NATO is like hitler...

nazis nazis

When Russia’s Vladimir Putin demanded that the U.S. rule out Ukraine as a future member of the NATO alliance, the U.S. archly replied: NATO has an open-door policy. Any nation, including Ukraine, may apply for membership and be admitted. We’re not changing that.

In the Bucharest declaration of 2008, NATO had put Ukraine and Georgia, ever farther east in the Caucasus, on a path to membership in NATO and coverage under Article 5 of the treaty, which declares that an attack on any one member is an attack on all.

Unable to get a satisfactory answer to his demand, Putin invaded and settled the issue. Neither Ukraine nor Georgia will become members of NATO. Russia resolved that it would go to war to prevent that from happening, just as it did on Thursday.

Putin did exactly what he warned us he would do.

Whatever the character of the Russian president, now being hotly debated here in the USA, he has established his credibility. When Putin warns he will do something, he follows through.

Days into this Russia-Ukraine war, potentially the worst in Europe since 1945, two questions need to be answered: How did we get here? And where do we go from here?

How did we get to a place where Russia—believing its back is against a wall and the United States, by moving NATO ever closer to Russia’s borders, put it there—reached a point where it chose war with Ukraine rather than accept the fate and future it believed the West had in store for Mother Russia?

Consider: Between 1989 and 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev let the Berlin Wall be pulled down, Germany be reunited, and all the “captive nations” of Eastern Europe go free.

Having collapsed the Soviet empire, Gorbachev allowed the Soviet Union to dissolve itself into 15 independent nations. Communism was allowed to expire as the ruling ideology of Russia, the land where Leninism and Bolshevism first took root in 1917.

Gorbachev called off the Cold War in Europe by removing all of the causes on Moscow’s side of the historic divide.

Putin, a former KGB colonel, came to power in 1999 after the disastrous, decade-long rule of Boris Yeltsin, who ran Russia into the ground.

In that year, 1999, Putin watched as America conducted a 78-day bombing campaign on Serbia, the Balkan nation that had historically been a protectorate of Mother Russia.

That same year, three former Warsaw Pact nations—the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland—were brought into NATO.

The question was fairly asked: Against whom were these countries to be protected by U.S. arms and the NATO alliance?

The question seemed to be answered fully in 2004, when Slovenia, Slovakia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Romania, and Bulgaria were admitted into NATO, a grouping that included three former republics of the USSR itself, as well as three more former Warsaw Pact nations.

Then, in 2008, came the Bucharest declaration that put Georgia and Ukraine, both bordering Russia, on a path to NATO membership.

Georgia, that same year, attacked its seceded province of South Ossetia, where Russian troops were acting as peacekeepers, killing some.

This triggered a Putin counterattack through the Roki Tunnel in North Ossetia that liberated South Ossetia and moved all the way to Gori in Georgia, the birthplace of Stalin. George W. Bush, who had pledged “to end tyranny in our world,” did nothing. After briefly occupying part of Georgia, the Russians departed but stayed as protectors of the South Ossetians.

The U.S. establishment has declared this to have been a Russian war of aggression, but an E.U. investigation blamed Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili for starting the war.

In 2014, a democratically elected pro-Russian president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, was overthrown in Kyiv and replaced by a pro-Western regime. Rather than lose Sevastopol, Russia’s historic naval base in Crimea, Putin seized the peninsula and declared it Russian territory.

Teddy Roosevelt stole Panama with similar remorse.

Which brings us to today. Whatever we may think of Putin, he is no Stalin. He has not murdered millions or created a gulag archipelago. Nor is he “irrational,” as some pundits rail. He does not want a war with us, which would be worse than ruinous to us both.

Putin is a Russian nationalist, patriot, traditionalist, and a cold and ruthless realist, looking to preserve Russia as the great and respected power it once was and he believes it can be again.

But it cannot be that if NATO expansion does not stop or if its sister state of Ukraine becomes part of a military alliance whose proudest boast is that it won the Cold War against the nation Putin has served all his life.

President Joe Biden promises almost hourly that “We are not going to war in Ukraine.” Why, then, would he not readily rule out NATO membership for Ukraine, which, were it to become a member, would require us to do something Biden himself says we Americans, for our own survival, should never do: go to war with Russia?

----

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of Nixon’s White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever and a founding editor of The American Conservative.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/buchanan/putin-warned-us/

By Gus Leonisky at 28 Feb 2022 - 4:36am
Gus Leonisky's blog
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truss is the village idiot...

The Western alliance promised to "hold Russia" and Belarus "accountable" for the "brutal and wholly unprovoked and unjustified" "invasion" of Ukraine on Friday, warning that Moscow would be made to pay "a severe price" for its actions.

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the military to put the nation's nuclear deterrence forces on high alert Sunday following "aggressive statements" from NATO.

"Top officials of leading NATO nations indulge in making aggressive statements about our country. Therefore, I am ordering the minister of defence and the chief of the general staff to put the deterrence forces of the Russian army into special combat duty mode," Putin said in a briefing with Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov in Moscow.

Putin's order follows remarks by UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss earlier in the day warning that if Russia's military operation in Ukraine was not "stopped," it could lead to a conflict with NATO.

"This long-running conflict is about freedom and democracy in Europe. Because if we don't stop Putin in Ukraine, we are going to see others under threat: the Baltics, Poland, Moldova. And it could end up in a conflict with NATO," Truss said.

White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki condemned the Russian president's decision later Sunday, suggesting it was part of a "pattern" of "manufacturing threats that don't exist to justify further aggression." Psaki did not comment on Truss's remarks.

Russia 'Will Be Held Accountable', NATO Says

The leaders of the Western alliance held an emergency virtual summit on Friday to "condemn in the strongest possible terms" what they called "Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, enabled by Belarus." In a joint statement, the alliance called on Moscow to "immediately cease its military assault, to withdraw all its forces from Ukraine and to turn back from the path of aggression it has chosen."

The bloc warned that "the world" would "hold Russia, as well as Belarus, accountable for their actions," and accused Moscow of bearing "full responsibility for this conflict" by "reject[ing] the path of diplomacy and dialogue repeatedly offered to it by NATO and Allies."

The alliance promised to "take all measures and decisions required to ensure the security and defence of all Allies," including through the deployment of additional land and air units in Eastern Europe and maritime assets "across the NATO area." This has included the deployment of the NATO combat-ready response force 'as a precautionary measure', for the first time in the bloc's history.

US media have also warned in recent days that a Russian cyberattack on Ukraine could trigger Article 5 -the NATO Treaty measure committing allies to joint defence in the event of an attack on one member, if such a cyber action impacts eastern Poland.

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg warned Thursday that the alliance would protect "every inch" of the bloc's territory, but noted that NATO does not have "any plans" to deploy troops in Ukraine.

"There must be no space for miscalculation or misunderstanding. We will do what it takes to protect and defend every ally, and every inch of NATO territory," Stoltenberg said.

The NATO chief and others, including US President Joe Biden, have indicated that the alliance's assistance to Kiev would continue include weapons and other support.

Ukraine Crisis: Decades in the Making

The current security crisis in Ukraine is at least in part a calamity of NATO's own creation. Russian officials have spent years condemning the bloc for its decades-long eastward push toward Russia's borders, and Washington's unilateral moves to break security agreements with Moscow aimed at ensuring peace and strategic stability - such as the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, and the Open Skies Treaty.

https://sputniknews.com/20220227/putin-slams-western-permissiveness-of-aggressive-speeches-in-russias-direction-by-nato-officials-1093422175.html

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Most Western leaders have not (they don't want to) unestood the situation that NATO/Hitler created in eastern Europe...

twisting our own nipples...

BY James O’Neil

A few days ago, Russian troops invaded Ukraine. The movement of Russian troops went far beyond removing Ukrainian forces from the Donbass region that they have occupied and challenged for the past eight years. The uproar from Western nations was as predictable as it was hypocritical. In 2014 an American backed coup took place against the lawfully elected and legitimate government of Ukraine. The silence then at this blatantly undemocratic move from western nations was stunning.

The two regions of the Donbass, and the island of Crimea declared their independence. In Crimea’s case the government held a referendum of the people. They overwhelmingly (more than 90%) voted to leave Ukraine and apply to re-join Russia. The word “re-join” is used advisably. Crimea had been part of Russia for hundreds of years until 1954 when the then Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev gifted Crimea to Ukraine. Neither the Russian parliament, nor, more significantly, the Crimean people were consulted.

The western attitude to Crimea has been marked by hypocrisy ever since it voted to re-join Russia. The British, for example, have refused to recognise the legitimacy of Crimea’s actions. Late last year a British war ship violated Crimea waters and had to be chased away by a Russian warship.

The two Donbass republics have had a hard time of it since their similar declaration that they wished no part of the new Ukrainian government. It is not an overstatement to call that government fascist, a fact that seems not to trouble western governments that are now loudly proclaiming Ukraine’s right to be free of Russian interference.

Among those western nations that have condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine are France and Germany. These two nations are part of the Normandy grouping that negotiated a settlement of the Donbass problem. They then did nothing for the next eight years as Ukraine refused to implement the agreement to which they had been a party. The protestations that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a violation of international law rings especially hollow. For eight years they have remained silent, not only on Ukraine’s refusal to abide by the terms of an agreement that they had willingly signed, but worse, waged war against the two Donbass regions.

The arrogance and hubris of the Australian government has been especially notable. The Prime Minister and the Opposition Labor Party have both condemned the Russian move. In Australia’s case they have gone so far as to shut down the Russian television channel Russia Today and prevented it from being broadcast in the country. Even the Americans have not gone that far.

The actions of the Australian government in isolating Russia for its invasion of Ukraine demonstrates a particular historical blindness. Australia has been a consistent cheerleader and willing participant in multiple acts of United States aggression around the world. Australian troops willingly joined the United States invasion of South Vietnam and waged war against the North. This was despite overwhelming evidence that the initial justification for the war, an alleged attack on a United States warship in Vietnamese waters, was manifestly a staged operation. Australian participation in that war lasted more than a decade before the newly elected Labor government withdrew Australian troops, an act that earned the Australian Labor Party the enmity of the Americans who were instrumental in the overthrow of that government three years later.

Obviously, no lessons were learnt by Australia as in 2001 they willingly joined the United States invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. That was only ended last year with the ignominious withdrawal of United States troops from that country. It is notable that the Americans loyal allies, including Australia, were not consulted about that decision. The result was an ignominious and rapid withdrawal of Australian forces and the messy betrayal of thousands of Afghan citizens who had been employed by the Australians.

The invasion of Afghanistan was followed in short order by an equally illegal and unjustified invasion of Iraq. The difference here however, is that 18 years later Australian troops still occupy Iraq and have refused a demand from the Iraqi government that they should leave. In that decision, Australia simply looked once again the to United States who similarly refused to leave Iraq.

This history is worth bearing in mind when one listens to the sanctimonious prattle of the Australian Prime Minister talking about the sanctity of national borders and the right of governments to be free of the fear of invasion and occupation. It is a lesson that his own government should heed, but that is unlikely to happen.

We are many more examples where the Australian government has refused to condemn, this alone sanction, egregious acts by foreign powers.

One has to look no further than the actions of the state of Israel. Its treatment of its own Palestinian population, the illegal seizure and takeover of the Syrian Golan Heights and Israel’s constant bombing of Syrian territory are all subjects that were met with complete silence from the Australian government.

It may well be that Russia has gone too far in invading Ukraine. One sincerely hopes that the matter will be resolved and Russian troops can return to their own country. But the west is far from justified in sanctimonious condemnation of the Russian move. There is an old biblical saying, “ those who are without sin amongst you, cast the first stone.” There are precious few western governments that are in a position to throw that stone.

James O’Neill, an Australian-based former Barrister at Law, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

https://journal-neo.org/2022/02/28/western-hypocrisy-over-ukraine-knows-no-limits/

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wars... wars...

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW. KEEPING IN PRISON IS A SIN...

By Gus Leonisky at 28 Feb 2022 - 3:31pm
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