Asia the organization should consider re-naming the group to reflect its expansion into the rest of the world outside Europe…..something that will reflect its growing power…..something like maybe the United Nations…..oh wait that one is already taken…..think on.

Yep I do not think the US should encourage this move…..we already have a strong presence in Asia thanks to the mash-up in the South China Sea and the so-called threat to Taiwan.

Yet another way to siphon off taxpayer dollars….just what our budget needs these days.

Whole NATO prepares to expand apparently so does Russia.

Russia will “develop” its military installations in Central Asian ally Kyrgyzstan, the Kremlin said Monday, following talks between the two countries’ leaders in Moscow.

“The heads of state emphasized the importance of strengthening the Kyrgyz Republic’s armed forces and developing Russian military facilities on its territory,” the Kremlin said in a statement.

Kyrgyzstan, a majority-Muslim country of nearly seven million people, hosts a Russian military base made up of an airfield, a naval installation on Lake Issyk-Kul and several other sites.

Russia and Kyrgyzstan, an ex-Soviet republic, are linked through a Moscow-led military alliance, the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO).

According to the statement released by the Kremlin, the two countries also expect to “deepen military and technical cooperation” as well as their economic and cultural relations in order to “reach a new level of integration.”

(thedefensepost.com)

Just when does this insanity end?  (That is rhetorical)

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

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The Day After

I would like to state for all to read….I by no means think that Putin is anything other than a power mad prick and that Ukraine has every right to defend itself from invasion….I make this statement because according to several commenters seem to think that I may have sympathies for Putin and Russia….plus maybe now the questions asked will be answered and the inevitable support for Ukraine can be taken off the table….but we will see.

This post poses the question…..what will happen if and when a peace agreement is settled between Ukraine and Russia? (I know I know Putin is a prick….long live Zelensky….blah…blah….blah)

What does the situation hold when it is declared over?

Allies do not agree on what comes next….

In nearly a year of war in Ukraine, NATO allies have tried to present a united front.

“It is in our security interest to support Ukraine,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told NPR last month at the organization’s headquarters in Brussels. “If you look across the alliance, there’s a strong, continued support on both sides of the Atlantic.”

That’s true. There are also some big divisions. The most obvious is disagreement over what kind of weapons to send Ukraine. But there are also differences over how the conflict should end and what role — if any — Russia should play in a post-war Europe.

In December, French President Emmanuel Macron made waves when he said NATO would eventually have to address Russia’s security concerns.

“How do we protect our allies and member states?” Macron said in an interview on French TV. “By giving guarantees for its own security to Russia the day it returns to the table.“

For NATO allies in Eastern Europe, the notion of making security pledges to a nation that has relentlessly shelled Ukrainian cities is stomach-churning. It’s also personal. They spent decades under Soviet domination.

“This kind of rhetoric coming from the Western leaders plays into the Kremlin’s narrative,” says Linas Kojala, who runs the Eastern Europe Studies Centre, a Lithuanian think tank.

https://www.npr.org/2023/02/23/1158152004/ukraine-russia-war-nato-europe

This situation brings me back to my question from day one….What does the US hope to get for its massive and blind support for Ukraine?  I believe Ukraine had that since 2014.

There is so much more to this conflict that anyone is willing to ask about for their views are given them by the MSM that they refuse to look any further.

As I have stated cracks in the situation are starting to form….

Over one year since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, there are growing differences between Washington and Kyiv on how to move forward in the conflict,POLITICO reported Sunday.

One issue is over Bakhmut, the eastern Ukrainian city where Russian and Ukrainian forces have been locked in battle for over eight months. Biden administration officials think Ukraine has expended too many resources defending Bakhmut and worry it will impact their ability to launch a counteroffensive this spring, but officials in Kyiv have decided to keep fighting for the city.

Another point of contention is over Crimea as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky insists they will retake the peninsula, which has been under Russian control since 2014 and is populated by people who are happy to be part of the Russian Federation.

US-Ukraine Unity Is Cracking Apart

Let us say the war ends….will Ukraine return to its former glory?  Before you answer think about other US involved wars…Haiti, Lebanon, Afghanistan and Iraq….have any of them been improved by our involvement?

America’s twenty-year involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrated that nation building is often more expensive, prone to failure, and politically unpopular than expected at the outset. The State Department’s Afghan Stabilization Assistance Review acknowledged the difficulties nation building poses and found that there was no appetite in the American public for such ventures in the future. Yet today, less than two years after the Afghan withdrawal, the United States and its European allies are faced with a nation building exercise more expensive and at least as extensive as those of the past two decades.

NATO’s pursuit of the long war risks pushing Ukraine past a tipping point beyond which it’s economy may never recover. Revitalization of the Ukrainian economy would even have been difficult had the war ended in 2022. Continuation of the fighting and the introduction of more destructive and lethal Western arms risks making Ukraine a permanent economic vassal state of the United States and the EU.

Even the hawkish Rand Corporation in their review of the costs and benefits of the long war acknowledged the tradeoff between continued fighting and the additional cost and difficulty to revitalize the Ukrainian economy post-war.

Existing estimates of reconstruction costs are enormous. The National Recovery Plan that Ukraine’s National Recovery Council put forth in July 2022 carried a $750 billion price tag. In January 2023, Ukraine President Zelensky put the cost to rebuild Ukraine at $1 trillion. These estimates are several times that of the $150 billion in all forms of aid that the West has extended to date. They also exceed by a factor of five or more the size of the post-World War II Marshall Plan, $150-160 billion in today’s dollars, and the $145 billion that the U.S. government spent on rebuilding efforts in Afghanistan.

What if the West Can’t Put Ukraine Back Together?

Maybe Einstein was on to something.

And do you presume we will field most of the cost?

Did the US and its handlers really just make an addict to US funds?

From the time Ukraine declared independence on August 24, 1991, until the Maidan coup of February 2014, Ukraine was essentially a binational kleptocracy that used its position as a buffer state, particularly in its role as a transit hub for Russian natural gas to Europe, to the advantage of its kleptocratic elite—a coterie of deeply compromised politicians and former Soviet-era functionaries-turned-oligarchs

The tension between the Russian East and Galician West came to a head during the Maidan protests when then-president Viktor Yanukovych, a politician from eastern Ukraine, sought to leverage Ukraine’s unique geographic position during the country’s E.U. accession bid—a bid against which Russia, with long and deep economic ties to Ukraine, furiously objected.

Ukraine’s Endgame

Maybe that answers my original question of oh so many months….what will the return on investment for the US?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

So Much We Do Not Know

That is my thought on the Ukraine/Russia mash-up…..why?  That is an easy answer and it comes from the MSM…..

For instance….Take a look at the newest ‘aid’ package from the US….

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Thursday that the US will send about $10 billion in additional economic assistance to Ukraine in the coming months.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine last year, the US has given Kyiv at least $13 billion in budgetary aid, economic assistance that goes directly to the Ukrainian government to fund government services, pensions, and healthcare.

“Our economic assistance is making Ukraine’s resistance possible by supporting the home front: funding critical public services and helping keep the government running,” Yellen said in India ahead of a meeting of G20 finance ministers.

“In the coming months, we expect to provide around $10 billion in additional economic support for Ukraine,” she said.

So far, the US has approved $113 billion in spending on the war, which includes military aid, training, funds for the Pentagon to replenish stockpiles and pay for troop deployments, and economic a

(antiwar.com)

Great deal….we cannot afford to fund our country but we have cash for some other nation.  Why is that?

According to the mainstream Western narrative, Vladimir Putin is an insatiable, Hitler-like expansionist who invaded Ukraine in an unprovoked land grab.

That is a convenient answer that will keep most of the public in the dark about why.

As I have asked many times before….why are there no answers to so many question?

The first question is the same one I have asked many many times….what does the US expect to be the return on our massive investment in the country?

This one never gets a good answer….usually it is some emotional response about the desire of Putin or his mental grasp on reality.

My next question is …..if the Ukrainian military is receiving advanced training from NATO and being rewarded with all this advanced weaponry like artillery, tanks, etc and if the Russian military is in disarray and badly trained….why is the conflict still raging? I mean the MSM gives us the glowing reports on the accomplishments of the Ukrainians….why is there not more progress beyond a basic stalemate?

Here is the situation…..

INTERACTIVE - WHO CONTROLS WHAT IN UKRAINE 219

All aid that Ukraine has received and yet they cannot re-take a small mining town of Bakhmut…..even Zelensky has said they may leave it for the Russians…..

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that Ukraine would continue to defend the eastern Donetsk city of Bakmut but “not at any price,” signaling that Ukrainian forces might be considering a withdrawal.

“Yes, it is not a particularly big town. In fact, like many others in Donbas, (it’s been) devastated by the Russians. It is important for us to defend it, but not at any price and not for everyone to die,” Zelensky said in an interview published Sunday, according to Reuters.

Bakhmut’s pre-war population was about 70,000, but now Ukrainian officials estimate only about 5,000 people live in the city. Russian and Ukrainian forces have been locked in fighting over Bakhmut for months, and Ukraine has taken heavy casualties defending the area.

Ukrainian officials still maintain that they want to recapture all the territory Russia controls, including Crimea. Oleksiy Danilov, the head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, said over the weekend that the war won’t be over until “our tanks will be parked on Moscow’s Red Square.”

(antiwar.com)

Not much change in the situation on the ground….why is that?

Any answers for my questions?

I am amazed just how deep the indifference of the American public actually goes.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

NATO In Asia?

I read this and immediately asked….”WTF?”

My question is why?

Stoltenberg will meet South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol during the four-day trip that begins in Seoul on Sunday, Yonhap News Agency reported, citing a presidential official. He will also meet Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Tokyo.

As well as Yoon, the Nato secretary general is expected to meet South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin and other senior officials while in Seoul. The Yonhap report said US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin would also visit South Korea next week.

Stoltenberg’s trip comes after the unprecedented attendance of the South Korean and Japanese leaders at a Nato summit in Madrid in June, when the military alliance labelled China as a “systemic challenge to Euro-Atlantic security” in a key strategy document.

Yoon and Kishida also met US President Joe Biden for a trilateral summit on the sidelines of the Madrid talks, the first time leaders of the three nations had met since 2017.

Both South Korea and Japan have sought to step up ties with Nato amid nuclear and missile threats from North Korea and growing tensions with China.

Choo Jae-woo, a professor of Chinese studies at Kyung Hee University in Seoul, said that during the trip Stoltenberg would likely discuss the countries’ goals in their Indo-Pacific strategy, with the conversation focusing largely on China.

He expected the talks to be “an icebreaker” that could see Stoltenberg planning for future dialogue on security and building communication channels with the two countries.

https://www.msn.com/en-xl/news/other/as-nato-chief-visits-south-korea-and-japan-china-will-be-high-on-agenda/ar-AA16S38S

If NATO is going to be the main international engine for war should it not be re-named something more appropriate?

Does the expansion into Asia violate something in the chart?

Let me see….the US pours billions into Asia to guard against North Korea and China should not these countries ban together and work on a strategy other than “let the US do it’?

When at what point does the American public realize just how stretched our forces and resources have become….after all most of our energy is going to Ukraine and our desire to confront Russia.

The words in Article 5 of the Charter reads thusly…..

The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.

An attack on a European or North America…..now what part of Asia falls in either of those categories?

Or is this just talk to hedge the vote to keep the cash rolling in for the defense industry and the Pentagon?

When will we ever learn?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

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”

Oh Crap! Article 5!

First what the Hell is Article 5?

Article 5 is the cornerstone of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)  and states that an attack on one member of NATO is an attack on all of its members.

Now that missile that hit inside Poland.

Poland said early Wednesday that a Russian-made missile fell in the country’s east, killing two people, though U.S. President Joe Biden said it was “unlikely” it was fired from Russia.

The blast, which Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy decried as “a very significant escalation,” prompted Biden to call an emergency meeting of G-7 and NATO leaders. A deliberate, hostile attack on NATO member Poland could trigger a collective military response by the alliance.

(apnews.com)

Now my questions are…..

Who is provoking who?

Is this truly an escalation by Russia?  Trying to draw NATO into this conflict.

It is a Russian made missile then was it fired by some other entity to draw NATO into the conflict?

Shortly after the accusations Biden made a statement…..

President Biden told reporters in Indonesia on Wednesday that it’s “unlikely” the missile that hit a village in Poland Tuesday near the Ukrainian border was fired by Russia and that “preliminary” information indicates otherwise.

“There is preliminary information that contests that,” Biden said when asked by reporters if the missile was fired by Russia. “I don’t want to say until we completely investigate. It’s unlikely in the minds of the trajectory that it was fired from Russia.”

After Biden’s comments, three US Officials told The Associated Press that “preliminary assessments” suggest the missile that hit Poland was fired by Ukrainian forces and was meant to intercept a Russian missile.

Biden is in Indonesia for the G20 summit and held an emergency meeting of NATO and G7 leaders over the news that a missile fell in Poland, killing two people. He said that the allies agreed to find out exactly what happened and make a decision together from there.

“Then we’re going to collectively determine our next step as we investigate and proceed. There was total unanimity among folks at the table,” Biden said.

Over in Poland, President Andrzej Duda told reporters that there’s no clear evidence of who fired the missile. “We do not for the moment have unequivocal evidence of who fired the missile. An investigation is ongoing,” he said.

Poland is considering holding consultations with NATO members under Article 4 of the alliance’s treaty. NATO’s Article 4 states: “The parties will consult together whenever any of them have the opinion that the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any party is threatened.”

Since Poland is a NATO member, there has been concern that the country may ask to invoke Article 5, which states that “an armed attack on any party is an attack on them all.” But so far, there is no sign that Poland is looking to escalate the situation, and there’s no evidence that Russia launched the missile.

When news of the missile landing in Poland first broke, a US official told The Associated Press that Russian missiles hit Polish territory. But when asked about the situation, the Pentagon said it could not corroborate the claim, and Russia issued a strong denial.

The lack of evidence has not stopped Ukrainian officials from accusing Russia of hitting Poland. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on Twitter that he spoke with Duda and expressed “condolences over the death of Polish citizens from Russian missile terror.”

(antiwar.com)

I will wait to see if the news actually reflects the facts as they are known….or will the warmongers get their way?

Which question is the more accurate?

Final thought…..US is planning yet another $37 billion in aid to Ukraine.

The White House on Tuesday asked Congress to approve $37.7 billion in new aid for Ukraine, which would bring total US spending on the war to about $105 billion.

According to The Hill, the request includes $21.7 billion in military aid for Ukraine and to replenish US military stockpiles that have been sent to the country.

A total of $14.5 billion in budgetary aid to directly fund the Ukrainian government is included, as Kyiv is expecting the US and its allies to pay its budget deficit for 2023.

The request also includes $626 million for the US Strategic Oil Reserve and for nuclear safety for Ukraine and $900 million for healthcare and other services for Ukrainians.

It’s possible Congress will increase the White House requests as media reports said lawmakers in both parties were looking to pass a Ukraine aid bill of about $50 billion before January.

(antiwar.com)

I know no on cares how much we spend on Ukraine but let children get a free lunch and all Hell breaks lose.

How disgusting is that?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Practice Makes Perfect

All this talk about a nuke holocaust has the US doing what it does best….preparing for an all out use of nukes.

NATO military alliance will hold a training exercise, known as Steadfast Noon, in which US B-52 bombers and F-16 fighters will simulate dropping atomic bombs over Europe amid a deepening nuclear standoff with Russia.

The training exercise comes just ten days after US President Joe Biden warned of a nuclear “apocalypse,” saying the risk of nuclear war is the greatest since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

“This is the exercise that practices NATO’s nuclear strike mission with dual-capable aircraft and the B61 tactical nuclear bombs the US deploys in Europe,” wrote Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists.

The aircraft will rehearse dropping B61 “tactical” thermonuclear bombs, each of which is up to 20 times more powerful than the weapon that destroyed Hiroshima in World War II, killing as many as 126,000 civilians.

While nuclear training exercises are usually presented as routine, nonthreatening, and not targeting any specific country, this year NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg made clear that the exercise is intended as a threat to Russia.

In a speech that mentioned Russia five times, Stoltenberg announced, “Next week, NATO will hold its long-planned deterrence exercise, Steadfast Noon.” He added, “Russia knows that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”

As of 2019, the United States had 150 “tactical” nuclear warheads stationed throughout Europe as part of the NATO nuclear arsenal, including in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/10/17/lkbs-o17.html

This news should worry about this exercise….after all the US is the ONLY country to actually use a nuke on a civilian population….it is a precedent.

But wait!

There is more that concern us mere peasants….

A commander said, “this is not a training deployment, this is a combat deployment”

The White House has deployed thousands of American soldiers just miles from Ukraine to prepare for war, according to CBS News. Officers speaking with the outlet revealed they were there for combat against Russia.

Brigadier General John Lubas confirmed nearly 5,000 troops from the 101st Airborne recently joined the 100,000 American soldiers already deployed to Europe. Lubas described his troops as being on “full deployment,” and they are preparing to fight Russian soldiers in Ukraine. “This is not a training deployment, this is a combat deployment for us. We understand we need to be ready to fight tonight,” he said.

Colonel Edwin Matthaidess said his forces have been “closely watching” the Russian soldiers, “building objectives to practice against” and conducting war games that “replicate exactly what’s going on” in Ukraine.

CBS News reported, “[Russia’s] goal is to cut off all Ukrainian access to the sea, leaving the country and its military forces landlocked.” CBS News did not provide a source for that assertion. The Kremlin has publicly said its war goal is limited to eastern Ukraine.

Lubas declared the division was “ready to defend every inch of NATO soil.” However, Moscow has never threatened to invade a NATO country. Ukraine is not a NATO member. When President Zelensky said Ukraine should be allowed into the North Atlantic alliance last month, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg rejected Kiev’s proposal.

(antiwar.com)

All this sounds like someone itching for a fight and will eventually find a reason to put practice into action.

Please people PAY ATTENTION!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Ukraine And NATO

Ukraine was barred from entry into NATO until it cleaned up its act and work on clean out corruption and extend democracy…..now since Russia’s ill-fated invasion of Ukraine the world including NATO are considering Ukraine for membership. But why?

Zelensky has tried to play Europe to rush through their membership….but sadly it is not falling on supportive ears…..

On September 30, in the tailwind of Russia’s announcement that Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia would be annexed by Russia, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky issued a renewed plea for Ukrainian membership in NATO. 

The Ukrainian president made his case for membership by pointing out that “de facto, we have already made our way to NATO.” With that statement, he lifted up Russia’s claim that it is “now in a direct war with the U.S.” or, as Putin said on September 21, that Russia is fighting “the entire Western military machine.”

In other words, Zelensky’s request has further fed into Russian fears that Ukraine has already become a Western vassal. For Ukraine and its allies, it also highlighted, once again, that Kyiv is not a member of NATO. And, judging by the muted response from NATO leaders, that’s not going to change anytime soon.

Take NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who repeated that the door is open to all European countries before slamming the door shut again by saying that “our focus now is on providing immediate support to Ukraine to help Ukraine defend itself against Russia’s brutal invasion.”

If that wasn’t enough, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan then pretty much locked the door, saying Ukraine’s application “should be taken up at a different time.”

This is a reminder to the people of Ukraine — the people who are directly suffering the horrors of this war — that the U.S. and its NATO allies are more than happy to send weapons to Ukrainian soldiers but remain unwilling to send their own men and women to fight.

Biden has repeatedly insisted that the U.S. “will not fight the third world war in Ukraine,” hence the  immediate reason NATO won’t entertain Zelensky’s entreaties: Article 5 could be triggered immediately in the face of continued Russian aggression against the defenses, infrastructure, and populace in Ukraine.

Zelensky’s NATO bid falls flat

Of course Russia takes exception to the possibility of a Ukraine membership….

A Russian Security Council official said Thursday that Ukraine joining NATO would guarantee World War III when commenting on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s recent attempt to join the alliance.

After Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered a speech on annexing Ukrainian territory on September 30, Zelensky submitted a “fast-track” application to join NATO, which was quickly shot down.

Alexander Venediktov, the deputy secretary of Russia’s Security Council, said that Zelensky’s application was a propaganda move. “Kyiv is well aware that such a step would mean a guaranteed escalation to World War Three,” he said.

Venediktov said that the US and its allies also recognize that Ukraine can’t join NATO without sparking a world war. “The suicidal nature of such a step is understood by NATO members themselves,” he said.

During the lead-up to Russia’s February 24 invasion, Putin was seeking a guarantee from the US that Ukraine won’t ever join NATO. Even though President Biden made clear at the time that Ukraine wouldn’t be joining the alliance anytime in the foreseeable future, he refused to make the promise.

Back in March, when seemingly discussing the period before the war, Zelensky said he asked for a straight answer about whether or not Ukraine would become a NATO member. He was told no, but that “publicly,” the door would remain open.

“I requested them personally to say directly that we are going to accept you into NATO in a year or two or five, just say it directly and clearly, or just say no,” he told CNN. “And the response was very clear, you’re not going to be a NATO member, but publicly, the doors will remain open.”

While NATO has no plans to accept Ukraine as a full member, Politico reported Wednesday that the alliance it is working on a 10-year plan to rebuild the country’s military and arms industry. The idea would be to focus on shifting the country from using Soviet equipment to primarily using NATO weapons, making it a de facto NATO member.

(antiwar.com)

The world should not be held up to blackmail…and that is exactly what Zelensky is doing regardless of how he puts lipstick on the request….it is a bad idea.   Period!

What to do, what to do?

The GOP may do something that I can agree with……

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) suggested on Tuesday that major Ukraine aid may be more difficult to pass if the House is controlled by Republicans after the upcoming mid-term elections.

“I think people are gonna be sitting in a recession and they’re not going to write a blank check to Ukraine. They just won’t do it. … It’s not a free blank check,” McCarthy told Punchbowl News.

While spending billions on the war in Ukraine still has strong bipartisan support, 57 House Republicans voted against the $40 billion Ukraine aid bill that was passed in May.

McCarthy and other Republican leaders are still in favor of supporting Ukraine, but more GOP members are said to be questioning the policy. So far, the US has authorized over $67 billion to spend on the war, more than Russia’s entire military budget for 2021.

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, downplayed McCarthy’s comments and said he believes the GOP concerns are more over the lack of oversight.

There still is virtually no oversight for the tens of billions of dollars that have been sent to Ukraine, which covers not only military aid but also direct funding of the Ukrainian government.

(antiwar.com)

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Zelensky’s Great Expectation

My regulars know that I am not a fan of all the funds and stuff we are pouring into Ukraine….I believe that this is just a funnel for the corruptible…..and we continue to feed that machine….just as we have done with other countries that we are saving from anarchy…..

The newest report coming out of Ukraine is that they are basically demanding the West (meaning the US) must guarantee their security…..

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday welcomed a proposal drawn up by senior Ukrainian officials and a former NATO chief that outlined a plan for security guarantees Kyiv would seek from Western countries.

The proposal emphasizes Ukraine’s desire to become a NATO member and says that until Kyiv joins the Western military alliance, it needs security guarantees from other countries.

The document says that the “strongest security guarantee for Ukraine lies in its capability to defend itself.” It says building up a sufficient defensive force requires “a multi-decade effort of sustained investment in Ukraine’s defense industrial base, scalable weapons transfers and intelligence support from allies, intensive training missions and joint exercises under the European Union and NATO flags.”

The security guarantees Ukraine seeks from other countries is a commitment for them to support Ukraine’s ability to create this force to deter future attacks through military aid, funding of reconstruction, training, intelligence sharing, and joint exercises.

According to the document, the countries Ukraine wants security guarantees from include but are not limited to “the US, UK, Canada, Poland, Italy, Germany, France, Australia, Turkey, and Nordic, Baltic, and Central European countries.”

As part of this arrangement, Ukraine seeks a “massive training and joint maneuver program of Ukrainian forces and partners on Ukrainian territory with international trainers and advisors.”

Zelensky on Wednesday welcomed the plan, which was drawn up with the help of Anders Fogh Rasmussen, a former NATO secretary-general. Zelensky said that the report “should become the basis of the future security compact.”

(antiwar.com)

Join NATO?

Is that not the major reason that Russia invaded?

This is nothing more than a demand for an open-ended deal to continue the funneling dollars and bombs into Ukraine indefinitely.

And this will happen come 2023 and the spineless creeps we have in our Houses of Congress.

Just another incident of the US saving ‘democracy’….like Iraq and Afghanistan to name the most recent failures.

Open you damn eyes!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Who Pays?

The US Congress has voted overwhelmingly to allow Sweden and Finland into NATO…..a bad idea from my point of view…..since the 1990s the US and NATO have been poking Russia in th eye at almost every turn…..and then Ukraine happened.

Now the finger poking begins again….and how will that end? Better question is if Russia retaliates against Europe who pays?

An excellent question and with the US domination of the arms industry….who do you think will benefit the most?

If Europe wants to flex its underused muscle….what will be the outcome?

After Russia attacked Ukraine, European governments claimed to be serious about defense. However, so far few have acted on their latest promises. The continent’s continued reliance on America is evident from European proposals for military escalation — which could only be pursued by Washington. The Biden administration should insist on an alliance rebalance.

For more than seven decades, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has stood for North America and The Others. It was not supposed to be this way. Warned Dwight D. Eisenhower, NATO’s first supreme commander: “We cannot be a modern Rome guarding the far frontiers with our legions if for no other reason than that these are not, politically, our frontiers. What we must do is to assist these people [to] regain their confidence and get on their own military feet.”

However, even after recovering economically from World War II, European governments preferred to invest in their welfare states rather than their militaries. American policymakers preferred to dominate the continent’s decision-making rather than limit the U.S. public’s military liability. As a result, the U.S. consciously acted as a modern Rome. Still, Washington wanted the Europeans to do more. Alas, America’s clients provided promises rather than performance, reducing U.S. officials to begging.

A decade ago, soon-to-retire Defense Secretary Robert Gates criticized Europe’s lackadaisical military efforts: “I’ve worried openly about NATO turning into a two-tiered alliance: Between members who specialize in ‘soft’ humanitarian, development, peacekeeping, and talking tasks, and those conducting the ‘hard’ combat missions. Between those willing and able to pay the price and bear the burdens of alliance commitments, and those who enjoy the benefits of NATO membership — be they security guarantees or headquarters billets — but don’t want to share the risks and the costs. This is no longer a hypothetical worry. We are there today. And it is unacceptable.”

So if Europe wants to escalate against Russia who foots the bill?

If push comes to shove in Europe the US will be on the hook with either troops, money, or weapons…..or all three.

An unacceptable situation that will be reality for the M-IC will always gets it’s way….it is why lobbyists throw money at Congress.

Time for a re-set.  NATO should have ended wit the fall of the Soviet Union.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”