A Blatant Case of Groupthink

 

"Participants in those critical decisions, Janis found, had failed to consider the full range of alternatives or consult experts who could offer different perspectives. They rejected outside information and opinion unless it supported their preferred policy. And the harsher the preferred policy -- the more likely it was to involve moral dilemma -- the more zealously members clung to their consensus " (Kathrin Lassila,Yale University)

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Nato's latest folly is its readiness to accept 2 new members, Finland and Sweden, from northern Europe. In today's world, it appears American neoconservatives cannot accept the institution of neutrality when it comes to fighting countries like Russia or China. All westernised countries have to line up behind the US, as Nato's leader, and share into its outlandish plans.

This time around the issue is not the invasion of Afghanistan or Iraq, and not even the present war effort in Ukraine. The obsession of the neocons is bringing down the current regime in Russia. This is why another round of Nato expansion is underway, not because it makes any strategic sense whatsoever. It is hoped that by expanding Nato to Sweden and Finland and by encircling Russia completely, the Russian people could be persuaded to oust Vladimir Putin and cease their resistance to American global hegemonism. This, to be sure, is not a military objective but a highly political one. Using Nato to achieve this goal only illustrates how toxic this alliance has become for the world as a whole.

Nato and G7's latest decisions concerning the war in Ukraine clearly indicate that Western decision-making is afflicted by groupthink. Groupthink has been known to lead to serious and sometimes catastrophic policy errors. Given the current strategic situation, trying to use Ukrainians to push back the Russian army and to regain lost territories like Crimea and Donbas is not only unreasonable, but also extremely dangerous from a military point of view. In the groupthink dynamic afflicting western policymaking, especially at Nato level, it's the American neoconservatives imposing the decisions, with all other western political and military leaders having to comply, however dangerous the outcome might be. 

In fact, promoting the fall of the current Kremlin government - taking into account the unresolved situation in Ukraine - would most probably bring to power a military regime in Russia. Such a change would not in any way favour the western alliance, I would say quite on the contrary. In that case, the war in Ukraine could only intensify and there would be a clear danger that the conflict would expand into neighbouring countries currently assisting Kiev with weapons and humanitarian aid. In other words, when it comes to regime change in Moscow, western leaders will be well advised to be careful what they wish for. Their decisions might have exactly the opposite result to what they intended, that is bringing Russia to its knees.

This is not to say that Vladimir Putin cannot do more to bring the war in Ukraine to an end. As no one in the West or in Ukraine has the slightest interest in restoring peace, the ranks of the Russian army fighting in Ukraine should probably be beefed up to the level required in order to bring the military conflict to a successful conclusion. This, in my view, is unavoidable, however regrettable it might be for Russians, Ukrainians and their families.

On the G8 and NATO

 In the spring of 1997 during my lobbying activity to foreign chancelleries, I was very preoccupied with the need to create an appropriate institutional framework for the transition from a bipolar to a multipolar world. American neoconservatives and NATO had other plans, however. If they wanted Russia as an enemy, well ... now they got it.

In the spring of 1997, I came up with the idea of ​​recommending to the Clinton administration the inclusion of Russia in the G7, a proposal that was accepted by the Americans. Thus, in June 1997 the G7 became G8 with Russia as a member.

My geopolitical suggestion was based on solid economic reasons, but also on the fact that Russia felt immense frustration with its international status after the disappearance of the bipolar world. Between 1995 and 1997 I participated in a series of international conferences organized by EuroForum or IBC (two London companies) in Bucharest, Prague and London on the transition of Eastern European states to a market economy and the necessary reforms. On those occasions, I was able to see the dissatisfaction of the Russians with the way this process was evolving in their country, but also with the uncertain status of the new Russia internationally.

Unfortunately  at the time , the West had not yet framed a coherent post-1989 foreign policy, so as to give the Russians the feeling that they had not become a third-hand power, as many US or EU political actors would have liked. The fact that my proposal was accepted proves that at that time the Clinton administration had not yet come to be dominated by neoconservatives, the artisans behind American unipolarity, that was inaugurated by President GW Bush after the 2001 terrorist attack.

In the end, Russia was arbitrarily reduced - at the instigation of the neoconservatives - to the status of a big state with an oil pump ( Nina Khrushcheva ) and was removed from the G8 in 2014, after it annexed the Crimean peninsula.

In the summer of 1997, I also sent a lobby letter to then-US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in support of Romania's NATO membership. My motivation was by no means anti-Russian. At that time, the country was in a dire economic situation, failing to attract - like the Czech Republic, Hungary or Poland - foreign investors to take over large bankrupt companies in Romania. It was only years later that I realised that the military goal of the alliance had really become that of encircling Russia, and it never crossed my mind in 1997 that NATO would accept the Baltic states in 2004 as members of the alliance. ..

Certainly at that time, I did not grasp that I was trying to gain Romania's accession to a politico-military alliance, NATO, which would become responsible two decades later for the outbreak of hostilities heralding World War III, because this is the phase which we are all in after the events of 2014 in Ukraine. Mea maxima culpa !