NATO has begun its death-spiral

Although the biggest news in our time is that NATO is now in its death-spiral, no one is saying it in the mainstream media. Therefore, I will indicate not only the fact, but also the reasons why it is occurring, and why the end of NATO will actually increase — instead of decrease — the security of all NATO-member nations.

First of all, I shall post excerpts from an article by Stephen Bryen, who retired from heading one of the world’s largest armaments manufacturers and has also served as U.S. Deputy Under Secretary of Defense, and as a staff director for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Despite having reached such high posts in the U.S. military-industrial complex, he has emerged from it as a person of high integrity, and whose predictive accuracy in his articles to the public has turned out to be extraordinarily high — which is very rare for someone of his background:

“Presidential candidate and Vice President Kamala Harris says she will not talk to Russian President Vladimir Putin without Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky.”

“Ukraine’s war, which is NATO’s war, is going badly. NATO’s future is in doubt.

Meanwhile Zelensky, who was just forced to cancel a forthcoming peace summit (officially postponed to a future time) because no one wanted to come, has made it clear he will not negotiate with Moscow under any circumstances.

Zelensky understands that any concession he might make to Russia would be fatal for him. As his army is beginning to disintegrate, Zelensky is relying on neo-Nazi elite brigades for his protection.”

“The Russians don’t have to reject the latest idea because, due to Zelensky, it is DOA (Dead on Arrival). Of course that won’t stop Europe and some in Washington pushing the proposal anyway, while shoveling more arms to Ukraine, hoping the Ukrainians can hold out until well after the US elections. Should Ukraine go belly up anytime soon, it would be chaos for the Democrats in the US and also would likely collapse the German government, perhaps even the shaky French regime.

Most experts don’t think that will occur. But most experts often are wrong.”

“Meanwhile, for their part, the Russians won’t accept a cease fire in place, since it offers them nothing.”

“There is little or no prospect that Russia’s demands will be met, neither by the current Ukrainian government nor by most NATO countries. For that reason, the Zelensky hard line, so long as it lasts, assures that Russia’s real goal will be to replace Ukraine’s government altogether with one favorable to Russia and willing to agree to Moscow’s claims.

If the Russians can pull it off, then NATO will have to retrench, something it should do anyway if the alliance is to retain any credibility. Unfortunately, despite a lot of bravado talk, the chance to revitalize NATO as a military alliance does not look promising.

There are profound reasons why NATO is floundering, despite appearances. The biggest reason of all is that NATO has been expanding without paying attention to its need to be a credible defensive alliance.”

“NATO today is about expansion, not defense. When it comes to defense, NATO is utterly reliant on the United States, and America’s commitment to send its army, air force and Navy to defend NATO expansion.

NATO expansion as a policy requires vast military commitments by America’s allies. That won’t occur.”

The reason it won’t occur is that the U.S. Government has been spending annually on ‘defense’ not only the approximately $900 billion per year that goes out from the ‘Defense’ Department, but also the approximately $600 billion that goes out annually from other federal Departments, such as Veterans Affairs, Homeland Security, Treasury, Energy, NASA, and the intelligence agencies. (This is done so as to hide from the public that the U.S. Government isn’t spending the mere 37% of the global military budget that the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute alleges — on the basis of counting only the ‘Defense’ Department’s expenditures — but slightly over 50% of the global military budget.)

There simply isn’t the capacity for the U.S. Government to be able to be spending much more than the 53% of all congressionally passed and Presidentially authorized annual spending that it currently does consume. Around half of that 53% gets paid to the U.S. firms such as Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Boeing, L3Harris, and Northrop Grumman, which make and sell to all of NATO and the rest of the U.S. empire the majority of the over $100 billion per year of the global sales in armaments. That has been what Russia is up against in Ukraine, and yet even with U.S.-and-allied armaments manufacturers having gone all-out ever since 2022 to outgun Russia on the battlefields of Ukraine, the armaments-shortages have been almost entirely on the U.S.-and-allied side. Consequently, if Ukraine becomes defeated by Russia, as is now widely expected, then that loss will be NATO’s loss as well.

The reason why this would be good for international security is that, as the major international poll that asked globally “Which country do you think is the greatest threat to peace in the world today?” found that “greatest threat” to be overwhelmingly the United States; and, so, if Biden, Harris, or Trump, will indeed go nuclear in order to prevent a Russian victory in Ukraine, there is little chance that America instead of Russia is going to be overwhelmingly blamed for it by whatever survivors there will be from it.

Ever since 25 July 1945, the U.S. Government has had as its #1 priority to fight Russia, but the evidence ever since 24 February 2022 is that this #1 goal will end in failure. There will be nothing to be gained by going nuclear in Ukraine. If the U.S. won’t go nuclear over Ukraine, then not only the Cold war, which the U.S. started on 25 July 1945, will end, but the hot parts of it also will, in the U.S. regime’s final and irreversible defeat.

Where Bryen said that “NATO today is about expansion, not defense,” he was — as inconspicuously as possible — acknowledging that NATO’s founding claim to be a “defensive” alliance, is nothing more than a lie after communism ended in Russia in 1991 — and then displayed its actually aggressive reality when it doubled its number of member-nations, right up to Russia’s very borders (despite having promised not to do it).

Both Russia and China have a shared anti-imperialist foreign policy; and after the fall of NATO, the sole remaining empire — America — will no longer be a threat to the entire globe. The result would be a much better world.

Author: Eric Zuesse

yogaesoteric
October 30, 2024