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The Coming Storm: Worsening War in Greater Europe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9bKyrPd2ww

 

TRANSCRIPT:

Looming Storm: War Escalating in Europe 

In addition to my reflections on Rosenfeld, The Age of Choice this month, I have been listening with dismay to the crescendo of drums of war coming from Greater Europe, John Darwin’s term from After Tamerlane for the troubled ménage a trois of Europe (including the splitter British Isles), North America, and Russia.

In Europe, on 18 and 19 June the European Council met with President Zelenskyy and stated its “firm and unwavering support for Ukraine.” This show of support for Europe’s largest army is cheered by shrill voices, such as Kaja Kallas and Boris Pistorious, Germany’s Defence Minister. Russia has become the enemy Other that galvanizes the shadow emotions of the modern West. It serves a useful function for a leadership class, unable to marshal opinion through reason. They seek to weaken Russia, even if Ukraine does not win. War with Russia is the new Northern Crusade.

Though the most militant European leaders have felt for the clifftop edges of this deadly abyss for months if not years, the actual language of the European Council communiqué is more cautious. It speaks of earnest diplomacy and together with reports of clumsy attempts to establish back channels to Moscow, may be interpreted as the assertion of a quiet diplomatic faction in Europe. This as yet leaderless grouping, in the words of the Council resolutions, “underlines the EU’s readiness to step up its engagement in that context in accordance with the Union’s aim to promote peace, as enshrined in the Treaties.” The context that this memory of the European peace project refers to is the “diplomatic efforts . . . to engage in meaningful negotiations towards a just and lasting peace.”

Some diplomatic spirits may be willing, but as yet their institutional flesh is weak. Their diplomacy is strangled by the muscular frenzy of a strong war faction in Europe, closely tied to the Atlantic Bunker State, as symbolised by the partnership between Polish Foreign Minister Sikorski and US American anti-Russia propagandist, Anne Applebaum. On 24 June, the leaders of Fervid Five (France, Germany, Italy, Poland and United Kingdom) met in Berlin the US American Political Commissar, also known as he Secretary General of NATO. They reiterated “their commitment to deepening NATO’s partnership with Ukraine, bringing Ukraine closer to the Alliance and recognizing the vital contribution Ukraine makes to Euro-Atlantic security.” This militant faction spoke in favour of war against the quibbling diplomats in the European Council. Behind closed doors, some militant European officials seem to be planning Operation Unthinkable again, planning another Napoleonic march on Moscow. Tarik Cyril Amar suspects key military and political officials in Germany are advocating war with Russia. It is deeply alarming. An imaginary New Grand Armée of drones is surely doomed to repeat history as farce and corruption.

In Britain, despite the political and social malaises of that imperial husk, hatred of Russia and Russians is ubiquitous, and manifests in poisonous belligerent rhetoric by the toy soldiers of the London clubs, ghoulish gutter press headlines, academic complicity in intelligence operations, and sabre-rattling boys’ own adventures such as ‘seizing’ Russian tankers for the photo op. It is not only an elite phenomenon regrettably, but a widely validated social antipathy, driven by blood-curdling in-group vs out-group thinking. For example, on 24 June The Telegraph published an opinion piece titled, “Ordinary Russians can’t escape the blame for Putin’s wars of aggression.” The war crime of collective punishment has infected every room of the Bunker State.

In North America, the source of the war infection, some pretences of being a ‘mediator’ have been discarded. Trump told the G7 he backed Ukraine. The Ukrainian press claim Trump signalled to Zelenskyy that the ‘Peace President’ was just fine with the intensification of NATO-Ukrainian attacks on Russian civilians and civilian infrastructure. Marco Rubio confirmed the USA was not a mediator and was on Ukraine’s side. The US military is practising drone attacks and developing plans to convert civilian industrial production to manufacture more weapons to throw against the old enemy, the Heartland of Eurasia. Across the USA’s political spectrum, the failure of the Iran War is not used to dismantle the USA’s global military presence, but rather to argue the other side could deploy violence against ‘our adversaries’ more effectively. Those Russophobe ghouls, Timothy Snyder and Jake Sullivan, recently got together in a podcast, to celebrate Trump’s failure in Iran, to make the case for ‘freedom', to crow how American public support for the Ukraine was holding up. They argued that Europe and Ukraine, by sustaining the drone war against Russia, will ‘help’ the USA (until the Democrats get back in and go full bore on the Northern Crusade). This common viewpoint in the transatlantic elite believes that the war can go on for a long time because Ukraine does not have to win. It just has to not lose, or at least not at an inconvenient time in the USA American political cycle.

And in the cheap seats of the geopolitics podcast universe, in both the right ‘anti-globalist’ and USA-oriented ‘anti-imperialist’ variants, the old habits of US American strategic culture prevail. Europe and its “stupid leaders” are to blame for the war, not the USA. The USA remains the fantasy peacemaker. These commentators routinely restate the self-flattering fantasy that the USA is the ‘Pacifier of Europe’, that stops wars of ‘ancient hatreds’ breaking out, and that ‘pulled Europe’s chestnuts out of the fire twice’ in the world wars of the twentieth century. Europe cannot run a war by committee, they say (what, pray tell is a War Cabinet?). Europeans are petty children and driving the war with their Russophobia. It is all a stale repeat of the traditional US American calumnies of Europeans as soft, lazy, authoritarian aristocrats who cannot compete with real macho men of the Western frontier. And really, they say, Mr Trump and Mr Vance really do, somewhere deep in their malevolent triad hearts, want peace. It is all a pathetic evasion of the USA’s primary culpability for this tragic war, whose root cause is the USA empire’s aggression and expansion since 1989. It is also all just fan service for the social media market. I guess it pays well.

Commentators like Glenn Diesen, whom I used to respect, have become unwatchable with his constant whining about Europe, his deflections of criticisms of the USA, and his evasion of his own misjudgements of Trump and the US American state. Ray McGovern seems to think, like Bush Senior and Dick Cheney, it is a good thing that Russia wants to keep the USA military occupation of Europe going, and that USA and Russian interests “coincide” in Ukraine (see from 1:50:00 of this talk with Jamarl Thomas). Regrettably too, the infection of US American strategic culture has spread to Russian commentary through figures like Karaganov and disaffected ex-USA military technicians, recycled as ‘geopolitical analysts’, like Mark Sleboda or Stanislav Krapivnik. Their shtick is ‘black-pill’ historical fallacies, endless Europe-bashing, and men’s locker talk about military prowess. Some postures are dangerous, like Krapivnik’s recent talk of using a nuclear weapon on Ukraine. I think it is time many in the ‘alt-media’ took a good, hard look at themselves. But that is a talk for another day.

Many in Russia too are still seduced by this love of the American spirit, as seen by imbecilic fawning of the oligarch negotiator to the Trumps, Kirill Dmitriev, the invitation of clown figures like Candace Owens and Andrew Tate to the recent St Petersburg International Economic Forum, or many of Peter Lavelle and George Szamuely’s discussions about the mythic hopes for Trump lost legacy on the Gaggle. This new conservative American infatuation is a variant of the late 1980s/early 1990s love of America that contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the social disaster of Russia’s 1990s. But the penny does appear to have finally dropped in Russian decision-making quarters that the USA is not Russia’s friend.

Statements by President Putin, Foreign Minister Lavrov, principal Presidential aide Ushakov, and Deputy Foreign Minister Rybakov this week all suggest the Russian Cabinet or Security Council has dismissed prospects of a peace partnership with the USA. They seem to recognise that the USA is a ruthless enemy, and the ‘Spirit of Anchorage’, the limerent romance of a peace with Trump touted after the 2025 Alaska meeting, was a deceit and a self-delusion. War is coming, Putin warned his military. It will be war with the West, that is Europe and North America (not forgetting Canada’s shameful militancy in the Ukraine fight).

The Storm is Coming. It may no longer be a social media stand with campaign or a siege or sanctions or a regional war far far away. It may be a ‘Great Power War’ that will ravage people and devastate places dear and close to us all. And yes, my North American readers, that may include you, too. It will harm us all and scar our memories for decades. The storm may pass far from shore, but it is time to shelter where you can. We may need to prepare mentally for how to endure a global catastrophe.

I have avoided commenting much on the NATO-Ukraine-Russia war - and the general topic of war - for more than six months now. By the end of last year, I was a bit emotionally exhausted by investing so much time and effort into the topic over the last few years. But that may be about to change; or events may overwhelm my voice. The news of the last week or so has left ambiguous signals and a lot of white noise. But I am deeply concerned and wanted to share some of my recent reflections on the topic.

I have been reading Odd Arne Westad, The Coming Storm: Power, Conflict and Warnings from History which compares the looming great power wars of today with the onset of World War One. I will return to this book, and my earlier discussions of comparisons with World War One, in the weeks to come. I am not convinced the World War One comparison, at least as perceived within the US American academy really holds. But there is a crucial warning in Westad’s book that you might share within your worlds.

“We also have to realize that behaviour and rhetoric are essential elements of peace. War came in the summer of 1914 because of the all-encompassing fear that had gripped many Great Power leaders, looking for signs that they would be attacked. Much of that fear, which turned so debilitating in efforts to stop the war, was based on what opposing leaders had said in the past, publicly and privately, and what they believed they knew about the war plans of others. Patience and even guarantees, features that are often central to preventing the outbreak of conflict, had no place in such a scenario. Today we must prepare to do better. The alternative, which we must also behold, is war on a scale that the vast majority of us have never experienced.”

Odd Arne Westad, The Coming Storm

Regrettably, we are not doing better. We are doing worse including aerial invasions of Moscow and bullying threats to drop nuclear weapons or to end whole civilizations tonight.

I have also read Richard Sakwa, The Russo-Ukrainian War: Follies of Empire. It is a sobering read with a difficult to grasp but more optimistic vision of a new world beckoning through the blood, ruins, smoke and ashes of the NATO-Ukraine-Russia war.

“The inevitable conclusion is that only some sort of North Eurasian Confederation can resolve the region’s security dilemmas. This vision of functionalist mega-regionalism would encompass all the states of Europe, including Central Asia, the South Caucasus, the Balkans, and Western Europe. It would provide a broader repertoire of political, economic, security and cultural choices and interactions than the stark binary on offer since 1991: the West or Russia. The confederation would possibly include the EU as an institution, and even NATO as a reconfigured European security structure aligned with the United States. It would be post-American but not anti-American.”

Sakwa, The Russo-Ukrainian War, p. 356

I agree that such a dismantling of “Atlantic power system, as constituted in the Political West” is a necessary path to a “culture of comity and cooperation” within the UN charter system. I would only add that another peace project is required: the disarming and reestablishment under peaceful, neutral constitutions of that belligerent monster and rogue state, the USA.

I have shared my thoughts on this situation in some recent videos and interviews, and one or two videos from last year that deserve more attention than they received at the time.

On 24 June I discussed the coming storm with Jamarl Thomas between 8:20 and 57:20 of this live stream

However, the European peacemakers, unlike the warmongers, as yet do not pose for photo ops.

READ MORE/SEE MORE: https://jeffrich.substack.com/p/history-book-club-call-and-the-looming

 

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Ukraine and the End of NATO

I have been invited to speak at a conference in Istanbul on "World Security and the NATO Conference., hosted by the Global Civilizations Initiative Research Center. These are my prepared remarks.

SCOTT RITTER

 

As the conflict between Russia and Ukraine enters its fifth year, it is high time that the nations that comprise the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) take stock of the situation and what it means for the future of a trans-Atlantic alliance that has been in place for some eight decades. Western mainstream media and its social media echo chambers promote a narrative centered around the notion of Russian fatigue, Ukrainian resilience, and western resolve, and take delight in highlighting talking points premised on a Russian-generated quagmire that has dragged on longer than the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45. This narrative parallels that of the officially held positions of most of the nations that make up the membership of NATO, which is no surprise, given the hand-in-glove relationship between corporate-controlled media and governments possessing a revolving door relationship with these same corporations.

This narrative is deliberately misleading, since it is not designed to reflect fact-based truth, but rather promote a fiction that is being used to shape public perception so that the Russo-Ukraine conflict can be sustained through to its desired conclusion—the strategic defeat of Russia. This objective is the formal position of NATO and its key constituent members, having been given voice numerous times since first being articulated in May of 2022. The concept is built around three basic pillars, those being the economic collapse of Russia brought about by economic sanctions, the military exhaustion of Russia brought on by an endless war underwritten by the collective west, and the disintegration of Russian societal structures leading to the termination of the Russian government headed by President Vladimir Putin.

There is one major problem with this concept: it is failing. The Russian economy is growing, not shrinking, and has been able to find a balance between the economic needs of a consumer-driven society while also dramatically expanding its defense industry to the point that Russia is outproducing its western counterparts when it comes to the critical weaponry of war. The Russian military is growing stronger, not weaker, and is prevailing on a complex battlefield despite the efforts of the collective west to wear it down through a seemingly endless proxy war with Ukraine. Moreover, the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to garner the support of not only most of the Russian people, frustrating those who have visions of provoking a Moscow Maidan moment, but also the world beyond the limited confines of the trans-Atlantic community.

The very pillars that the NATO plan of action are supposed to collapse inside Russia are in fact crumbling inside NATO—an energy crisis triggered by the self-imposed severing of Europe from Russian energy supplies, and exacerbated by war in the Middle East, has led to the near collapse of several critical European economies. NATO military strength has been greatly diminished in the years since the collapse of the Soviet Union, to the extent that there is not a single NATO nation capable of successfully waging large-scale ground combat in Europe of the kind being fought between Russia and Ukraine. And the costs associated with bringing NATO military forces up to the necessary levels capable of engaging with and prevailing over the Russian military are prohibitively high, and as such represent unattainable objectives for most, if not all, of Europe given the overall desultory condition of the greater European economy. Lastly, the political and economic elites who have seized and sustained their hold on power in Europe for the past three decades are themselves falling to the wayside. The United Kingdom has had four Prime Ministers in four years. German’s government is about to collapse, as it the government of France. In short, the very objectives NATO sought to impose on Russia are being implemented—inadvertently, but effectively—among the NATO membership itself.

What is most shocking about the current situation is that this is not the byproduct of some short-term misjudgment, but rather the result of policies decades in the making. Even before NATO was formally constituted, the United States and the United Kingdom were conspiring to turn the territory of central Europe that today comprises Ukraine into a poison pill for the notion of a greater Russia. Both Yalta and Potsdam were meant to carve out territory away from Russia that constituted part of Ukraine in 2021. The CIA was openly cavorting with former Nazi intelligence personnel and organizations to build an anti-Russian resistance movement on the territory of Ukraine that was recruited from the worst of the western Ukrainian nationalist organizations, including those headed by Stepan Bandera and Andrei Milnyk. And even after the Soviet Union crushed the last remnants of these pro-Nazi forces in 1954-55, the US and NATO continued to harbor fantasies of making common cause with the surviving elements of the Ukrainian nationalist movement, with US Special Forces planning the creation of indigenous resistance movements on Soviet soil, all the while the CIA sustained the odious ideology of Ukrainian nationalism through direct funding and training support that continued unabated until 1990.

When the Cold War ended, NATO worked with the United States to destabilized Russia by helping install ant-Russian, pro-Ukrainian governments in Kiev. NATO expansion took place in-the-shadows, the true motivations hidden from public scrutiny by those who viewed Russia as weak and susceptible to buying into misleading narratives. NATO was assisted by various non-governmental organizations which funneled money and resources into a master plan designed to create the inevitability of war with Europe and NATO. In 1993 George Soros, who is heavily invested in regime change opportunities in Russia, published an article in which he wrote of the inevitability and necessity of violence between NATO and Russia. But Soros openly acknowledged that NATO, as an institution, was incapable of sustaining any conflict which would send the bodies of hundreds of thousands of its soldiers home in body bags. Instead, Soros noted, NATO would need to provide the arsenal of war to a non-NATO eastern European source of manpower which would fight Russia as a NATO proxy.

This proxy has always been identifiable as Ukraine.

The Orange Revolution of 2004 was a NATO-supported, Soros-funded effort designed to supplant the pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovych with Ukrainian nationalists like Viktor Yushchenko who openly embraced the ideology of Stepan Bandera.

It succeeded.

And in the aftermath of Yanukovych’s political comeback, in 2010, NATO supported the US-EU efforts to orchestrate a violent coup in February 2014 that toppled Yanukovych and replaced him with Ukrainian nationalists and, in doing so, purposefully triggering the events that would lead to Russia’s initiation of the Special Military Operation in February 2022. The complicity of NATO in this action is manifest—NATO established training facilities in Ukraine whose mission was to build a Ukrainian army capable of holding its own against the Russian military. This action is the literal manifestation of Soros’ 1993 vision of a NATO-equipped eastern European army.

And is the very essence of the military situation that exists today between Ukraine and Russia, where millions of Ukrainian lives and billions of dollars of Ukrainian resources have been sacrificed to facilitate NATO’s not-so-secret war with Russia.

A war NATO is losing by a wide margin.

NATO’s first Secretary General, Lord Ismay, famously noted that the mission of NATO was “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.”

Today we see a NATO where the Americans are leaving, the Germans are resurgent, and the Russians are being compelled, against their will, to engage in direct confrontation with a NATO that is actively seeking war with Russia by the end of the decade.

It should be noted that NATO cannot afford to build the kind of military necessary to prevail against Russia in direct conflict, and that any NATO-Russia war would not only inevitably lead to the economic devastation of the NATO membership, but also the physical destruction of the very societies NATO was purportedly created to protect.

Next month the NATO collective will gather in Ankara to discuss the way forward for an origination which lost its legitimacy with the collapse of the Soviet Union and can only continue to justify its existence by resurrecting the threat of Russia by provoking Moscow through the proxy war with Ukraine.

As thing stands, NATO’s planned confrontation with Russia is a literal suicide pact. It will lead to the defeat of NATO and the probable extermination of Europe.

The Ankara Summit may prove to be the last Summit NATO ever convenes. Europe today is behaving like a rabid dog, and the only way a community protects itself from such a threat is to shoot the dog.

Russia is getting ready to shoot the European dog.

War prevention must be the priority of NATO going forward. This will require accepting the harsh truth that a Russian victory over Ukraine is inevitable, and that any effort by NATO to seek an alternative outcome by escalating the conflict between Russia and Ukraine will only lead to a direct conflict with Russia NATO cannot win, and as such will likely trigger a nuclear conflict that ends forever the experiment of European civilization.

NATO is playing a dangerous game of Russian roulette, where every chamber of the pistol is loaded, and the outcome certain.

Unless it stops playing the game.

The choice is clear—life or death for Europe and the trans-Atlantic alliance.

And the decision will be made next month in Ankara.

Choose wisely.

 

https://scottritter.substack.com/p/ukraine-and-the-end-of-nato

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

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         RABID ATHEIST.

         WELCOME TO THIS INSANE WORLD….