NATO

NATO Expansion What Gorbachev Heard National Security Archive
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Washington D.C., December 12, 2017 – U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s famous “not one inch eastward” assurance about NATO expansion in his meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990, was part of a cascade of assurances about Soviet security given by Western leaders to Gorbachev and other Soviet officials throughout the process of German unification in 1990 and on into 1991, according to declassified U.S., Soviet, German, British and French documents posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University (http://nsarchive.gwu.edu).
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Mikhail Gorbachev was lied to by murderous thugs.

 

NATO ex Wiki
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is an intergovernmental military alliance based on the North Atlantic Treaty which was signed on 4 April 1949. The organization constitutes a system of collective defence whereby its member states agree to mutual defense in response to an attack by any external party. NATO's headquarters are in Brussels, Belgium, one of the 28 member states across North America and Europe, the newest of which, Albania and Croatia, joined in April 2009. An additional 22 countries participate in NATO's Partnership for Peace program, with 15 other countries involved in institutionalized dialogue programmes. The combined military spending of all NATO members constitutes over 70% of the global total.^[4] Members' defense spending is supposed to amount to 2% of GDP.^[5]

NATO was little more than a political association until the Korean War galvanized the organization's member states, and an integrated military structure was built up under the direction of two U.S. supreme commanders. The course of the Cold War led to a rivalry with nations of the Warsaw Pact, which formed in 1955. Doubts over the strength of the relationship between the European states and the United States ebbed and flowed, along with doubts over the credibility of the NATO defence against a prospective Soviet invasion—doubts that led to the development of the independent French nuclear deterrent and the withdrawal of the French from NATO's military structure in 1966 for 30 years. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the organization was drawn into the breakup of Yugoslavia, and conducted its first military interventions in Bosnia from 1992 to 1995 and later Yugoslavia in 1999. Politically, the organization sought better relations with former Warsaw Pact countries, several of which joined the alliance in 1999 and 2004.

Article 5 of the North Atlantic treaty, requiring member states to come to the aid of any member state subject to an armed attack, was invoked for the first and only time after the 11 September 2001 attacks,^[6] after which troops were deployed to Afghanistan under the NATO-led ISAF. The organization has operated a range of additional roles since then, including sending trainers to Iraq, assisting in counter-piracy operations^[7] and in 2011 enforcing a no-fly zone over Libya in accordance with U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973. The less potent Article 4, which merely invokes consultation among NATO members, has been invoked four times: by Turkey in 2003 over the Iraq War, twice in 2012 by Turkey over the Syrian Civil War after the downing of an unarmed Turkish F-4 reconnaissance jet and after a mortar was fired at Turkey from Syria^[8] and by Poland in 2014 following the Russian intervention in Crimea.^[9]

 

NATO Propaganda Failing In Germany [  5 May 2014 ]
Germans have been abused for following naughty Adolf. They have been robbed by the Holocaust® Racketeers - see e.g. Jews With Light Fingers Took Germans For €63.2 Billion. Now they are not falling for the new Cold War being set up by NATO, the wonderful people who invaded Yugoslavia [ Why? ], Bosnia, [ Why? ], Afghanistan [ Why? ], Iraq [ Oil for Israel! ].

The Main Stream Media feed us the Propaganda, e.g. the entirely fraudulent fuss about Pussy Riot. One Russian alleged that Vladimir Putin is the best ruler they have had since Peter the Great. Was he wrong?

 

NATO Is Preparing To Start World War III Against Russia [ 11 July 2016 ]
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Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev has accused NATO of preparing for a “hot” war against Russia and says rhetoric from alliance’s leaders is pushing the two sides toward a military confrontation............

His comments came as NATO leaders met in Warsaw for the final day of a summit, where the alliance endorsed a new major deployment of armed forces to Eastern Europe that Moscow has fiercely criticized.
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Is it sabre rattling or worse? Western politicians are corrupt and vicious, controlled by the Puppet Masters, the Zionist crazies who run Israel. That is why they are making war on Arab countries that Jews don't like. This is not to say that Gorbachev is not bad news too.

 

Is a Coming NATO Crisis Inevitable Asks Pat Buchanan [ 13 July 2018 ]
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Of President Donald Trump’s explosion at Angela Merkel’s Germany during the NATO summit, it needs to be said: It is long past time we raised our voices.

America pays more for NATO, an alliance created 69 years ago to defend Europe, than do the Europeans. And as Europe free-rides off our defense effort, the EU runs trade surpluses at our expense that exceed $100 billion a year.

To Trump, and not only to him, we are being used, gouged, by rich nations we defend, while they skimp on their own defense.

At Brussels, Trump had a new beef with the Germans, though similar problems date back to the Reagan era. Now we see the Germans, Trump raged, whom we are protecting from Russia, collaborating with Russia and deepening their dependence on Russian natural gas by jointly building the Nord Stream 2 pipeline under the Baltic Sea. When completed, this pipeline will leave Germany and Europe even more deeply reliant on Russia for their energy needs.

To Trump, this makes no sense. While we pay the lion’s share of the cost of Germany’s defense, Germany, he said in Brussels, is becoming “a captive of Russia.”

Impolitic? Perhaps. But is Trump wrong? While much of what he says enrages Western elites, does not much of it need saying?
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Bigger armies make sense.; If you want peace prepare for war. But Brer Hun has been free loading for too long.

 

A Former Head Of The Foreign Office On What Putin Wants ex Prospect Magazine  [ 25 February  2022 ]
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The Russian president is using Ukraine to re-open the post-Cold War settlement
By Peter Ricketts
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine takes Europe back to the darkest days of the 20th century. Putin has embarked on a course that will cause terrible suffering in Ukraine, and ought to leave Russia a pariah state, barred from international exchanges from financial markets to football. It also poses a fundamental threat to the system of international rules that has avoided wars between major powers for 75 years and allowed the world an unprecedented period of growth. In addition to responding to the immediate crisis, the US, Britain and the EU will face searching questions about their national security priorities.

Two decades ago, things were very different between Nato and Russia. In 2002 Silvio Berlusconi, the party-loving former Italian prime minister, hosted the first ever Nato-Russia summit at an air base outside Rome. A vast hangar was commandeered for the meeting, lavishly decorated with treasures from Italian museums. The mood was celebratory. The president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, seemed to bask in the attention of western leaders. The discussion on European security was amicable, and Putin signed a joint declaration that spoke of “opening a new page in our relations, aimed at enhancing our ability to work together in areas of common interest and to stand together against common threats.” On the flight home, Tony Blair was confident that he could develop a constructive relationship with Putin, who was duly feted in London on a state visit the following year.

The 2002 summit marked the high point of Nato-Russia relations. Why were these hopes disappointed? The answer involves very different memories of the immediate post-Cold War years. The generation that has grown up in the west since the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 takes it for granted that former member states of the Warsaw Pact are normal sovereign countries, pursuing their future embedded in Nato and the EU. Putin, however, has never really accepted the democratic transformation of eastern Europe—still less the rights of former key parts of the Soviet empire, such as Georgia and Ukraine, to choose their own future. As he has brooded on the perceived humiliations inflicted on Russia after 1989, his determination to roll back history has hardened and his paranoia about Nato has increased. His aim is nothing less than to re-open the post-Cold War settlement, with a buffer zone of client states around Russia’s western borders, a weakened Nato and real influence for Moscow over security arrangements in Europe as a whole.

It need not have come to this. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, western leaders were acutely conscious of the need to help Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin manage the peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union, but equally they were keen to welcome former members of the Warsaw Pact into the democratic community. Eastward expansion of Nato was always going to be a stumbling block for Moscow, and the record of what commitments were given or implied at the time is contested. Russian spokesmen often quote, as evidence of Nato’s bad faith, an undertaking given by US secretary of state James Baker to Gorbachev in early 1990 that “there would be no extension of Nato’s jurisdiction… one inch to the east.” But that was a comment made purely in the context of negotiations over the unification of Germany. Baker was referring to new Nato infrastructure in the old East Germany, and the re-unified Germany respected that commitment.

Scholars who have combed through the files are clear. There was never any Nato commitment not to expand to former member states of the Warsaw Pact, however much Russian leaders might wish it were so. Instead, Nato members made every effort to help Russia feel at home in the new Europe they were building. The vehicle for this was the 1997 Nato-Russia Founding Act, which committed both parties to “build together a lasting and inclusive peace in the Euro-Atlantic area on the principles of democracy and co-operative security,” adding that “Nato and Russia do not consider each other as adversaries.” They agreed to base their relations on a series of principles, including “respect for sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of all states and their inherent right to choose the means to ensure their own security.” The Founding Act was signed before Putin came to power, but he endorsed it at Berlusconi’s Rome summit, which also created a Nato-Russia Council. This was a forum where the ambassadors would meet to discuss common problems and, if possible, agree joint action.

The optimism of the Rome summit soon evaporated. The way in which the US and UK steamrollered the UN Security Council over the Iraq War in 2003 soured Moscow’s view of the west. When I arrived as UK ambassador to Nato later that year, the Russians had already lost interest in the Nato-Russia Council. They wanted the prestige of being treated as equal partners, but never used it as a problem-solving forum. As the years passed, Putin shifted increasingly to seeing Nato as the adversary and turned to military force to achieve his objectives. The occupation of parts of Georgia in 2008 ruined that country’s prospects of Nato membership. The 2014 intervention in Crimea and further into Ukraine evidently did not produce a sufficiently deferential government in Kiev.

While Putin has brooded on the “humiliations” inflicted on Russia after 1989, his paranoia about Nato has increased

The current massive assault on Ukraine is final confirmation of Putin’s dark vision of a continent divided once again into two antagonistic blocs. In responding to it, Germany and France led the camp of those in favour of continuing negotiations with Putin until the last possible moment. This approach has deep historical roots in both countries. Germany, with its strong pacifist streak and heavy dependence on Russian gas, has a natural preference for resolving disagreements through dialogue. French presidents since de Gaulle have prided themselves on their own channel to the Kremlin, separate from Washington. French and German leaders invested huge time and effort in negotiating with Russia and Ukraine after 2014 to produce the Minsk agreement. Although these failed to reduce tensions, the idea of resolving differences through patient dialogue appealed strongly to Paris and Berlin, and doing so directly with Moscow and Kiev seemed to fit with their ambitions to build European strategic autonomy.

For Britain, the emphasis from the start of the crisis was very different: a close partnership with Washington in seeking to deter Putin through arms supplies to Ukraine, troop deployments to frontline Nato countries and threats of draconian sanctions. This reflected the fact that London’s relations with Moscow were much more distant than those of other European countries since the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko in 2006 and then of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in 2018. While still in the EU, the UK pressed hard for sanctions on Russia after Putin’s first assault on Ukraine in 2014. Brexit has also made it politically expedient for London to favour Nato as the main forum for crisis management on Ukraine, since that is where it can exert the most influence.

It was right to try a dual-track strategy of diplomacy and deterrence. In practice, there was probably nothing the west could have done to deflect Putin from his determination to reduce Ukraine to a vassal state. But all concerned on the western side have some wider lessons to draw.

In Washington, the crisis has been a sharp reminder that the US still has security commitments in Europe, however much it would prefer to concentrate on the confrontation with China. Washington will need to sustain the priority it is now giving to Europe in terms of military reinforcements and political energy.

EU member states will have to steel themselves to living with a hostile Russia. That means increased defence spending, years of investment to reduce dependence on Russian energy and much tougher controls on Russian access to their markets and technology. For London, the need for closer co-operation with the EU is glaringly obvious. The government’s foot-dragging over publication of the parliamentary report into Russian interference in British politics in 2019, and its inertia in introducing the Economic Crime Bill to stop London being used as a safe haven for the corrupt fortunes of the Russian elite, now look very ill-judged. Action against Russian assets and influence now needs to match the rhetoric.

The essential message of the Ukraine crisis is that, for Putin, the security of Russia depends on the insecurity of its neighbours. It is now clear that he is determined to pursue this bleak doctrine to the bitter end. How extraordinary that the warped vision of one man could impose such a fate on his country—and our continent. He cannot be allowed to succeed.
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Ricketts was a senior Foreign Office wallah with a strangely shaped head. This is not definitive proof that he is a pinko poofter but it might be thought suggestive. He admits that NATO's eastward expansion was a bad idea but blames Vlad for taking the point. He is silent about American hostility to Russia & its commercial opposition to Russian Oil

He seems to have thought that the Russians were meddling in British elections & tried harassing Boris Johnson for that reason. See Legal action taken against PM over refusal to investigate Kremlin meddling Boris Johnson ex The Guardian for more and better details. Recall that Bill Clinton's old woman set up a major conspiracy, claiming that the Russians were helping Donald Trump to win the 2016 election. She has stayed out of prison for the moment; sad but true.

 

https://www.unz.com/article/truth-about-tanks-how-nato-lied-its-way-to-disaster-in-ukraine/

NATO Losing A War In The Ukraine
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Tank warfare has evolved. The large force-on-force armored battles that were the hallmark of much of WWII, the Arab-Israeli conflicts, which served as the foundation of operational doctrine for both NATO and the Soviet Union (and which was implemented in full by the United States during

Tank warfare has evolved. The large force-on-force armored battles that were the hallmark of much of WWII, the Arab-Israeli conflicts, which served as the foundation of operational doctrine for both NATO and the Soviet Union (and which was implemented in full by the United States during Operation Desert Storm in 1991), has run its course.

Like most military technological innovations, the ability to make a modern main battle tank survivable has been outstripped by the fielding of defensive systems designed to overcome such defenses. If a modern military force attempted to launch a large-scale tank-dominated attack against a well-equipped peer-level opponent armed with modern anti-tank missiles, the result would be a decisive defeat for the attacking party marked by the smoking hulks of burned-out tanks.

Don’t get me wrong: tanks still have a vital role to play on the modern battlefield. Their status as a mobile bunker is invaluable in the kind of meat-grinder conflicts of attrition that have come to define the current stage of large-scale ground combat. Speed and armor still contribute to survivability, and the main gun of a tank remains one of the deadliest weapons on the modern battlefield.

But the modern tank performs best as part of a combined arms team, supported by infantry (mounted and unmounted) and copious amounts of supporting arms (artillery and close air support.) As part of such a team, especially one that is well-trained in the art of close combat, the tank remains an essential weapon of war. However, if operated in isolation, a tank is simply an expensive mobile coffin.....................

The truth about tanks is that NATO and its allied nations are making Ukraine weaker, not stronger, by providing them with military systems that are overly complicated to operate, extraordinarily difficult to maintain, and impossible to survive unless employed in a cogent manner while supported by extensive combined arms partners.

The decision to provide Ukraine with Western main battle tanks is, literally, a suicide pact, something those who claim they are looking out for the best interests of Ukraine should consider before it is too late.
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Tanks are big, expensive, unreliable, complicated and effective. But they need expert handling and support. The Ukraine has been weakened & NATO is a Boondoggle keeping American War Mongers off the dole.