Burnt-Out

He may have led the western Drang nach Osten, yet in doing so, both the Ukraine and NATO’s credibility have most certainly gone south.

Preamble.

An article published yesterday explained the desperate situation in which the Ukraine now finds itself, with even the Secretary General of NATO forced to admit that all is not as the West told us it would be. Notwithstanding, the bluster that we have come to expect of the Atlantic Alliance continues unabated, this article looking not only at a hot war in Eastern Europe, but the hot air coming from the West.

A World on Fire.

We are all now familiar with the photos and videos that portray current hostilities, yet for all the information we have, this does not lessen the importance of this war either to the people involved or those who are affected by its consequences. Soldiers and civilians in-theater are suffering immeasurably as a result of the war whilst global consumers are feeling the heat of the backblast it is producing.

Fire Sale.

With there being such uncertainty both politically as well as in commodity markets, Wall Street and other markets are seeing not only a sell off, but also a slump in the values of their markets. This has not yet reached the levels seen in the middle of the pandemic, but as time goes by and the real effect of the measures taken by the West and relative countermeasures from Moscow begin to hit home, a decade of attempted persecution by the West are slowly boomeranging back.

Dumpster Fire.

The flames of war may be thousands of miles away from those who wished the worst on Russia, yet increasingly arcane statements are being made by western leaders to justify the chaos that now faces both their people and countries. The most ridiculous has come from Joe Biden who has baptized the karma affecting his country as the ‘Putin Tax’, a decade of western malfeasance apparently the fault of Putin and Putin alone.

This sets out the scenario for the West in general, yet with NATO having played such a huge role in the lead up to this conflict, we now need to examine how billions of dollars in aid have still not helped Kiev’s fortunes, a few statements from its dignitaries giving is an insight into what may lie ahead.

A Pile of Firewood.

In the first instance, we have to look at a number of hard and incontrovertible facts. The first is that NATO has been operating a Drang nach Osten since before Putin even came to power, yet in the case of the Ukraine, it has come to a grinding and most ignominious stop. The second is that for all of NATO’s past performances in the Middle East and elsewhere, threats and violence just don’t cut it. Russia is not a banana republic, and will not bend to the pressure that Brussels and Washington are attempting to apply. The third is that the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was based on the allegation that Saddam Hussein possessed WMDs which was known by the Pentagon to be false. Russia’s Special Operation in the Ukraine was launched in the full knowledge that WMDs were under development in the Ukraine, this presumption being proven by numerous documents that have been recovered over recent months. The fourth point is that no Ukrainian government since independence has been able to stay in the black, rampant corruption being the mainstay of political élites over the last three decades. The final point is that the Ukraine pre-2014 was a patchwork of diverse peoples and cultures cooped together within politically and historically convenient borders, yet not at all convenient to those who lived there.

Getting Burnt.

In spite of this blatantly obvious reasoning, until a few weeks ago, the western world was waiting with bated breath for the Ghost of Kiev to do his thing, Russia suffering an embarrassing defeat against a backdrop of NATO support. The last month has proven that the Ukraine is going nowhere whilst its eastern borders creep westwards, and the aid, hope and words of NATO add up to nothing. Notwithstanding this, Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO Secretary General recently stated that:

‘peace in Ukraine is possible, but the question is what territories she herself is ready to give up for this. Therefore, the Alliance helps Kyiv so that it “pays the lowest price.”’

He also added that:

‘Peace in Ukraine is possible. The question is what will be its price. How much territory, freedom and democracy we are willing to pay for this world. NATO intends to help Ukraine to give it the strongest position at the negotiating table with Russia, which should end the hostilities.’

Put simply, in the space of a month, a NATO puppet has gone from center stage to at best a sideshow, and a comedian president is following a joke of an agenda that simply isn’t funny. The Ukraine is today facing an imminent final curtain and NATO must now attempt to backtrack previous statements whilst still pumping money into a bottomless pit of a country. It has been clear from the first day that this conflict that there would only be one winner, yet with NATO having bound itself so tightly to Zelenskiy and Kiev, as the Ukrainian ship begins to sink, it drags the Atlantic Alliance with it, not that it was particularly buoyant even before this war began.

Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire.

As much as the previous statements said of the current situation, other statements prove that NATO is telling outright lies. Stoltenberg, attempting to keep Finland sweet in its efforts to become a member state made a long statement at the Kultaranta talks, yet some parts of this monologue require more investigation. He stated that:

‘Putin’s ambitions go beyond Ukraine.
The so-called ‘security treaties’ he presented to NATO and the United States last December made demands not only on Ukraine, but also on NATO to refrain from any further enlargement, and remove NATO troops and infrastructure from countries that joined the Alliance after 1997, introducing some sort of first class and second class members of NATO.’

The fact that NATO has been conducting a decades-long process not unlike Operation Barbarossa seems to have flown under his radar, yet Russia was merely asking that NATO reduce its footprint to that of 1997 rather than asking Brussels to keep its ‘not one inch eastwards’ promise made to Gorbachev all those years ago. That is not the worst of it however, and not by a very large degree. Stoltenberg also made the incredulous statement that:

‘NATO is not part of the war.’

Quite how the hell anyone could say that with a straight face truly beggars belief, yet the fact that such a preposterous statement could be taken seriously on the world stage truly proves that the lunatics are running the asylum.

Firing Blanks.

A final statement by NATO Deputy Secretary General Mircea Geoană read (of the current conflict) that:

‘something which is much deeper and much more important: it galvanised our democratic society.’

Whilst this is not an outright lie a là Stoltenberg, it cannot be forgotten that most westerners cannot find the Ukraine on a map and even fewer really give a damn about either the country or the people. What is glaringly obvious however is that whilst NATO might think that the West is galvanized in its support of Kiev, the Ukraine is today just a rusty old bucket, very happy to be filled with money and arms, yet as fast as anyone tries filling it, everything just leaks away.

Summary.

Ten years of constant belligerence from NATO are now suddenly changing, the poster boy of yesterday turning into the wayward child of today. Just like an idiot who has gambled his everything on a three-legged horse, the Atlantic Alliance is now having to change its tune to fit new circumstances that simply don’t fit in with what went before.

For all the bluster of it being an invincible alliance, not only has a proxy war turned sour for Kiev, things are just as bad for Brussels. A western engineered, supplied and administered conflict has been trounced by a very adept Russia, a huge proportion of the arms NATO members possessed have been lost in the face of Russia only using a fraction of its resources. The hot air coming from Stoltenberg regarding his failed show in the Ukraine may put a lot of egg on his face, yet a hot war between Russia and NATO really would put a Bear amongst the warhawk pigeons fluttering around NATO headquarters in Brussels…