Category: NATO

LAB RATS TO THE FRONT!

On By Patrick ArmstrongIn NATO, THE WORLD IS CHANGING, WORLD POWER RELATIONSHIPS

First published Strategic Culture Foundation

We sleep soundly in our beds, because rough men stand ready in the night to do violence on those who would harm us.

– George Orwell

NATO contemplates Kaliningrad: “We think through those plans all the time, and… if that would ever come to fruition, we’d be ready to execute.” It would be “a multi-domain, very timely and effective capability”. “The best Polish military units, numbering 30,000 soldiers, should take part in the quick offensive“. Multi-domain, best Polish; in the imaginations of the strategists of Laputa, the Russians passively await the blow. But now we must leave the empyrean realms of pure thought and float down to earth; there we find that “The largest headquarters military exercises Winter 2020 in Poland ended with the complete defeat of Polish troops: on the fifth day of the virtual conflict, the enemy reached the banks of the Vistula and surrounded Warsaw“.

Moscow has just told us (in the guise of a “suggestion” from two scientists) what it would do while NATO was polishing its multi-domains. Andrei Martyanov summarises it. Russia knows that US/NATO attacks start with a heavy air bombardment. And very effective it is too. Against Iraq or Libya which had poorly-coordinated, poorly-maintained, obsolete air defence systems. Or against Afghanistan which had none at all. Went well until the Serbs sent the F-117 into premature obsolescence. But Russia has excellent air defences. But more to the point, which is what our two professors are talking about, it has a host of highly effective missiles, many of them hypersonic and it knows where to aim them.

In order to disrupt the bombardment and frustrate ground-based operations, the analysts say, Russia should launch a colossal counter or pre-emptive strike to wipe out enemy hardware. This could be achieved, they argue, with the combined use of drones, missiles, cyber warfare and new weaponry, destroying Western equipment before it can even get airborne.

As soon as Moscow decided that a real war was inevitable, there would be a rain of hypersonic missiles which would swiftly overwhelm NATO’s mediocre air defences and destroy airfields, aircraft hangars, ammunition dumps, logistics and C3I facilities. And the Defence Minister has just ordered more of them. The “Sulwaki Corridor” would be the quietest place in Europe. Russians, through their brutal experience, know Orwell is correct: war is about destruction and killing.

In the West, however, other matters predominate. An American Rear Admiral heads a group to “have a deeper inclusion and diversity conversation in our Navy“; it will “acknowledge all lived experiences and intersectional identities of every Sailor in the Navy“. The German Army is far ahead as are many Western militaries. “America is stronger around the world when it is inclusive“. “Diversity, inclusion and respect are at the heart of the British Army’s values and ethos“. Diversity makes the Canadian Armed Forces stronger. NATO has “mainstreamed” “gender balance and diversity“.

Is transgenderism a “mental disorder” with very high suicide risk as at least one credentialed psychiatrist says, or is it a perfectly normal position on a flexible spectrum as many other credentialed psychiatrists say? Whatever, let’s try it out in the military and see what happens. Women have gradually moved to full combat roles in the US military. And, no matter how one might want to play with the meaning of the word “stronger”, men are physically stronger than women. And the infantry have to carry heavy loads: one of the more famous efforts was the Royal Marines’ “yomp” in the Falklands – 90 kilometres, three days, average load 36 kilograms. It is said that modern soldiers in the British Army are loaded down with even more. Perhaps weight itself should be made gender-neutral: “The Army Combat Fitness Test, ordered gender-neutral three years ago, is under evaluation by the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command“.

Western militaries are lab rats for the latest woke diktats. But there are consequences: “Overall, 11 percent of female service personnel scheduled to ship out were not able to in the previous year because of a pregnancy.” “Research suggests that veterans who identify as members of marginalized populations (e.g., women and racial/ethnic minority groups) carry far greater risk for developing PTSD.” “Sexual violence remains pervasive. In 2018, 20,500 service members were sexually assaulted or raped including 13,000 women and 7,500 men. The rate of sexual assault and rape jumped by almost 40% from 2016 to 2018, and for women veterans, the rate increased by over 50% to the highest level since 2006.” Meditate on the corrosive effect on morale and trust of this: “Of women who reported a penetrative sexual assault, 59% were assaulted by someone with a higher rank than them, and 24% were assaulted by someone in their chain of command.” At some point, the US military will no longer have the levels of trust, cohesion, morale and readiness that distinguish a real fighting force from a parade army.

Lots of money spent, little to show for it. Weapons seem to have been designed to produce cost over-runs, not victories. The US Navy’s latest aircraft carrier, long over due and over budget still has “problems getting jets off the deck and issues with the landing systems“; problems indeed for an aircraft carrier. “[T]he F-35 currently has 871 software and hardware ‘deficiencies’.” The years-long and stunningly expensive super destroyer program has fizzled out: three built without the weapon they were originally designed around. Brand-new military equipment unuseable in Germany. Engine troubles in the UK’s new warships. AEGIS ships that don’t know where they are: HNoMS Helge Ingstad, USS Lake Champlain, USS John McCain, USS Fitzgerald; or maybe it’s only bad seamanship. German aircraft not ready. USAF bombers ageing out. Cost over-runs in Germany. USAF training ranges inadequate. A third of the RAF’s fighters unfit to fly. F-35 not very ready. Crumbling skin on F-22. NATO air defence is inadequate (vide this). “Only five of the U.S. Army’s 15 armored brigade combat teams are maintained at full readiness levels“. Where is the money going? Into woke projects like tanks with solar power? (Bit of a heat signature, but more money can be squandered fixing that.)

The experience of fighting “forever wars” – two decades of bombing and shooting from safe distances, kicking in doors and hoping there are no IEDs on patrols – have sapped preparation for a real war against first-class enemies. The truth is that Western militaries have been fighting – unsuccessfully – against minor enemies. They strike from secure bases confident in air supremacy and assured communications. (Can the Russians spoof GPS signals? What will that do to all the systems relying on GPS?) NATO is not winning against determined poorly-armed enemies; what makes it think it’s ready for determined well-armed enemies? And who wants to join a losing army? No wonder only one British infantry battalion is fully staffed.

The “forever wars” have enormous morale effects. In 2019 the US Army asked “how has serving impacted you?” and got back a host of answers about suicide and PTSD. The US military now publishes an annual suicide report: about 700 members and family a year. But, it says, deployment doesn’t increase the risk; no, that comes afterwards: over 6000 US veterans commit suicide every year. There are similar results in allied forces: German and British. Not surprising really: wars that last for generations without visible success are bad for morale: “For Afghanistan, 58 percent of veterans said that fight was not worthwhile“. NATO has already spent twice as long in Afghanistan as the USSR did and there isn’t anything to suggest it will be leaving: despite the agreement to be out by 1 May 2021, “no decision”. Meanwhile, NATO wants more troops in Iraq. Can’t end them, can’t win them. But NATO keeps looking for more: add China to the list.

Given skilful diplomacy and policies that didn’t threaten neighbours these things wouldn’t matter very much. Your inclusive and intersectional army would give good parades and your air force noisy flypasts, your navy could glisten at the dock. But the USA and NATO are not such: they believe they should be everywhere, interfere everywhere and enforce everywhere.

NATO is committed to the peaceful resolution of disputes. If diplomatic efforts fail, it has the military power to undertake crisis-management operations… in cooperation with other countries and international organisations.

Has NATO ever solved any dispute, anywhere, any time with anything but bombs and threats? Certainly not since the USSR went down: bombs in the Balkans (22 years), Afghanistan (20 years), Iraq (19 years), Syria (9 years), Libya destroyed, run out of Somalia. Its principal member has 800 military bases in 70 countries. Here is the famous meme that Russia must want war because it puts its country close to our bases. (Not just a meme, actually, NATO complains about “provocative military activities near NATO’s borders“; or, as others might say, “inside Russia”.) Iran, a country that last attacked somebody in 1795, also. The British Navy joins the US Navy in “freedom of navigation” cruises in the South China Sea. Both navies would suffer from shortages in a real war. Maybe better to stay at home and let Beijing worry about freedom of navigation to and from China. Not content with the fact that the USA has no competent icebreakers, Washington is contemplating FON cruises in the Russian Arctic. The US regularly flies B-52s near countries it wants to overawe – “sending a message” they call it. Some message – 31 were lost in Vietnam. Or was it 34? At any event, given that it’s spent years thinking about what to do if the USAF comes, it’s unlikely that Tehran sees two B-52s as anything other than a derisory provocation.

Some US generals get it – World War II loss rates. Maybe even most generals get it, but they’re not making the decisions. People who call it “the greatest military in the history of the world” (Obama) “best trained, best equipped, and strongest military the world has ever known” (Hillary Clinton) with the “greatest weapons” (Trump) part of “the most powerful military alliance ever assembled“, “America’s forward operating base for democracy” do. And, just as if the last twenty years had not been a record of overextended failures, here’s a cheerleader calling for more of the same: A Superpower, Like It or Not.

NATO isn’t a paper tiger, it’s a paper pussycat. Lab rats in the latest woke experiment; bad morale and fading cohesion; low readiness levels; exhausted by forever wars; expensive weapons that don’t work; pawns in the fantasies of belligerent braggarts: that’s a recipe for catastrophe.

NATO would be severely defeated in a war with Russia or China and probably with Iran. If it can’t secure Afghanistan or Iraq after two decades, if it takes 226 days to overthrow Qaddafi, 79 days in Kosovo, what makes it think it can casually provoke countries that know they’re on the hit list and have been preparing for two decades? Do the Polish players in Winter 2020 still think it will be “timely and effective“?

A NEW YEAR’S FANTASY

On By Patrick ArmstrongIn HISTORY, NATO, WAR ON RUSSIA, WORLD POWER RELATIONSHIPS

(First published Strategic Culture Foundation

History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind

– Edward Gibbon

Counterfactual history is generally a waste of time because, in the end, it’s just speculation. But it’s fun and it can sometimes illuminate factual history.

For example, take the aborted Soviet-French-British alliance to stop Hitler. It came to nothing for a number of reasons but, had it happened, history would have been very different. (And – dare I say it? – probably better. And not the least of the benefits would be that we would be freed from the endless appeals to “Munich” to encourage us to stand firm and bomb the “Next Hitler”.) But I am not going to explore that counterfactual history in which the UK, USSR and France got together, Poland was convinced to let a million Soviet soldiers in and the German military, seeing the hopelessness of it all, overthrew Hitler and the future followed a different set of possibilities (Poland probably being occupied each time).

I am going to consider a counter-factual post Cold War history. Not because I believe – cynical as I have now become – that there was much of a chance of triumphalist Washington, in thrall to PNAC fantasies, allowing it to happen; I do it to illuminate some of the mess that we are in today.

After the Second World War, Stalin, either because he was a dedicated expansionist enemy of the West or because he was determined that, the next time, invaders would have to start their attack farther away from Moscow, absorbed most of the countries the Soviet Army captured/liberated. Communists – and each country had plenty – were put into power. (I invite the reader to speculate: they were absorbed but which was his true motive?) After the Washington Treaty, Moscow formed the Warsaw Treaty. But while the former was, more or less, voluntary, the latter was not and, the moment the USSR weakened, everybody wanted out. Mikhail Gorbachev, GenSek in 1985, began glasnost and perestroyka, believing that the USSR as it was had exhausted its possibilities; one thing led to another, the Berlin Wall came down, the Warsaw Treaty organisation collapsed: when the USSR’s “allies” realised the tanks weren’t coming, they jumped. The USSR itself then fell apart and a whole new world was there for the making.

This is what happened, now begins my counterfactual speculation.

The Western (=NATO) capitals – none of which had foreseen these events – get together and think about how to profit from the collapse of their enemy and how to build a more secure world. A world that is not just better for themselves but more secure for everybody because the wise people in NATO understand that they cannot be secure if their neighbours are not: they know that security is indivisible.

The wise men and women of NATO ponder – it is their world-historical moment; they will create tomorrow. Alternate futures pass before their eyes, they have the power to choose one and eliminate the others; they will pick, out of all the possibilities, the one road the world will travel. Their challenge, now that a great war has ended, is how to fashion a wise ending to the struggle. Not a triumphant ending but a wise one; not just for us but for our descendants. Not momentary but enduring; not a quick sugar hit but lasting nutrition. Many roads to failure; only a few to success.

They take their place with modesty: while, naturally believing that their “free world” system was and is preferable to Marxism-Leninism, they are wise enough and modest enough to know that reality comes in shades of grey. No triumphalism here: just the pragmatic desire to build stability and peace. No boasting: just an acknowledgement that both sides have won.

They remember other decision points when a few created the future. The French Revolutionary/Napoleonic wars killed and maimed millions and devastated and squandered wealth throughout Europe. The easy end would have been to blame France and try to squash it for all time. But the victors – Britain, Prussia, Russia and Austria – were wiser: they included France in the settlement; and their settlement avoided a great European war for a century. They knew that France would always be an important player and therefore had to be invested in the settlement. If it weren’t invested in the settlement it would be invested in breaking the settlement. It’s the essence of The Deal: everybody gets something and everybody has an interest in keeping things the way they are. When no one wants to tip it over, you have stability. The victors of 1919 forgot this principle and their settlement collapsed into an even worse war in twenty years. The victors of that war remembered the 1814 principle (partially) and integrated Germany, Italy and Japan into the winners’ circle.

The wise ones of NATO know this history; they know that the losers have to be made into winners so that the peace can have a chance of lasting; they remember the terrible example of the 1919 failure. There’s no place for boasting or triumphantasising. They bend their powerful minds in the Great Peace Conference of 1991 (counterfactual fantasy event) to calculate how to accommodate everybody’s security concerns. They know that security is indivisible: if one doesn’t feel secure then, sooner or later, no one will.

They start with two realities: 1) Moscow’s former allies – or at least their current leaders – hate and fear Moscow and 2) Moscow doesn’t trust NATO. The Wise Ones waste no time moralising, they know these are the materials with which they have to work and have to make to fit together.

Expand NATO? No, say the Wise Ones: while it will please people in Warsaw or Prague (at least until they get the bill), it will make Moscow nervous and that violates the principle of indivisible security. If making Warsaw happy makes Moscow unhappy, then, at the end of the day, they will both be unhappy and, if they’re both unhappy, then we will all be unhappy too. Indivisibility of security is the kernel of wisdom that the Wise Ones hold to. If nobody is unhappy then everybody is happy: it’s the geopolitical version of “happy wife, happy life”.

So, the question is this: how do we make a settlement to the Cold War in which NATO, the former Warsaw Treaty, former-USSR and Moscow all feel secure at the same time? Fortunately, at this unrepeatable moment in world history, the NATO leadership is replete with wise, knowledgeable and thoughtful people, well-informed about past errors, determined to do better, with the vision, modesty and ingenuity to square the circle. (I warned you it was counterfactual). They figure it out:

  1. They tell Warsaw, Prague, Kiev and the rest of them to form an alliance (Central European Treaty Organisation or some such name) grounded on NATO’s Article 5 (an attack on one is an attack on all).
  2. They get a formal, signed, ceremonial declaration from NATO that, should Russia attack any member of the Central European Treaty Organisation, NATO will come to its defence.
  3. They get a formal, signed, ceremonial declaration from Moscow that should NATO attack any member of the CETO, Moscow will come to its defence.

So, between NATO and Russia, there would have been a belt of neither-one-nor-the-other-but-guaranteed-by-both countries. CETO would have lots of weapons and a high degree of interoperability and command structure left over from the Soviet days; therefore they would be able to mount quite effective defences with what they already had. Their weapons, being Soviet and very rugged, would work for years to come so they wouldn’t have to spend much on their defence.

(Note that, we have, as a sort of scale model of something like this, the relationship between Malta and Italy. From 1981 Malta is officially neutral and its neutrality is guaranteed by Italy, a NATO member. The USSR recognised this neutrality soon after.)

If a CETO had been formed, guaranteed by NATO and Russia, wouldn’t everybody be 1) happier and 2) more secure?

But that didn’t happen. We all know what did: the men and women of NATO were not so wise, they missed their world-historical moment and they went for the triumphantasising quick sugar hit.

So I wish you all a happy

New Year

in which you may reflect upon what might have been

but wasn’t.

RUSSIA THE ETERNAL ENEMY QUOTATIONS

On By Patrick ArmstrongIn NATO, PROPAGANDA, LIES AND NONSENSE, WAR ON RUSSIA

All the clichés in one neat package.

  • Poor little NATO: just quietly minding its own business when those pesky Russians start doing exercises on its borders.
  • And again with the “rules-based order” claptrap: our rules, your disorder Ukraine, Libya, Syria and Venezuela.
  • What “Western interests” in the Middle East?
  • Amazing the “interference” a few grand on Facebook can produce, isn’t it?
  • Military activity in the rather large chunk of the Arctic it owns.

Ah well, the Bubble is strong and I’m sure the authors are paid to believe what they believe to be paid.

Geography still matters. Russia—NATO’s largest, most militarily capable neighbor—remains NATO’s principal external challenge. Russia under President Putin ignores international commitments; violates Ukrainian, Georgian and Moldovan sovereignty; conducts provocative exercises and maneuvers along NATO’s borders; expands military activity in the Arctic and North Atlantic; intervenes in parts of the Middle East against Western interests; and interferes in democratic processes within members of the Alliance, aspiring members and partners. President Putin’s objectives seem clear: secure his leadership position within Russia and prevent regime change; undermine the international rules-based order in favor of a Europe re-divided into spheres of influence; assert increasing influence on the Russian periphery, especially in Ukraine and Georgia, to prevent the success of democratic, pro-European governments whose example could undermine his own kleptocratic system; seize every opportunity to erode the cohesion of NATO and the EU; and widen divisions within individual member states.

NATO at Seventy: An Alliance in Crisis, Nicholas Burns, Douglas Lute, February 2019

PSYCHOANALYSING NATO: THE DIAGNOSIS

On By Patrick ArmstrongIn NATO, PROPAGANDA, LIES AND NONSENSE, WAR ON RUSSIA

(First published Strategic Culture Foundation, picked up by SouthFront, ZeroHedge, Straight Line Logic)

In previous essays I argued that NATO tries to distract our attention from its crimes by accusing Russia of those crimes: this is “projection“. NATO manipulates its audience into thinking the unreal is real: this is “gaslighting“. NATO sees what it expects to see – Moscow’s statements that they will respond to medium range missiles emplaced next door are re-jigged as the “threats” which justify NATO’s earlier act: this is “confirmation bias“. And, finally, NATO thinks Russia is so weak it’s doomed and so strong that it is destroying the tranquillity of NATOLand: this is a sort of geopolitical “schizophrenia“. (I must acknowledge Bryan MacDonald’s marvellous neologism of Russophrenia – a condition where the sufferer believes Russia is both about to collapse, and take over the world.)

I wrote the series partly to amuse the reader but with a serious purpose as well. And that serious purpose is to illustrate the absurdities that NATO expects us to believe. NATO here being understood as sometimes the headquarters “international staff”, sometimes all members in solemn conclave, sometimes some NATO members and associates. “NATO” has become a remarkably flexible concept: Libya was a NATO operation, even though Germany kept out of it. Somalia was not a NATO operation even though Germany was in it. Canada, a founding NATO member, was in Afghanistan but not in Iraq. Some interventions are NATO, others aren’t. The NATO alliance today is a box of spare parts from which Washington assembles its “coalitions of the willing”. It’s Washington’s beard.

NATO and its members are inexhaustible sources of wooden language and dishonesty. Take Washington’s demand that Iran get out of Syria while US forces stay there. Syria has a recognised government, that government invited Iran in; no one invited the USA and its minions in. A child could see the upside down nature of this: it’s a housebreaker demanding the host evict the guests and hand over their bedrooms. This, apparently, is what NATO calls the “rules-based order”. Here’s the American official insisting it’s all legal: “our forces are there under a set of legal and diplomatic documents… “; but he only mentions one and it’s an American one. Putin is condemned for saying “Whatever action a State takes bypassing this procedure are illegitimate, run counter to the UN Charter and defy international law“. We are expected to solemnly nod our heads rather than contemptuously laugh when unilateralism is meretriciously named “rules-based”. These inversions of reality are routinely fed to us by NATO and its mouthpieces.

A very recent revelation of NATO’s gaslighting is the Integrity Initiative (such a gaslighting name!) busy trolling away with a couple of million from the British taxpayer. Its remit, apparently, includes infiltrating political movements of an ally and it “defends democracy against disinformation” by smearing its own political actors with disinformation. Does Russia do this? Well there’s RT and Sputnik and “Russians” did spend nearly $5000 on Google and $7000 on Facebook fixing the US election. And almost one dollar on Brexit ads. And one should never forget the insidious effect of Masha and the Bear. But don’t dare laugh at these preposterous assertions: the BBC earnestly assures us that humour is Putin’s newest weapon. Against this mighty effort, there can be no vigilance too strong! The only way to protect our values is to trash them: defend freedom of thought by secretly planting fake stories, defend democracy by smearing the opposition as Russian stooges. Pure gaslighting, defended by projection and confirmation bias: “This kind of work attracts the extremely hostile and aggressive attention of disinformation actors, like the Kremlin and its various proxies“.

NATO hyperventilates about “Russia’s military activities, particularly along NATO’s borders“. Only in NATO’s counterfeit universe could this be imagined; in the real world Russia’s military is inside its own borders. Once again, the proper response is a contemptuous sneer rather than solemn head nodding.

NATO collectively and severally manifests a detachment from reality. Its website is full of pious assertions about being a defensive alliance that brings stability wherever it goes, replete with valuable values. And it always tells the truth. The reality? No rational person would regard Moscow’s concern about a military alliance creeping ever closer as “aggressive”. There is less stability in Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan than before NATO entered them. Fooling around in Yugoslavia, Georgia and Ukraine have sparked actual shooting wars. NATO’s activities in Syria (illegal by any standards of international law, be it remembered) has not brought stability. More civilians killed, Raqqa obliterated, hospitals methodically destroyed. All “tragic accidents” of course; but don’t look here! look at Russia! Only in its imagination is NATO a bringer of stability. As to its values, they’re mutable – it’s good to break up Yugoslavia, invade Iraq and Afghanistan and destroy Libya but Crimeans taking the opportunity to return to Russia is a heinous crime. NATO’s so-called values are whatever NATO does. And as to NATO’s promises: well it did expand, didn’t it? (Here’s NATO’s official weasel-wording: “Personal assurances from individual leaders cannot replace Alliance consensus and do not constitute formal NATO agreement”. And suddenly its narrative jumps to President Clinton. Wrong POTUS, actually; NATO’s caught gaslighting again.) Its intervention in Libya was very far from what the UN resolution approved: it was an armed intervention against the government on false pretences.

Here’s what NATO’s so-called “stability projection” has actually produced: riots in France, partly connected with the influx of “migrants” coming from the Libya that NATO destroyed. But, we supposed to believe it has nothing to do with NATO, it’s Putin! Only an idiot could believe that.

NATO had a purpose when it was formed, or at least it thought it did. It is true that, at war’s end where the Soviet Army stood “elections” were held and socialist or communist parties came to power and stayed in power. (Austria being an exception). There were at least two ways that one could understand this extension of Soviet power. One was that they were the actions of an expansionist hostile power that fully intended to go all the way to Cape Finisterre if it could and, if not prevented, would. In such an case the Western Allies would be fully justified in forming an defensive alliance to deter Soviet expansion. Another possible interpretation was that, after such a hard victory in so fearfully destructive a war, Moscow was determined that never again would its neighbours be used as an assembly area and start line for the forces of another Hitler. Such an interpretation would call for quite another approach from the Western Allies. We all know which of the two interpretations was followed by. I have speculated elsewhere that Reinhard Gehlen may have had a strong influence on that decision. But, for whatever reason, the NATO alliance was founded on that first assumption and it shaped the world in one direction rather than another.

Since the USSR broke up, taking with it NATO’s original raison d’être, NATO members, sometimes under the NATO flag and sometimes not, have helped break up Yugoslavia and Serbia, invaded Afghanistan, Iraq (twice), Syria, destroyed Libya, incited a war in Georgia, carried out a coup d’etat in Ukraine and participate in the civil war there. That’s not stability. And, where NATO has set foot, it stays. KFOR is still bringing “peace and stability” in Year 19 and Kosovo is home to a huge US base. Afghanistan is in Year 15. Iraq is in Year 14. Syria is Year 4 and set to run forever. Ironically Latvians, Estonians and Lithuanians are back in Afghanistan; different flag, same place. That’s not stability either.

And still the wooden language rolls out. But turn off your brain when you read it.

POLITICAL – NATO promotes democratic values and enables members to consult and cooperate on defence and security-related issues to solve problems, build trust and, in the long run, prevent conflict.

MILITARY – NATO is committed to the peaceful resolution of disputes. If diplomatic efforts fail, it has the military power to undertake crisis-management operations. These are carried out under the collective defence clause of NATO’s founding treaty – Article 5 of the Washington Treaty or under a United Nations mandate, alone or in cooperation with other countries and international organisations.

 

Has post-USSR NATO ever peacefully resolved a dispute? Anywhere? Any time? It’s always military power. What did Article 5 (an attack on one is an attack on all) have to do with NATO’s war on Libya? Did it attack one of them? How about Serbia? One can argue that someone in Afghanistan attacked the USA but who did in Iraq? As to “democratic values”, well, it will be amusing to watch NATO’s reactions to Ukraine President Poroshenko trying to avoid the election. And nobody likes to mention the pack of organ harvesters and drug runners NATO gave a whole country to.

If NATO were a human individual on the couch, a case could be made that it is living in a fantasy world in which everything is reversed.

Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil;

that put darkness for light, and light for darkness;

that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!

Delenda NATO est!

PSYCHOANALYSING NATO: SCHIZOPHRENIA

On By Patrick ArmstrongIn NATO, PROPAGANDA, LIES AND NONSENSE, PUTIN DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, WAR ON RUSSIA

(First published at Strategic Culture Foundation; picked up by SouthFront)

NATO sorrowfully explains its problems with Russia on its official website:

For more than two decades, NATO has worked to build a partnership with Russia, developing dialogue and practical cooperation in areas of common interest. Cooperation has been suspended since 2014 in response to Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine but political and military channels of communication remain open. Concerns about Russia’s continued destabilising pattern of military activities and aggressive rhetoric go well beyond Ukraine.

None of this – of course – is NATO’s fault: on the contrary NATO is concerned that

Russia’s military activities, particularly along NATO’s borders, have increased and its behaviour continues to make the Euro-Atlantic security environment less stable and predictable, in particular its practice of calling snap exercises, deploying near NATO borders, conducting large-scale training and exercises and violating Allied airspace.

Suffice it to say that this statement would have a closer relationship with reality if the words “NATO’s borders” were replaced with “inside Russia”. And I would be interested to hear the details of “violating Allied airspace”. Why even the Daily Telegraph in 2015 with its suggestive headline of Mapped: Just how many incursions into Nato airspace has Russian military made? had to admit “The Ministry of Defence says the Russian bombers have never violated Britain’s sovereign airspace, which extends 12 nautical miles from the coast.” Likewise Violated US Airspace 16 Times In Last 10 Days turns out to be Air Defence Identification Zones which is not the same thing at all. Or Most Russian Plane Intercepts over Baltics Due to Error: NATO General. So NATO’s statement needs a further calibration so that “violating Allied airspace” becomes “flying in international airspace close to Allied countries’ airspace”.

Therefore, properly understood, NATO accuses Russia of 1) holding military exercises in its own territory, 2) flying in international airspace, 3) supporting secessionist movements in places that weren’t part of Yugoslavia or aren’t in the Middle East or North Africa. And they accuse it of invading countries that NATO didn’t invade first. NATO projects its behaviour, gaslights its audience and confirms its initial assumption when Moscow objects. But that’s NATOLand for you – the unicorns roam free and all is sunny until the bear smiles.

There is a striking schizophrenia among NATO’s members: Russia is, at one and the same time, so weak it’s “doomed” and so strong that it’s demolishing NATOLand.

Russia is forever, eternally, endlessly, doomed. Always on the edge of collapse. (But Russia has always been doomed here’s Time in 1927) and it was altogether finished in 2001. But doom dooms on. Has an ‘open society’ doomed Russia to fail? (September 2012); Russia Is Doomed (March 2014); Why Putin’s Adventure in Ukraine Is Doomed (April 2014); Putin’s Nationalism and Expansion Strategy Is Doomed to Fail (September 2014); Sorry, Putin. Russia’s economy is doomed (December 2014); Remember Russia? It’s still doomed (January 2015); Morgan Stanley thinks Russia’s doomed (February 2015); Secretary of Defense: Russia ‘Doomed to Fail’ in Syria (September 2015); Is Russia’s Economy Doomed to Collapse? (July 2016); Why The Saudi-Russian Oil Agreement Is Doomed To Fail (September 2016); Putin’s Bridge to Crimea Is Doomed to Collapse (January 2017); Russia’s Su-57 Stealth Fighter Is Doomed to Fail (December 2107); The Russian economy looks doomed (March 2018); Russia is doomed to steadily fall behind the rest of the world (August 2018); Why Putin’s 5-100 project is doomed to fail (October 2018). And its soccer team too! Aging and Inexperienced: Why Russia Is Doomed to Fail (June 2018).

You’d think, with all this doom dooming away at Russia, that no one would be much worried about it. Except of course for the risk of getting bits of it spattered on you when it finally crashes down. Said collapse confidently predicted three years ago by Alexander Motyl, who, making his wish the father of his thought, declaimed that Russia might even “disappear”:

As the new year begins, both Ukraine and Russia are making steady progress. The difference is that, while Ukraine is slowly, and more or less surely, adopting a raft of systemic reforms that will make it a normal Western market democracy, Russia is becoming a failed state. If current trends continue, as they probably will, Russia may even disappear.

But, amazingly, Russia has become more powerful than ever before. Not even Stalin in his wildest dreams imagined choosing the next US President. Yet, even as “weak and dying” Russia freefalls, Putin has done exactly that: “Vladimir Putin has a plan for destroying the West—and that plan looks a lot like Donald Trump” Trump being what Putin would design to “undermine American interests – and advance his own”. “Trump is Putin’s ally in Russia’s war on the West”. But even before he animated his Trumpenpuppet, his tendrils had slithered deep into Washington: “Putin’s Got America Right Where He Wants It: And that’s bad news for Obama”. So Putin, although he’s no genius, just another Brezhnev, has a puppet in the White House.

But not just there: Putin (Aspergers, “gunslingers’ walk”, lonely psychopath that he is), through his “useful idiots“, affects everything, everywhere. Brexit. French election. Italian election. German election. Austrian election. Dutch election. Canada’s next election. Catalonian separatism. Gilets jaunes. Hungary’s Prime Minister is a Putinist. And it’s more, so much more: Russia and the Threat to Liberal Democracy: How Vladimir Putin is making the world safe for autocracy. Moscow’s unstoppable “Hybrid War” weaponising Information, Culture and Money. Separatism, migrants, left wing right wing.

Sounds as if we’re the ones who are doomed.

In this race of the doomed: who will get to the FINAL DOOM first?

PSYCHOANALYSING NATO: CONFIRMATION BIAS

On By Patrick ArmstrongIn NATO, PROPAGANDA, LIES AND NONSENSE, THE WORLD IS CHANGING, WAR ON RUSSIA, WORLD POWER RELATIONSHIPS

(First published at Strategic Culture Foundation)

(Earlier parts of this intermittent series discussed NATO’s projection and gaslighting.)

Psychology Today defines confirmation bias as:

Once we have formed a view, we embrace information that confirms that view while ignoring, or rejecting, information that casts doubt on it. Confirmation bias suggests that we don’t perceive circumstances objectively. We pick out those bits of data that make us feel good because they confirm our prejudices. Thus, we may become prisoners of our assumptions.

Or, closer to the topic of this essay:

Of course there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then [the NATO expanders] will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are — but this is just wrong.

This quotation is from an interview of George Kennan by Thomas Friedman published in the New York Times twenty years ago. He was speaking about what was then called “NATO expansion” (later changed to the more anodyne – and deceptive – phrase “NATO enlargement”. (I as a civil servant in the Canadian Department of National Defence used to amuse myself by seeing if I could sneak the forbidden “expansion” – an altogether more honest word – into briefing notes for the Higher Ups. As I recall, I got away with it about half the time. A trivial pleasure in the evolving disaster.)

But back to Kennan, Mr X, the author of the Long Telegram, the founder of “containment“, the man who actually lived long enough to see his recommendations, not only followed, but successful. He was right: in the long term, the Soviet system was not sustainable; it was, as Russian President Putin said: “a road to a blind alley“.

I think [NATO expansion] is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else…. We have signed up to protect a whole series of countries, even though we have neither the resources nor the intention to do so in any serious way. It was simply a light-hearted action by a Senate that has no real interest in foreign affairs… Our differences in the cold war were with the Soviet Communist regime. And now we are turning our backs on the very people who mounted the greatest bloodless revolution in history to remove that Soviet regime.

The man who got it right in 1947 also got it right in 1998.

a bad reaction from Russia, and then [the NATO expanders] will say that we always told you

Could there be a better illustration of the truth of Kennan’s percipience than this headline from the New York Times in July 2017: “Russia’s Military Drills Near NATO Border Raise Fears of Aggression“? The chutzpah of the headline is hard to swallow: Russia hasn’t moved anywhere. “The troops are conducting military maneuvers known as Zapad, Russian for ‘west,’ in Belarus, the Baltic Sea, western Russia and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.” Belarus is an ally of Russia, Russia has a Baltic coastline of more than 400 kilometres, Kaliningrad is part of Russia. So what exactly is the reason what Russia can’t do whatever military things it wants to at home? Imagine the reaction if Moscow dared question an American military exercise in the USA. But this reversal of truth is now the propagandistic norm: “New photos show Russia’s building up its military on NATO’s doorstep, but the alliance says it won’t be intimidated” and “Russia Building Up Military on NATO’s Borders” in October 2018 (just before a large NATO exercise that actually is on Russia’s border). NATO idiotically assures us that Russian notions that NATO is encircling Russia “ignores geography” because of Russia’s 20 thousand kilometre border NATO touches only a teeny weeny bit. Well, if it can add Finland, Ukraine and Georgia, it will be a bit more. But I doubt any Russian has said “encircling”. Russians know there’s no NATO in Asia but they do see NATO moving its doorstep towards it. These are perfect examples of the confirmation bias that Kennan predicted: the NATO expanders are telling us that Russia’s actions inside its unchanged borders are exactly why we had to expand NATO’s borders. Russia’s reaction to NATO’s expansion enlargement justifies NATO’s enlargement expansion.

Here’s NATO patting itself on the back: “NATO enlargement has contributed to spreading democracy, security and stability further across Europe.” NATO’s official enumeration of its sad relations with Russia and Moscow’s many unfounded accusations and inexplicable failure to accept the simple declaration that this military alliance advancing every closer to Russia “does not seek confrontation and poses no threat to Russia” may be found here. Parenthetically it is interesting that the specific accusations made against Russia in this apologia, which we are to believe sadly made NATO take other steps, are Crimea and Ukraine which greatly postdate NATO expansion. How clever of the expanders in the 1990s to foresee Russia’s actions in Ukraine nearly two decades later! Another clear case of confirmation bias.

This sort of thing goes on all the time. From the Washington Post in November 2016, a reliable mouthpiece of the US war party, “Russian warplanes keep buzzing the Baltics. Here’s how NATO scrambles.

A Russian fighter jet flew dangerously close to a U.S. RC-135 reconnaissance aircraft on Thursday in the latest military provocation by Moscow over the Baltic Sea, the U.S. European Command said Saturday.

“Russian War Planes Threaten a US Navy Ship in International Waters” (Note the video reconstruction and see if you think it’s an accurate representation of what the actual video shows.) “Russia defends sending warships through English Channel”. Russia’s Existential Threat to NATO in the Baltics is a perfect fulfilment of Kennan’s observation “We have signed up to protect a whole series of countries, even though we have neither the resources nor the intention to do so in any serious way”. And because we can’t defend them, the very existence of NATO is threatened.

I will agree that there are a few cooler heads around:

Gen. Petr Pavel, chairman of the NATO Military Committee, told reporters he and his NATO counterparts have not seen obvious offensive acts from Russian aircraft or troops.

but they seem to be without much effect in the prevailing weather of Russia Threatens Massive Military Buildup to Counter US, NATO, Vladimir Putin’s nuclear warships pictured steaming towards the English Channel as Royal Navy prepares to scramble fleet, Latvia faces hybrid threat as EU, NATO boost defenses and many more.

The same confirmation bias can be found on the other side of the world in which we are ceaselessly told that China provokes US Navy ships peacefully exercising their free passage in international waters. This can stand for the numerous examples:

At approximately 0830 local time on September 30, a PRC LUYANG destroyer approached USS DECATUR in an unsafe and unprofessional maneuver in the vicinity of Gaven Reef in the South China Sea.

Imagine the reaction in Washington if Chinese warships patrolled the Gulf of Mexico “to ensure freedom of navigation“! The USN patrols to ensure the safe passage of goods to and from China in the South China Sea; Beijing reacts; proof that more patrols are necessary and justified.

So, after two decades of NATO’s expanding its doorstep to the edge of Russia, after years of the USN doorstep moving closer to China, where are we in terms of the stability that NATO expansion is supposed to have brought us? At least two wars – in Ossetia in 2008 and eastern Ukraine starting in 2014 – are consequences of NATO expansion. But, more to the point, we have two announcements, not, I suspect, by coincidence made a few hours apart.

25 October 2018, China

The Southern Theatre Command has had to bear a “heavy military responsibility” in recent years, state broadcaster CCTV quoted him as saying during an inspection tour made on Thursday as part of his visit to Guangdong province. “It’s necessary to strengthen the mission … and concentrate preparations for fighting a war,” Xi said. “We need to take all complex situations into consideration and make emergency plans accordingly. “We have to step up combat readiness exercises, joint exercises and confrontational exercises to enhance servicemen’s capabilities and preparation for war.”

26 October 2018, Russia

Speaking at the UN on Friday, Andrey Belousov, deputy director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Department of Nonproliferation and Arms Control, echoed Putin’s comments from last week that Russia is indeed readying itself for war, but only so it can defend its people against American aggression. “At a recent meeting, the US stated that Russia is preparing for war. Yes, Russia is preparing for war, I can confirm it”, Belousov said adding that “We are preparing to defend our homeland, our territorial integrity, our principles, our values, our people.”

No stability, no security. And still the expanders blame Russia and China for responding to what they gratuitously began.

The last words go to George Kennan

There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else… This has been my life, and it pains me to see it so screwed up in the end.

NATO THEN AND NATO NOW

On By Patrick ArmstrongIn NATO, PROPAGANDA, LIES AND NONSENSE, REPRINTS, THE WORLD IS CHANGING

(I wrote this under a pseudonym four years ago today. Any updating needed do you think?)

Then I supported NATO and believed in the “Soviet threat”. I didn’t really think that the Soviets were planning to attack the West (although it wasn’t a bad idea to keep NATO strong, just in case) but I believed that they – the system, that is – were opposed to us. NATO was a necessary balancer. And nothing I have learned since has changed my mind.

But the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union disappeared. So what to do with NATO? Some said it had served its purpose, “won” the Cold War (everybody won it actually), and could justifiably pack up and sell off the Brussels headquarters. On the other hand, others argued, as the most successful peace-time alliance ever, it would be a pity to get rid of it. About this time I was interviewed for a job on NATO’s International Staff (big tax-free salaries, not very heavy work schedule, good location) and one of the questions was: What’s NATO’s future? Well, said I, to become an alliance of the civilised countries against whatever was coming next. Who might these “civilised countries” be? Present members of course but more too: Russia (or was it still the USSR then? can’t remember), Japan, Australia, Brazil, quite a few in fact. I didn’t get the job (not, I think, because of my answers but because it wasn’t my country’s turn to get a job on the IS).

Well, that’s not what happened. As we all know NATO expanded (amusingly somebody after a year or so decided “expansion” sounded bad and “enlargement” became the compulsory word). I remember one of my bosses (a well-connected one who had spent three years in NATO HQ) assuring me that NATO expansion was such a stupid idea that it would never happen.

But it did happen and today there are lots and lots of new members – can anyone outside the NATO bureaucracy name them all? (there’s a story that the Canadian PM mixed up Slovenia and Slovakia and so they both got in) – and possibly more coming. Open to all who want in; why NATO wouldn’t dream of interfering with a country’s free right to choose. But oddly enough, no one in Africa has applied. Or South America, or Australasia, or Asia. And as to Russia, well, you know its application will be lost in the mail.

So we came to Kosovo. And NATO discovered a new role doing “humanitarian interventions” (and everybody there preserved his job! Hurray!) Kosovo set a pattern we’ve seen several times since. Every media outlet reporting exactly the same thing. One side committing every possible crime: terrible human rights violations, aggression, racism, whatever. The other side painted as the victim. (They say Kosovar men are being marched around; walking blood banks suggests a NATO mouthpiece. No women from Serbian rape camps have been be found; their culture tells them to be ashamed suggests a CNN mouthpiece. What’s the collateral damage in a village of a 500-lb bomb dropped on some target identified from 20,000 feet? Nobody asks. Why was the bridge in Novy Sad destroyed? Nobody knows.) We must intervene! Short. Easy. Justified. Preferably by air. No casualties. On our side, that is.

And so it happens. It takes a LOT longer than it was supposed to. And there’s nervousness about an actual land invasion being maybe necessary. But it ends eventually; thanks (not that they are given) to Russia’s Chernomyrdin. (Not, come to think of it, the last time Russia saves Washington and NATO from its folly).

Doubts and difficulties are immediately forgotten. Human rights professionals, like a certain Canadian Harvard personality, praise the intervention as a model of power wisely used in a good cause. Best-selling military authors hail it as the first time air power has won a war all by itself. All is well, in the best of all possible worlds. And you’ll be glad to hear that Albright and Clark are doing OK in their business interests in Kosovo.

And there’s another pattern set by this first NATO “humanitarian bombing” mission. Later – in the actual case of Kosovo fifteen years later – we learn that we weren’t quite told everything:

unlawful killings, abductions, enforced disappearances, illegal detentions… ethnic cleansing… violence and intimidation… extrajudicial killings, illegal detentions, and inhumane treatment. We believe that the evidence is compelling that these crimes… were conducted in an organized fashion and were sanctioned by certain individuals in the top levels of the KLA leadership.

NATO gave these people a whole country. Well done NATO! Well done Western media outlets!

But, learning nothing, ever praising itself for making “a more secure world”, NATO tramples on. It has now become a box of spare parts from which Washington chooses its next “coalition of the willing” for the next “humanitarian bombing”. And what are the results? Kosovo is a major crime centre. Afghanistan is about the same as it was before but at least Al Qaeda isn’t running it. Iraq is worse than anything Saddam Hussein or his two loathsome sons could ever have produced. Libya is a jihadist playground. Ukraine, in the eleven months from postponement of the EU agreement to postponement of the EU agreement, is a horrible nightmare with worse coming. Al Qaeda is back, bigger and better, as ISIS. How exactly has NATO made a more secure world?

All NATO does nowadays is visit chaos, bloodshed, disaster and destruction on countries using justifications we later learn are exaggerated or faked. But no one asks what’s going on or how we could be so mistaken over and over again. The monster lurches on, destroying and threatening.

NATO is a serious threat to the security of its members. To say nothing of the rest of the world.

NATO TRUMPED

On By Patrick ArmstrongIn NATO, THE WORLD IS CHANGING, WORLD POWER RELATIONSHIPS

First published at Strategic Culture Foundation

Picked up by The Duran; JRL 2018/135/17; Zenith News; South Front; Straight Line Logic;

Those of us who regard NATO as one of the primary sources of international instability thanks to its wars of destruction in the MENA and provocation of Russia were looking forward with delighted anticipation to Trump’s appearance at the NATO summit. We were not disappointed. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when Trump came late to the meeting where Ukraine and Georgia were banging on about the Russian threat, started ranting about spending and blew up the decorous charade. Ukraine and Georgia were then dismissed and a special meeting was convened. (A side effect of his “creative destruction” was that the Ukrainian President delivered his speech to a practically empty room). He started his assault before the meeting, opening Twitter fire on Germany, returning to the attack in his breakfast meeting with NATO’s GenSek:

Germany is totally controlled by Russia because they will be getting from 60% to 70% of their energy from Russia, and a new pipeline, and you tell me if that’s appropriate because I think it’s not and I think it’s a very bad thing for Nato.

Good fun for some of us but a stunner to the Panjandrumocracy: “meltdown“, “tantrum“, “latest diplomatic blowup“, “making bullying great again” and so on.

As ever, Trump’s statements were extreme and his numbers might not stand up to examination but most commenters (typically) left out the context. Which was a piece by German Chancellor Merkel herself in which she called for NATO to focus on the threats from Russia: “the alliance has to show determination to protect us”.

This gave Trump the opening to pose these questions (posed in his own way, of course, in a strategy that most people – despite the example of North Korea – have still not grasped). You tell us that NATO ought to concentrate on the Russian threat. If Russia is a threat, why are you buying gas from it?

        1. You tell us that Russia is a reliable energy supplier. If Russia is a reliable supplier, why are you telling us it’s a threat?
        2. I hope you’re not saying Russia is a threat and its gas is cheap but the USA will save you.

Good questions to be sure; questions that crystallise the contradiction of NATO. If Russia is such a big military threat to them – as NATO communiqués incessantly say it is – then why aren’t the Europeans, presumably first on Moscow’s cross hairs, doing more to meet that threat? And, if, as their doing so little about their defence suggests, they don’t fear Russia, then why do they say that they do? From the latest NATO communiqué:

meeting Russia’s aggressive actions, including the threat and use of force to attain political goals, challenge the Alliance and are undermining Euro-Atlantic security and the rules-based international order.

I always like to count words in these cliché-ridden screeds: it gives a metric of importance and saves force-marching my eyeballs through 12,000 words of self-satisfied pap. In the countries where NATO forces are actually deployed, the communiqué mentions Afghanistan twice, Kosovo six times and Iraq 14 times. NATO destroyed Libya but it only gets six references; it’s doing its best to repeat the performance in Syria (nine). But Russia leads with 54 mentions, none of them complimentary. Why even NATO’s favourite mush words, “values” (16) and “stability” (26), appear fewer times. Ukraine, on the other hand, has 25 appearances, all in what could be called the phantasmagorical verbal mood: “We welcome significant reform progress”. So, in NATOland, Russia’s back. By contrast, the Riga Summit communiqué in 2006 mentioned Afghanistan 17 times, Iraq eight times and Russia ten times (“values” and “stability” scored 15 each). But NATO was still looking for a purpose then:

It recognizes that for the foreseeable future, the principal threats to the Alliance are terrorism and proliferation, as well as failing states, regional crises, misuse of new technologies and disruption of the flow of vital resources.

The logic of NATO’s very existence creates the contradiction. NATO, having lost its raison d’être when the Warsaw Pact and the USSR disappeared, having floundered around in out-of-area operations and the “War on Terror”, has returned to “the Russian threat”. (But in a bureaucracy nothing ever actually stops: this week’s meeting approved a NATO training (!) mission in Iraq Year 15 and more British troops in Kabul Year 16.) Without the “Russian Threat” there would be no reason for NATO to exist, and certainly no big arms contracts, and all the warm butterscotch sauce of “common values” or “projecting stability” could not keep it together. Because, the brutal truth is that military alliances are kept together, not by common values, but by common enemies.

But, no question about it, it’s Washington that bears the major responsibility: Washington pushes NATO expansion, adding monomaniacal anti-Russian members; Washington foments colour revolutions; Washington blew up Ukraine and tried to snatch the Sevastopol naval base; Washington “twists arms“; Washington demands European sanctions and Magnitskiy Acts; Washington’s failed wars in the MENA suck in NATO members; Washington dropped the ABM Treaty inspiring Russia to create its super weapons. The truth is that, whatever might have happened otherwise, Washington drove NATO in the anti-Russia direction.

But Donald Trump is not that Washington: he is the anti-Washington. He tosses bombs into gatherings of complacent apparatchiks: if you believe what you’re saying, act on it; if you don’t act on it, stop saying it. Then he threw the spending bomb. For years there has been a vague commitment that NATO members should spend 2% of their GDP on defence; the commitment appears to have been formalised in 2014. (14) But the members aren’t paying much attention. Few have achieved it and the downward trend, begun at the end of the Cold War, has continued. Regardless of whether “2%” makes any sense or how it is calculated, Trump was right to remind NATO members that they themselves agreed to it. Again Trump raises the pointed question: why don’t you act as if you believe what you’re saying?

Indicators of European NATO members’ actual readiness and combat capability are stunning; the latest being “Only 4 of Germany’s 128 Eurofighter jets combat ready — report“; “Ground force: Half of France’s military planes ‘unfit to fly’“. “Britain’s ‘withered’ forces not fit to repel all-out attack“. “Europe’s Readiness Problem“. Obviously they’re not expecting a Russian attack any time soon. NATO is, as I have argued here, a paper tiger. It is questionable whether NATO members can conduct any operation without the USA providing satellite navigation and observation, air defence suppression, airborne command and control, inflight tankers, heavy lift and ammunition resupply to name a few deficiencies. So, either the Europeans are not worried; or, as Trump likes to say, they are free riders.

Six months ago I suggested that Trump may be trying to get out of what I called the “Gordian knot of entanglements”

President Trump can avoid new entanglements but he has inherited so many and they are, all of them, growing denser and thicker by the minute. Consider the famous story of the Gordian Knot: rather than trying to untie the fabulously complicated knot, Alexander drew his sword and cut it. How can Trump cut The Gordian Knot of American imperial entanglements? By getting others to untie it.

 

He stamps out of NATO leaving them quaking: if you say Russia is the enemy, why do you act as if it isn’t; and if you act as if it isn’t, why do you say it is? And firing, over his shoulder, the threat: 2% by next January.

I believe it is a threat and a very neat one too:

If you don’t get up to 2% (or is it 4%?) and quickly too; I warned you. Goodbye.

If you do get your spending up, then you don’t need us. Goodbye.

Another strand of the knot gone.

 

PSYCHOANALYSING NATO: GASLIGHTING

On By Patrick ArmstrongIn ACCUSATIONS, NATO, PROPAGANDA, LIES AND NONSENSE, WAR ON RUSSIA

First published at Strategic Culture Foundation 17 July 2018

Picked up by Zerohedge; Internationalist 360º; Straight Line Logic; Uebersetzungen aus dem Imperium (in German); Link Zeitung;JRL/2018/138/18

NOTE: Because “NATO” these days is little more than a box of spare parts out of which Washington assembles “coalitions of the willing”, it’s easier for me to write “NATO” than “Washington plus/minus these or those minions”.

Home Secretary Sajid Javid has called on Russia to explain “exactly what has gone on” after two people were exposed to the Novichok nerve agent in Wiltshire. (BBC)

The Russian state could put this wrong right. They could tell us what happened. What they did. And fill in some of the significant gaps that we are trying to pursue. We have said they can come and tell us what happened. I’m waiting for the phone call from the Russian state. The offer is there. They are the ones who could fill in all the clues to keep people safe. (UK security minister Ben Wallace)

Leaving aside their egregious flouting of the elemental principle of English justice, note that they’re uttering this logical idiocy: Russia must have done it because it hasn’t proved it didn’t. Note also, in Javid’s speech, the amusing suggestion that Russia keeps changing its story; but to fit into the official British story “novichok” must be an instantly lethal slow acting poison which dissipates quickly but lasts for months.

This is an attempt to manipulate our perception of reality. In a previous essay I discussed NATO’s projection of its own actions onto Russia. In this piece I want to discuss another psychological manipulation – gaslighting

The expression comes from the movie Gaslight in which the villain manipulates her reality to convince his wife that she is insane. Doubt the official Skripal story and it is you – you “Russian troll” – who is imagining things. Only Russian trolls would question Litvinenko’s deathbed accusation written in perfect English handed to us by a Berezovskiy flunky; or the shootdown of MH17; or the invasion of Ukraine; or the cyber attack on Estonia. Only a Russian troll would observe that the fabulously expensive NATO intelligence agencies apparently get their information from Bellingcat. Argumentum ad trollem is everywhere: count the troll accusations here or admire the clever anticipatory use of the technique there.

This is classic gaslighting – I’m telling the truth, you’re the crazy one.

We may illustrate the eleven signs of “gaslighting” given in Psychiatry Today by Stephanie A. Sarkis with recent events.

They tell blatant lies.

The Skripals were poisoned by an incredibly deadly nerve agent that left them with no visible symptoms for hours but not so deadly that it killed them; at least not at Easter; nor the policeman; a nerve agent that could only have been made in Russia although its recipe was published in the open media; that poison having been administered on a doorknob that each had to have touched at the exact same minute that no one else touched; a nerve agent so deadly that they only bothered to clean up the sites 51 days later. And so on: a different story every day. But your mind must be controlled by Putin if you smell a falsehood at any point. And, now we have it all over again: apparently the fiendishly clever Russian assassins smeared the doorknob and then, rather than getting out of town ASAP, sauntered over into a park to toss the container. (Remember the fiendishly clever Russian assassins who spread polonium everywhere?)

And, speaking of proven, long term, repeating liars: remember when accusing the British government of complicity in torture renditions was a conspiracy theory? Well, it turns out the conspiracy was by the other side. “Conspiracy Theorist” is the perfect gaslighting accusation, by the way: you’re the crazy one.

They deny they ever said something, even though you have proof.

The Skripal case gives a perfect illustration: here’s the UK Foreign Secretary saying Porton Down told him it was Russian (“absolutely categorical”) And here’s the UK Foreign Office disappearing the statement: We never said Porton Down confirmed the origin. It’s rare to get such a quick exposure of a lie, so it’s useful to have this example. Here is an obvious fake from Bellingcat. Already the Douma story is being re-polished now that the OPCW has said no organophosphates.

Most of the time it takes years to reveal the lie: gaslighters know the details will be forgotten while the impression remains. 64 years later we learn the “conspiracy theorists” were right about the CIA/UK involvement in the Iran coup. It’s rather amazing how many people still believe the proven liars this time around.

They use what is near and dear to you as ammunition.

Russians cheat at the sports you follow, scatter nerve agents and radioactive material in places you could be in, sneak into the voting booth with you, blow up airplanes you might be on and tear up the “very fabric of our democracy.” Your favourite actor tells you “we are at war with Russia“.

And the children! The boy on the beach. The boy in the ambulance. Bana from Aleppo. Miraculous recoveries. Dramatic rescues with camera! Dead children speaking. And finally, the little girl, Trump and the Time cover.

If it’s a child, they’re gaslighting you.

They wear you down over time.

Skripal story fading? How about a CW attack in Syria? No? Back to MH17: same story with one new obviously suspicious detail. Pussy Riot is forgotten and Pavlenskiy an embarrassment, but “Russian bear in Moscow World Cup parade video sparks PETA outrage“! This is what is known as a Gish Gallop: the gaslighter makes 47 assertions, while you’re thinking about the first, he makes 20 more: in former times it was recognised by the the folk saying that “a fool can ask more questions than ten wise men can answer”. But the fools quickly come up with more: dead dogs in Russia: without tuk-tuks, with tuk-tuks; your choice.

You are worn down by ten new fake outrages every month: all expressed in simplistic terms. How much context is stuffed into this imbecilic headline? The Plot Against Europe: Putin, Hungary and Russia’s New Iron Curtain. How many thousand words, how many hours to discuss it intelligently? Too late! Time for “Trump and Putin’s Too-Friendly Summit” (NYT 28 June). Forget that! “Sexism at Russia World Cup the worst in history as female fans and broadcasters are harassed“. (Telegraph 30 June). Gone! “We already gave Syria to Putin, so what’s left for Trump to say?” (WaPo 5 July) Stop wondering! “Amesbury poisoning: Here’s what we know about the novichok victims” (Sky News 6 July). No! Trumputin again! “Will Trump Be Meeting With His Counterpart — Or His Handler?” (NY Mag 8 July). Gish Gallop. The sheer volume of easily-made accusations forces two conclusions: they’re right and you’re wrong (smoke: fire) or, more simply, eventually you – you crazy one! – give up.

Their actions do not match their words.

They bomb hospitals on purpose, we bomb them by accident. Discussed further here but the essence of the point is that

it would be physically impossible for Russia to be more destructive than NATO is.

If you want a single word to summarize American war-making in this last decade and a half, I would suggest rubble.

They throw in positive reinforcement to confuse you.

There are direct rewards of course: cue Udo Ulfkotte; many benefits to swimming with the stream; swimming the other way, not so many. It’s only after they retire that British generals question the story, the cynic observes. German generals too. Maybe even US generals.

But for the rest of us, NATO bathes us in gush: “NATO’s Enduring Mission – Defending Values, Together”. Together, our values: we – you and I – have the good values. NATO loves to praise itself “the Alliance also contributes to peace and stability through crisis management operations and partnerships.” Remember Libya? “A model intervention” said the NATO GenSek of the time. Here is the view on the ground. Most of the “migrants” tearing Europe apart are fleeing the destruction of NATO’s wars. NATO backs (plus/minus minions) the intervention in Mali, a country destabilised by its destruction of Libya. Cue the positive reinforcement: “Projecting Stability: an agenda for action“. In NATOland the gaslight burns bright: “Nato chief: Vladimir Putin ‘weaponising’ refugee crisis to ‘break’ Europe“. NATO keeps pouring butterscotch sauce on the rubble: “NATO is based on some core values – democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty” (25 June).

All I can say, over and over again, is Libya. NATO destroyed Libya, weird as it was, killed Qaddafi, weird as he was, and smugly congratulated itself: “NATO’s Victory in Libya: The Right Way to Run an Intervention“. Ubi solitudinum faciunt pacem appelant. But should that thought occur to you, you’re part of “Russia’s secret plan to destroy EU and NATO“.

They know confusion weakens people.

Remember PropOrNot? Sites that do not agree with the Establishment are Russian bots! Authenticated experts! 100% reliable! The WaPo published the list; when under attack even from proponents of the Putindunnit hysteria, it feebly backtracked: it “does not itself vouch for the validity”. Vermont power grid hack? WaPo fell for that one too. Confusion from the endless Gish Gallop about Putin: in December 2015 I compiled a number: Aspergers, pychopath, slouching and on and on and on.

You may be confused but the gaslighter isn’t: Russia’s to blame for whatever-it-was!

They project.

NATO projects all the time and this headline from the NYT is classic: “Russia’s Military Drills Near NATO Border Raise Fears of Aggression“. I discuss NATO’s projection here.

They try to align people against you.

NATO exerts a continual pressure for unanimity. Again, the Skripal story is a good example: London accused Russia and, “in solidarity“, Russian diplomats were expelled all over the world. Allies took its word for it. Now the doubts: in Germany especially. Sanctions must be imposed on Russia because we must be in solidarity with Kiev. “Solidarity” on migrants. “Solidarity” is perhaps the greatest virtue in NATOland. We will hear more pleas for solidarity as NATO dies: when mere “solidarity” is the only reason left; there’s no reason left.

They tell you or others that you are crazy.

It also must be said that when elected officials — including members of Congress — and media platforms amplify propaganda disseminated by Russian trolls, they are aiding the Russians in their efforts.

The goal is to undermine democracy. So you want America to look unstable and Americans not to trust each other.

How Russian Trolls Won American Hearts and Minds

An “existential threat posed by digitally accelerated disinformation“. So no forgiveness to you, crazy Putin trolls. And don’t dare doubt that American democracy is so feeble that it can be directed by a few Facebook ads. Never forget that NATO’s opponents are crazy: Putin is a “madman“; Qaddafi was “crazy“; Saddam Hussein “insane“; Milosevic “rabid“. Only crazy people would defend crazy people.

They tell you everyone else is a liar

Honest people don’t have to tell you they’re trustworthy, and neither, once upon a time, did the BBC. The Atlantic Council smoothly moves from “Why Is the Kremlin So Fixated on Phantom Fascists?” in May 2017 to “Ukraine’s Got a Real Problem with Far-Right Violence (And No, RT Didn’t Write This Headline)” in June 2018. But it still calls Russia the liar: “Why the Kremlin’s Lies Stick” (May 2018). The Atlantic Council hopes you’re dumb enough not to notice that Russia hasn’t changed its line but the gaslighters have. (Remember O’Brien and two plus two?)

Russian Federation is not the USSR

I said it the last time: the USSR did lots of things in its time – influencing, fiddling elections, fake news, gaslighting and so on. But, in those days the Communist Party was the “leading and guiding force” but today it’s the opposition. Things have changed in Moscow, but NATO rolls on.

Some hope, though

While many people are still taken in by the gaslighters, there are hopeful signs. Once upon a time Internet versions of the mass media allowed comments. Gradually, one by one, they shut down their comments sections because of “trolls”, “fake news” and offended “standards” but really because of disagreement. Perhaps the most famous case is that of the Guardian: an entire website, has been created by people whose comments were rejected because they violated “community standards”. I always read the comments in the Daily Mail, especially the best rated, and on the Skripal stories, the comments are very sceptical indeed of the official story. For example.

This is rather encouraging: for gaslighting really to work, the gaslighter either has to be in such a position of power that he can completely control the victim’s surroundings or in such a position of authority that the victim cannot imagine doubting what he says. Those days are gone.

PSYCHOANALYSING NATO: PROJECTION

On By Patrick ArmstrongIn ACCUSATIONS, NATO, PROPAGANDA, LIES AND NONSENSE, WAR ON RUSSIA

First published at Strategic Culture Foundation 3 July 2018

Picked up by SOTT; South Front; ZeroHedge; JRL/2018/122/31; Straight Line Logic; BizNewsIndex; AstuteNews; BrasilNoMundo; Internationalist 360º

 

 

“NATO” can be a rather elusive concept: Libya was a NATO operation, even though Germany kept out of it. Somalia was not a NATO operation even though Germany was in it. Canada, a founding NATO member, was in Afghanistan but not in Iraq. Some interventions are NATO, others aren’t. But it doesn’t really mean much because NATO is only a box of spare parts out of which Washington assembles “coalitions of the willing”. So it’s easier for me to write “NATO” than “Washington plus/minus these or those minions”.

We are told – incessantly – that Putin is “Winning the Information War“, “We have no counterattack to Russia’s information warfare“. Nonsense. The real information war is being conducted by the British Army’s “77th Brigade“, the soldiers of Fort Bragg, NATO’s Centre of Excellence in Tallinn. Or by the BBC, RFE/RL, Deutsch Welle, AFP et al; each of whose budgets is many multiples of RT’s. They manipulate; they dominate; they predate; Moscow is a minor newcomer.

I am not a psychiatrist, psychologist or any other kind of psychist, but I cannot fail to notice the projection and gaslighting practised by Washington and its minions. They accuse Russia of doing things that they actually do – projection – and they manipulate our perception of reality – gaslighting. I will discuss gaslighting in the next essay.

Wikipedia defines projection as

Psychological projection is a theory in psychology in which humans defend themselves against their own unconscious impulses or qualities (both positive and negative) by denying their existence in themselves while attributing them to others. For example, a person who is habitually intolerant may constantly accuse other people of being intolerant. It incorporates blame shifting.

Another source calls it a “defence mechanism”:

Psychological projection involves projecting undesirable feelings or emotions onto someone else, rather than admitting to or dealing with the unwanted feelings.

Interference: Russia! Russia! But NATO actually does it.

Russia, we are told, interfered in the US presidential election. And Brexit, and France, and Germany, Hungary, Greece, populism, and and and. The American story has metamorphosed from its initial version which was supposed to have been an attempt to elect Trump into an attempt to sow division in US society. The NYT attempts to explain how both stories fit together. The absurdity of the charge was shown when the 3500 or so Facebook ads paid for by the so-called Internet Research Agency were revealed: they were all over the place. Even more amusingly, Mueller, who no doubt thought he was safe to indict a Russian company, is trying to get out of having to prove it now that the company’s lawyers have shown up. If the matter ever does come to trial it will likely show that the whole operation was a scam designed to create interest groups to sell advertising to. (Which would explain why the majority of the ads appeared after the election: the election was the bait to create the groups.)

This is projection at its most obvious: the USA is by far the world champion at interfering in other people’s elections. No less an Establishment outlet than the Washington Post (one of the principals in sustaining Putindunnit hysteria) listed many in: “The long history of the U.S. interfering with elections elsewhere“; but piously insisted “the days of its worst behavior are long behind it”.

A quick diversion from the sordid reality of the rigged Democratic Party nomination – “don’t blame us for doing it, blame Russia for revealing it!” – attributed to Russia what it denied in itself. The actual interference, we now learn, was not by Russia on the outside but by, among others, FBI officials on the inside.

A textbook illustration of blame shifting, isn’t it?

The Russian threat NATO created

NATO expansion is all projection: NATO expands to meet the threat its expansion creates. NATO justifies itself by pretending to solve the problems it creates: Canada/Libya leads to Libya/Mali leads to Canada/Mali. When the documents about the broken expansion promise were published, we saw that NATO’s own “false memory syndrome” had been projected onto Moscow.

This NYT headline from last year perfectly shifts the blame: “Russia’s Military Drills Near NATO Border Raise Fears of Aggression“.

NATO blames Russia when its fake news fails

Does anyone remember Gay Girl in Damascus tweeting about the horrors of life in Syria under Assad? Not gay, not girl, not Damascus. How about Sarah Abdallah, who, the BBC tells us is “a mysterious and possibly fictitious social media celebrity [who] tweets constant pro-Russia and pro-Assad messages“. But she actually exists. But the champion of champions is surely Bana from Aleppo whose English abilities declined so dramatically when she got out (and few wondered how, in a destroyed city, her Internet service could be so good). Aleppo has mostly disappeared from the West’s news outlets but here is AFP’s coverage a year later (a less NATOcentric view here). Even with the obligatory propaganda twists – “pro-regime residents back on the streets” – it’s obviously a better place after the “Assad regime” reclaimed it than it was when Bana wanted to start World War III. Believing Gay Girl, believing Bana, denigrating Sara is projection: because projectors live in a world of falsehood, they assume that everything they do not fake themselves must be faked by someone else.

And we’re still waiting for Kerry’s “we observed it”, a coherent Skripal story (here’s one but it’s not the authorities’), actual evidence of the Russian “invasion” and many other things that we were told were anything but “fake news”. Believing NATO’s stories requires crimestop: if you doubt 76 missiles hit this site (here’s just one), then you must be a Russian troll or a victim of Russian fake news.

Don’t look here, look there: our fakery is real, their reality is fake.

Russia challenges the ideas NATO puts in your head

The concern over Russia’s influence in the West has grown considerably in the past few years, particularly the Russian regime’s use of information technologies to malign unfriendly Western politicians and undermine the Western public’s faith in democracy.

Russian bots everywhere influencing, dividing, affecting. But the real bots are NATO’s: from Operation Mockingbird in the 1950s, through Udo Ulfkotte’s Bought Journalists to today:

The 1,200-strong psychological operations unit based at Fort Bragg turns out what its officers call ‘truthful messages’ to support the United States government’s objectives, though its commander acknowledges that those stories are one-sided and their American sponsorship is hidden. (New Yorker, December 2005).

Our vision is to be the main source of expertise in the field of cooperative cyber defence by accumulating, creating, and disseminating knowledge in related matters within NATO, NATO nations and partners. (NATO, October 2008)

A contest to re-design the USAF Cyberwarrior Badge (2010)

Three years later the accusations have not been substantiated, but they have served their purpose nonetheless: NATO dispatched cyber warfare experts to Estonia shortly after the events of 2007 and on May 14, 2008 the military bloc established what it calls the Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (CCD COE) in the nation’s capital of Tallin. (2010)

The British army is creating a special force of Facebook warriors, skilled in psychological operations and use of social media to engage in unconventional warfare in the information age. (Guardian, January 2015)

Members of the Military Information Support Task Force-Central influence and persuade targets or intended audiences within the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility to reject those enemy narratives and violent extremist ideologies in order to establish conditions for long-term regional stability. (CENTCOM, April 2017).

The Army announced on Wednesday (Nov. 29) that a team of its researchers would work alongside scientists from Ukraine and Bulgaria to ‘understand and ultimately combat disinformation attacks in cyberspace. (November, 2017)

Clearly NATO is projecting what it is actually doing onto Russia.

“Hybrid war” was invented by the Russian who’s reacting to it

In 2014 NATO worried about “hybrid war”, apparently something Russia practised. This writer tells us it is sometimes called the “Gerasimov doctrine” after an article written in 2013 (note the date) by the Chief of the Russian General Staff.

According to Gerasimov, the lessons of the Arab Spring are that if the ‘rules of war’ have changed, the consequences have not – the results of the ‘colored revolutions’ are that a ‘thriving state can, in a matter of months and even days, be transformed into an arena of fierce armed conflict, become a victim of foreign intervention and sink into a web of chaos, humanitarian catastrophe and civil war.’

In short the theoretical foundation of this supposedly amazing, tricky, sinister and almost invisible Russian way of waging war originates in a paper written about Western-inspired “colour revolutions”. Like the 2003 Rose Revolution in Georgia (ten years before Gerasimov’s paper), the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine (nine), the 2005 Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan (eight). Once upon a time to get rid of a ruler you didn’t like, you invaded his country and, months later, fished him out of a hole and hanged him. But it’s much cheaper to invest money ($5 billion in Ukraine we are told) to organise protests and overthrow him. And, as we have seen in Ukraine, sometimes it becomes a real shooting war, with real dead bodies and entrails. Sometimes the one thing, sometimes the other; but it’s all conflict, and it’s all “hybrid”. It’s “hybrid” because it uses many methods to bring about the desired regime change: propaganda, manipulation, protest and, occasionally, a little judicious bombing or sniping.

So how ironic – how “hybrid” – to accuse Gerasimov of inventing something that began years earlier. His so-called textbook of Russian “hybrid war” is actually a response to the real “hybrid war” that Washington practises.

Projection: accusing Russia of doing what you are actually doing.

We bomb hospitals by mistake, Putin does it on purpose

Putin and Assad mercilessly bombed Aleppo – we heard about it for months. “Carpet bombing“. “War crimes“. The boy in the ambulance. Humanitarian convoys intentionally hit (although Bellingcat has become sloppy with his faked evidence). The implication was that Russia just threw lots of bombs around while NATO was precise, surgical.

We heard rather less about Mosul or Raqqa. Although that may change: even the managed Western media/human rights apparat has noticed the stunning, indiscriminate destruction.

Islamic State fighters have now essentially been defeated in Mosul after a nine-month, US-backed campaign that destroyed significant parts of Iraq’s second largest city, killing up to 40,000 civilians and forcing as many as one million more people from their homes.

In Raqqa: 20,000 bombs, 30,000 artillery rounds, altogether, about one per five pre-war occupants! Amnesty International condemned the NATO bombing of Raqqa: “we witnessed a level of destruction comparable to anything we’ve seen“.

But, as “The Persistent Myth of US Precision Bombing” shows, the US military has always pretended “surgical precision” while scattering prodigious numbers of bombs. “America has no idea how many innocent people it’s killing in the Middle East” said the Independent in 2017. Even the Establishment-friendly NYT concluded that the US military greatly understated the number of civilians it kills – reporting maybe as few as 4%! At least eight wedding parties. But the quantity of bombs dropped makes a mockery of “precision”: by its own count 114,000 weapons since 2013 on Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. Who can believe there are a hundred thousand pinpoint targets in those countries? “The detonation of the bombs as they hit the ground appears to be pretty huge.” In Afghanistan the USAF is now bombing to “shape the terrain” – geological bombing.

If you want a single word to summarize American war-making in this last decade and a half, I would suggest rubble.

A tour through the rubble in Mosul.

To say nothing of the sustained destruction of a clearly marked and identified hospital in Afghanistan. (A mistake, for which no one was punished.)

Projection again: don’t look here, look over there.

Russian Federation is not the USSR

The USSR did lots of things in its time – influencing, fiddling elections, regime changes, fake news, projection and so on. But the Communist Party was the “leading and guiding force” in those days; today it’s the opposition; the Comintern is gone but Mockingbird is not. Things have changed in Moscow, but NATO rolls on.

Which, when you think of it, is the problem.

If NATO accuses Russia of something, NATO is actually doing it

I leave you with this simple rule of thumb:

Every time NATO accuses Russia of doing something

you know it’s doing it itself.

And reflect on this: NATO and its propaganda minions are so unimaginative that they cannot imagine Russia doing anything but what they are doing. That’s why they are surprised all the time.