By Tom Luongo
April 9, 2024
This week's brouhaha in Brussels saw the Foreign Ministers of NATO emerge from their holes in the ground looking for food now that things are finally warming up for Spring.
And they had a message for us: more for them and less for us. They were ready to steal the food from our mouths, our children from our homes, to give Ukraine the aid it needs to beat Russia in a war only they seem to want.
They would strangle the political process at home to make this so. They would betray their basic roles as diplomats, speaking with forked tongues, to confound the conditions for dialogue with Russia and end the fighting.
In fact, with all the war mongering going on you would have thought this was a convocation of military commanders, not diplomats. But that's where we are in this process.
The message of NATO's foreign policy is simple, "War first. Talk later." Facts on the ground don't matter. Budget deficits don't matter. Plunging public support for Ukraine doesn't matter. All that matters is what these people want.
And they want war. But at the same time, they won't admit that that is exactly what they are waging.
The doublespeak has gotten to the point where even Pinocchio is looking at outgoing General-Secretary Jens Stoltenberg going, "Dood. Your schnoze!"
Then again, Stoltenberg is a year past his 'use-by' date. He's even more a lame duck than French President Emmanuel Macron at this point. The problem for those who actually run NATO, they can't agree on who to replace him with... a British Neoconservative or a Dutch Neoliberal?
In the same week where the French and Russian Defense Ministers had a frank conversation about Ukraine, the attack in Moscow on civilians, and how quickly Russia will vaporize French troops sent into the fighting, we're treated to the complete abandonment of all diplomatic pretense.
And even then, that discussion was more of a diplomatic endeavor than anything coming out of Brussels, if Mark Wauck and Alex Mercouris are correct.
Mercouris, of course, has a lot more to say, but that's the long and the short of it. It was all a pathetic game, transparently so. The Russians were forced into this war, but now that they're in it they're in it to win. Mercouris sums it up:
The Russians are not under any pressure to negotiate. They are winning the war and they know they're winning the war. The West, if it wants to avoid a spectacular geopolitical disaster-which is what a defeat in Ukraine would be- in its own interests needs to talk to the Russians. But coming up with half baked proposals such as a return to Istanbul or a Frozen Conflict is going to get nowhere. It is only going to annoy the Russians even more. The logical and right thing to do is to ask the Russians what it is, exactly, in Ukraine that they want to achieve, and see whether it might be possible for the West to meet them halfway. I would have thought that is basic obvious diplomacy.
It's been so long here in the US where we've had a Secretary of State who wasn't hell bent on a war with Russia, Iran, or China (or all three consecutively and concurrently) we've forgotten what having diplomats looks like.
I mean think about it. Antony Blinken's sad dog-eye technique makes you wistful for the days of Condoleeza Rice's angry diversity hire routine.
The difference between then and now is Putin hadn't quite told NATO to "piss off."
Again, can anyone remember that as late as 2007 Vladimir Putin was invited to speak at the annual Munich Security Conference. Back then he was just as willing to tell the West what they needed to hear rather than wanted to hear as he is now, but at least we put up the pretense of listening to him.
Blinken is only competent in the role of anti-diplomat. And why he's worse than Rice or even *shudder* Hillary Clinton, is that he's not even consistent. One week looking for an off-ramp after the terror attack in Moscow. This week mouthing words about Ukraine joining NATO knowing that that's the road to a US war with Russia.
But, Mercouris and Wauck both believe this is some kind of bluff by Blinken. I'd like to believe they are correct. Nat. Sec. Adviser Jake Sullivan cracking a rib canceling his trip to Saudi Arabia may speak to that. I mean, there's a high probability of that when you "fall down the stairs" or whatever excuse he gave.
As is this morning's rumor that the US has told Iran they won't be upset if Iran hits Israel hard in retaliation over the attack on Iran's embassy in Damascus earlier this week. Israeli citizens seem to believe this rumor, looking for the exits, stocking up on toilet paper, etc.
Today we can see what's fundamentally wrong with NATO in this clearly over-produced shite with an extended steady cam shot that would make Stanley Kubrick green with envy... or just green.
With all respect to Macron's right hook, who else is producing this level of propaganda? Who is always driving this bus towards the edge of the cliff? Who is going to put more pressure on Speaker Mike Johnson to pass a Ukraine aid bill that he's held at bay from these vipers for nearly 6 months?
Exactly who you would expect if you still have three functional brain cells and a passing acquaintance with something known as 'history.'
The only good thing I have to say about David Cameron's political resurrection is that he's no Winston Churchill.
I don't know about you, but I get tired of writing and saying that NATO hasn't been fit for purpose since the end of the Cold War. If that's the case then why did they just get shiny new headquarters, new members, and every Western leader screaming for them to have more money?
We all know why. And that's the fundamental problem.
NATO is the entangling alliance that the Founders warned us about back in the 18th century. And it's high time we crafted a way out of the trap that membership in it represents. As a deterrent against future aggression NATO can be seen as a necessary thing. But, like all organizations facing the end of its lifespan, it had to find new ways to retain its relevance after we bled out the USSR with a deft combination of defense spending and $8 per barrel oil.
This is also why the Cold War never really ended. It just shed its skin and NATO along with it. The problem with most of the analysis about the current conflict is that we're all stuck (including myself at times) within the nation-state framework.
The US needs this. The UK needs that. Russia needs something else.
But that framework is inadequate to describe the everything that's going on unless you map the geographic unit to the dominant globalist faction within each region of the West. And they each have very different agendas and goals with respect to Ukraine and Russia.
I wrote about that last week, quoting this month's GGnG Newsletter. It bears repeating this week:
Ukraine became the battleground physically for this. To the EU, the US and the UK, through their influence in Poland and the Baltics, were used to foment this war. Bankrupting them {and Russia} through war forces them back to being subjugated sources of raw materials while exporting EU laws and rules to those places which have the privilege (from their perspective) of doing business with them.
From all three players' perspectives if Ukraine beat Russia, then they win. Putin is eventually deposed, Russia is humiliated, and the long-desired breakup of their land-based empire would commence. Europe gets their Great Reset. The UK gets to maintain control over the maritime empire, reclaiming NATO
control over the Black Sea, and forcing the Arab oil producers back in line. The US gets to leverage a fallen Russia to weaken China and stop the further integration of the BRICS into a competitor.
In short, the world would go back to the 1990's when guys like Bill Browder were running around buying up everything and the Russian oligarchs Putin beat would be restored to power. Fukuyama would finally be right.
But, as I said, the real goal of this war wasn't just getting Russia, they had to maneuver the US into a terminal state as well, through the costs of fighting a war we weren't capable of sustaining. And that was the bridge too far for US interests not beholden to the ghost of Trotsky and the tears of Bill Kristol.
NATO cannot and should not survive these stresses if its intended victims, Russia/China/Iran, fight even remotely competently.
And they are. They all understand that this is a race against a political and economic clock in the West that is quickly counting down to zero. All Russia has to do is keep grinding out territorial gains in Ukraine, Iran to not over-react to Israel's provocations, and China to ignore the yapping over tariffs and Taiwan.
And all the Americans who are tired of this have to do is keep the money spigot to NATO and Ukraine closed off as much as is politically possible.
So, this is why we're seeing the full court press from both the UK and EU to get the US re-focused on the task at hand in Ukraine. It's why everyone on Capitol Hill hates Speaker Mike Johnson and why the knives are out from all sides, including his own party.
Yeah, I'm lookin' at you Marjorie Taylor Greene....
Because the US is clearly looking for a way to extricate itself from this mess, even if all the puff adders on K Street want to do is pivot towards China.
The cost/benefit analysis for the US, especially in an election year, just doesn't add up. And there is zero real leverage Europe can apply to the US other than through their bought and paid-for politicos in D.C. for more money.
The heart simply isn't willing anymore. Why? For all the reasons I've been talking about for six years here, the memories of WWII are fading. The generations of Americans imprinted with the post-WWII Pax Americana lie are dying off (Boomers) or no longer care, if they ever did (Gen X).
The Millennials and 'Zoomers' aren't invested in this mythology. They know their heads are on the chopping block.
They can see that none of this is in their best interests. The US, as a nation at war with itself, will try one last time this fall to vote its way out of Europe before it gets ugly here. Listen again to Cameron's harangue carefully. There is an implicit threat not just in the language but the staging of it.
Make no mistake, folks. These people are the enemy of all that's good and decent in the world. We have plenty of snakes here in the US doing their bidding, selling us the old lies repackaged as new ones, and acting outside the bounds of the law. There's plenty of blame to spread around here.
But what's becoming obvious is that the era of extra-curricular US warfare is over. A lot of people refuse to look at the cover of the TPS report for fear of 'getting the memo.'
Sadly, most of them work at NATO, and we're not skimming fractions of pennies here.
Reprinted with permission from Gold Goats 'n Guns.