FROM ATLANTIC WAVE TO REVOLUTIONARY CONTAGION

 

"  Palmer and Godechot presented the challenge of an Atlantic history at the Tenth International History Congress in 1955. It fell flat, dismissed by revolutionary historians as a poorly cloaked Cold War attempt to bolster NATO " 

Click here to read the full post:

Https://florianpantazi.substack.com/p/from-atlantic-wave-to-revolutionary. 

US IS PLAYING WITH ( NUCLEAR) FIRE

 

The US and NATO are fighting the wrong war in Ukraine. WWII nostalgia is evident in the preference of the CIA and Ukrainian services for clandestine operations, for sabotage missions inside Russia and for assassinating Vladimir Putin.  Unfortunately for the American strategists, Russia is not Nazi Germany, Putin is not Hitler and such tactics have the potential to ignite a nuclear war. Two things are clear, however : Putin is not bluffing and the Russian elite is very angry with the US and NATO.

 Stephen Bryen has recently published an article in Asia Times ,  describing how Western spy agencies led by the CIA,  present in large numbers in Ukraine, are hoping to provoke  regime change in Moscow by assassinating Vladimir Putin and other Russian political and military leaders.

According to Bryen ,  NATO cannot start a fully fledged conventional war with Russia due to the fact that after 2 years of war in Ukraine, the allies have emptied their weapons and ammunition depots. This , however, is no excuse for resorting to acts of state terrorism such as the assassination of leaders of the Russian military , a practice that will not solve the conflict, but make it exponentially worse. 

In doing this, the US's  international reputation as a superpower is reduced to that of the Islamic terrorist networks it fought with for the last two decades. In other words, the terrorist actions of American agencies may find a positive echo in the West, but not outside of it. The situation is not much different indeed from the actions of Islamic terrorist organizations  like Al Qaeda or ISIS,  which are appreciated only in the Islamic world, not outside of it.

If the CIA wants to have as dubious a reputation as Islamic terrorist networks, that's their business. For those in the know, however, the fact that the US and its allies resort to such terrorist actions is a clear indication - as in the case of Islamic terrorism - of their inability to wage a conventional war with Russia, having to resort to  asymmetric war strategies. To be sure, this is a sign of the alliance's weakness, not of its strength .

" Americans are impatient by nature. We want quick solutions, even to complex problems. That makes killing a foreign leader seem like a good way to end a war. Every time we have tried it, though, we’ve failed — whether or not the target falls. Morality and legality aside, it doesn’t work. Castro thrived on his ability to survive American plots. In the Congo, almost everything that has happened since Lumumba’s murder has been awful."  (  Stephen Kinder, Politico, 2022 )

 Theoretically speaking, the purpose of any foreign intelligence service is to protect abroad the interests of the state that finances it. It isn't to help launch missiles aimed at Putin's office or to attack his car, as it already happened in 2018 . Such reckless actions reminiscent of WWII - which did not work then and will not work now- have the potential to endanger the lives of millions. It is not clear how the CIA will be able to protect the inhabitants of New York or Washington from a nuclear attack by the Russians, in case the assassination of Russian leaders is successful. What will happen this time around to the buildings of the Pentagon, the White House or the financial center of New York if or when the Russians retaliate ? 

These  are questions that  should be answered by those responsible in an inquiry into the CIA's operations in Ukraine, which should be initiated by the US Congress. Anything less could lead to a catastrophe of unprecedented proportions in history .

A North Korean Blueprint for Romania's Future

 

If Romania's former dictator Ceaușescu wanted to emulate North Korea's dynastic communism, it now seems that his former secret police generals and their descendants wish to transform Romania into a North Korean-style militarised society. All this with NATO'S backing.

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For more than a year now, the second-in-command of NATO, Mircea Geoană, is being pushed forward by some circles in the American foreign policy establishment and in the affiliated Romanian media, as the best placed candidate to become president of Romania in the 2024 elections.

Mircea Geoană was a presidential candidate before. In 2009 he ran against incumbent president Băsescu and lost. His main qualification for being appointed ambassador to Washington, the boss of the Romanian Social Democrats or subsequently deputy Secretary-general of NATO was the fact that he is the son of Ceaușescu-era Securitate general Ioan Geoană. 

His ex- political boss Ion Iliescu, former president of Romania, said he considered Mircea Geoană as a "dimwit".

One can say many things about Ion Iliescu, but not that he isn't a shrewd judge of character. To illustrate this, here is the enlightening substance of an interview given by Geoană recently about his vision for Romania's future: 

"The only public institution that enjoys the respect and trust of Romanians is the Romanian Army. This is where we must start to rebuild(...) Investing in the army, in the military career, in modern equipment, represents more than a requirement of national security or obligations towards NATO, for which Romania acquits itself impeccably. It represents the support point for the historic Leap, which only a modern state can achieve", (Mircea Geoană.) 

Geoană sees Romania's future as a country full of army barracks, ammunition and weapons plants, manned by people thoroughly trained into military warfare or industrial arts. If during the 1980's Ceausescu wanted to inaugurate a local version of North Korean dynastic communism, Geoană -with his American and presumably with former secret police apparatchiks in Romania - now envisions the transformation of his country into a militarized society, similar, if not identical, to North Korea. 

Never mind that Romania has never been a military power before, or indeed ever wanted to become one. These development priorities, however, reflect the sad reality that in Romanian politics the American military-industrial complex and NATO are calling the shots.

Unfortunately, these "reconstruction plans" for Romania, drafted somewhere else, can succumb to the law of unintended consequences. The most obvious of such consequences that comes to mind is a militarised Romania that could easily turn back into a totalitarian state in the decades ahead and become a security threat to the entire region which surrounds it. This potential outcome of the 2024 presidential elections is not as far-fetched as it sounds. Last century, NATO was for decades known to support the dictatorial regime of general Franco in Spain. A fully militarised Romania would also complement nicely Zelensky's de facto dictatorship in Ukraine.

The “New Europe” Concept Revisited

The recent use of the “New Europe” label by American policymakers comes as no surprise, as US foreign policy has been hijacked a second time this century by neoconservatives. Unfortunately, what the neoconservatives have overlooked is the true " graveyard of empires" role played in the modern era by the nations from this area of Europe. Indeed, all the major European empires which attempted to dominate it , like Austria ,Germany or France, as well as outside powers like Russia or the Ottomans , imploded. Therefore there is no reason to believe that US domination of it will have a better fate than that of its other imperial predecessors.

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Since the start of Russia’s military operations in Ukraine in 2022, the discredited geopolitical concept known as  “New Europe” -launched in 2003 by the late Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld- has started being used again in American official narratives about Eastern Europe.

The concept “of New Europe” was coined by Rumsfeld after NATO’s leading allies in Europe -France and Germany- flatly refused to participate alongside the American and British troops in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. 

“New Europe” referred to ex-Soviet satellites like the Baltic states, Poland, Romania and even Bulgaria, which were supposed to be more pliant to NATO’s geostrategic objectives in Europe.

Already by 2003 after NATO’s bombing campaign in Serbia or the Iraq invasion, the alliance was thoroughly discredited as a peacekeeping organisation. In spite of Russian objections, however, NATO expanded eastwards and by 2008 at its Summit in Bucharest the Americans were talking about including Georgia and Ukraine into the alliance. Again, this objective was defeated by the opposition of the French and German leaders, who knew that the inclusion of Georgia and Ukraine in NATO would be an absolute red line for Moscow, as the then-US ambassador to Russia William Burns also warned his bosses in Washington.

20 years later the concept of “New Europe” has resurfaced again in American political discourse, a fact that should come as no surprise, since neoconservatives have hijacked American policy a second time, as they did during the George W Bush presidency. Now as then, neoconservative-inspired foreign policy has ignited a devastating military conflict, this time being fought on NATO’s behalf by Ukrainian proxies. 

Like in 2003, the Americans include in this group of countries they call “New Europe” almost all of the USSR’s former satellites in Central and Eastern Europe, from Czechia, Hungary and Slovakia to Poland, Romania and Bulgaria. What US policymakers have not mentioned to these new NATO members is the fact that they would simply substitute American hegemony to that of the Soviets without actually considering them -as it was the case between 1949 and 1989 with France, Italy or Germany- equal alliance partners on the European continent. 

To their discredit, Czech, Polish, Romanian and Bulgarian leaders have failed to realise that what took place was just a change in colonial masters: from the neighbouring USSR to the much more distant USA; from a land-based military superpower to a maritime superpower.

This confusion in the minds of Central and Eastern European political leaders has been fully exploited by the US, which convinced them to invest their countries’ hard-earned billions into American weaponry and to prepare for war with Russia, a war that -needless to say- is not about to happen. Thus, states in the region were persuaded to invest between 2.5% (Romania) to 4.5% of their GDP (Poland) in military hardware, with a view to getting American security guarantees against an enemy that does not plan to invade them anytime soon.

What American geostrategists fail to realise is that they have applied the New Europe label to the most anti-imperialist region of Europe. Accordingly, it is just a matter of time for ex-Soviet satellite countries to grasp that what has actually happened is just a change in colonial masters. When that takes place, the time-honoured anti-imperialist traditions of nations in the area will reassert themselves in a forceful way, jeopardising American plans to establish themselves as the new masters of Central and Eastern Europe.

Romania's Confused Geopolitics

 Starting with 1968, Romania's geopolitical situation and the foreign policy of the Romanian state stopped taking into account the country's historical ties and the geographical area it belongs to .This situation has changed unfortunately little since.

For a long period of time, the modern Romanian state had a policy of alliances that reflected the fact that the country's political elites had a very clear idea about Romania's actual enemies, its potential enemies and the states that could be of help in obtaining or defending its independence.

Until the end of the 19th century, the number one enemy of the newly created Romanian state was the Ottoman Empire, against which the Romanian army fought, alongside the Russian troops, to obtain its independence. Second on the list of Romania's enemies was, until its disappearance in 1918, the Austro-Hungarian empire.

After the union with Transylvania, Moldova and Bucovina in 1918 and the victory of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, the main enemy of Greater Romania became the USSR, a communist state that emerged from the ruins of the old Russian empire. This enmity, it is worth emphasising, did not have a historical or geopolitical basis, being of a purely ideological nature ( in fact, between 1934 and 1936 Titulescu negotiated with USSR's Litvinov a non-aggresion pact with the Soviet Union ). For the Romanian political class in the interwar period, however, Soviet communism represented a permanent and real threat, because the infiltration of Moscow's agents had the potential to undermine the stability of the Romanian state.

The second great enemy of Romania in the interwar period was Nazi Germany, which in 1938 imposed on Romania, through the Vienna Diktat, the cession of northwestern Transylvania to Hungary. The success of the Nazis in Vienna encouraged Stalin in 1940 to demand by means of an ultimatum the reunification of Moldova with the USSR.

Until 1937, Romania had a policy of regional alliances well thought out by the then foreign minister, Nicolae Titulescu. This is how the Little Entente appeared, a pact signed in 1920-21 between Romania, Czechoslovakia and the Kingdom of Serbo-Croatian-Slovenes directed against Austro-Hungarian revisionism and the Balkan Pact of 1934 between Greece, Romania, the Kingdom of Serbo-Croatian-Slovenian and Turkey.

In 1941, the first and perhaps the most serious geopolitical error occurred, when Marshal Antonescu - the head of the Romanian state at the time - decided to participate with a million soldiers in the Nazi invasion of the USSR, although the dictator Salazar of Portugal advised him, in a secret diplomatic communication, to opt for Romania's neutrality.

After the occupation of Romania în 1945 by the Red Army, the ally of the Romanian state became the USSR, together with all the member states of the Warsaw Treaty. This time, Romania had a collective enemy, Western Europe, represented militarily in the area by NATO, which appeared in 1949.

It is nevertheless remarkable that the communist regime in Bucharest managed to convince Moscow to withdraw its troops from Romania as early as 1958, 31 years before that happened in the other communist states from Central and South-Eastern Europe.

After 1968, the Ceaușescu regime opted for a bizarre geopolitical orientation, anti-Soviet but pro-Chinese and pro-American, a fact that largely isolated Romania from the other alliance partners from the Soviet bloc and contributed to strategic destabilization in the area. For the first time in Romania's history, the Romanian state sought economic and political support outside Europe, from countries on other continents, such as the USA or China, located thousands of kilometers away, but which in turn had a adversarial relationship with the USSR .

Even more curious was the 1976 affiliation of Romania to the Group of 77, promoter of a policy of non-alignment. Since the group had only Yugoslavs and Romanians as members in Europe, Romania was included in the group of Latin American states of the G77. Again, Romania's potential allies were countries from other continents, thousands of kilometers away from our area of ​​the world. In this context, it should also be mentioned the alliances of the Ceaușescu regime with countries from Africa or the Middle East, which betrayed the exaggerated great power ambitions of the Romanian dictator.

Unfortunately, the disappearance of the USSR in 1991 did not lead to a return to normal from a geopolitical point of view or to re-establishing Romania's traditional alliances. Romania's accession to NATO in 2003, an alliance led from a distance of 7000 km from Europe, by Washington , is a case in point. Becoming a member of this alliance did not contribute to the geopolitical stabilization of the area, or to more secure Romanian borders , as the war in Ukraine currently demonstrates, on the contrary. Sadly, although since 2007 Romania has become a European Union member, the EU has been systematically prevented by the US to build its own collective security structures.

VAROUFAKIS ABOUT NATO

 Yanis Varoufakis has recently published in Unherd an article highly critical of NATO's role in Europe.

In reality, NATO is the military arm of American imperialism in Europe, otherwise Washington would have no valid reason to pay for the "defense" of EU countries itself. Varoufakis is right, NATO isn't in Europe to promote or support liberal democracy, this is pure propaganda, as his testimony of the "colonels' dictatorship" in Greece from 1967 demonstrates .

NATO's real purpose is that of enforcing the hegemony of the US in Europe and, if possible, even beyond, in Eurasia. Unfortunately, most Western Europeans are not yet aware of the obsolete, zombie nature of NATO after 1989, because they have become victims of relentless US propaganda. NATO did not even help "liberate" the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. It was actually the Soviets who realised their time was up and who decided that their troops should return home.

In truth, it was not NATO military pressure that determined the Soviets to do so, but popular pressure from below in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. People in these countries demonstrated in 1989 in the streets against Soviet IMPERIALISM, against the artificial division of Europe, and not necessarily in favour of liberal democracy, as most Western pundits like to claim nowadays .

People from our area of Europe have only recently started to realise that the US has simply substituted its hegemony to that of the Soviets and they are not happy about it. As Central and Eastern Europe is historically the most anti-imperialistic region of Europe , what happened there after 1989 will backfire miserably against the US in the very near future.

THE POLITICS OF HALF-MEASURES

 A document  circulating in American conservative  foreign policy circles for some time now proposes a dormant NATO as a solution to the alliance's current crisis of credibility.

 Paradoxically, although the number of members of the alliance has increased recently, NATO's credibility as a peacekeeping force in Europe has all but evaporated.

According to the document, the burden of the EU's common defense would pass from the US to the Europeans, with the Americans only providing the continent's nuclear protection, the rest of the military obligations falling entirely to the Europeans.

In actual fact , the American nuclear umbrella is not even needed, as France can simply beef up its nuclear arsenal already at its disposal. Accordingly , we arrive at the logical conclusion that the proposal in question is meaningless, as it's generally the case with similar American proposals . In truth , NATO should not be sent "to sleep", but rather dissolved as an alliance .

Why NATO is now a zombie alliance

 With the exception of the Delian League and NATO, no other politico-military alliance has been kept operational after all its objectives were met. It is highly regrettable that the American political elite refuses to see NATO for what it really is: a zombie alliance that has become a menace to European and world peace.

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Ever since the first city-states appeared in ancient times, most countries felt compelled to enter into military and political alliances. The most common reason for doing so was that of deterring conquest by a more powerful state that would force them to lose their military and economic independence. Other alliances sought to maintain their members' political status quo and, especially in the modern era, to prevent the spread of liberalism in their lands (the Holy Alliance between 1815-1822; the Concert of Europe until  1914 ). Some European powers, during the 19th and 20th centuries, entered into alliances aimed at preventing the emergence of a single power as sole hegemon on the Continent.

The 20th century saw its fair share of political and military alliances, starting with the Triple Alliance between imperial Germany, Austro-Hungary and Italy, which was directed against British hegemony. This alliance was followed in 1904 by the Franco-British Entente, aimed at containing Germany's expansionist drive in Europe and Africa, and joined by Russia in 1905. With American help, this coalition of states succeeded in defeating imperial Germany during World War I. 

In 1940 a new alliance, the Tripartite Pact, was concluded between Nazi Germany, imperial Japan and fascist Italy, with the objectives of defeating Britain with its European and American allies and of establishing themselves as the new hegemonic world powers. In order to thwart their plans and subsequent military expansionism, the US entered into an alliance with Soviet Russia between 1941-1945, which Great Britain also joined. Known as the Allied Powers, the Americans, the Soviets and the British succeeded in decisively defeating Germany, Japan and Italy.

In the aftermath of World War II, the world became bi-polar and witnessed the ideological confrontation between the USSR with its allies from Central and Eastern Europe and the Western European powers, allied this time under the leadership of the United States.

In order to preserve the ideological status quo in Western and Central Europe and to prevent a potential military invasion by the USSR, the Americans inaugurated the NATO alliance in 1949, in which Germany was also included as a member. Soon thereafter the Soviets created their own alliance coordinated by Moscow, the Warsaw Pact, with all the satellite countries from Central and Eastern Europe which -after 1945 - had been forced to adopt the communist system of government and accept the presence of troops on their territories. 

By 1989 the Soviets decided that the military occupation of satellite countries and the enforcement of communist orthodoxy there had become counterproductive. Accordingly, they decided to call back their troops, to give up their political monopoly within the satellite countries of Central and Eastern Europe and to dissolve the Warsaw Pact. Furthermore, in 1991 the USSR imploded and the emerging Russia abandoned its centrally-planned economy, adopting a version of a market-oriented capitalist system.

Finding itself victorious against Soviet communism and having successfully prevented a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, the United States made the bizarre decision, however, to maintain the NATO alliance even after its objectives had been fully met. Moreover, although Russia ceased to be the military threat it had once been to Western Europe, NATO expanded eastwards in 2 waves, in 1997 and 2004, via the inclusion of former Soviet satellites (Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria) or territories (the Baltic States), to the great disquiet of Moscow. 

In truth, over the past 3 decades NATO has become a veritable zombie alliance, which is highly detrimental to most of its European allies and -since 2014- a menace to peace in Europe. Its planned expansion to Finland and Sweden cannot hide for long its true character or the need to replace it with a pan-EU security organisation, as consistently requested by France since the Iraq invasion of 2003.

In the 21st century new military and political alliances have appeared. In Eurasia the most important is the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), which includes China, Russia, four of the five Central Asian "stans" and India. The main focus of this alliance is that of preventing or defeating Islamic extremism or terrorism in the region.

A few years ago the Japanese, the US, Australia and India have agreed to create the Quad, an organisation aimed at containing China, which - like CENTO and SEATO before it - would not live up to its objectives. 

Finally, the Americans, the Australians and the British decided to form the AUKUS alliance two years ago, aimed at managing the decline of US hegemony and at preventing its members from being attacked or defeated militarily (after the dissolution of NATO it is highly likely that Canada will join it as well). AUKUS is, therefore, one of the few new security alliances that are highly cohesive internally and it has all the chances of becoming one of the leading security organisations of this century.

What is BRICS' Global Agenda ?

 BRICS is putting together the world's biggest balance of power mechanism to date.

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By now we all know who was the ‘godfather’ of BRICS. In 2001 as chief economist at Goldman Sachs, Jim O’Neill used the acronym BRIC in a research paper. At the time, grouping together Brazil, Russia, India and China made a lot of sense, as Western capitals were eager to invest in faster-growing developing economies. 

The launch of BRICS unfortunately coincided with the launch of America’s Athenian-styled informal empire, which aimed to become the sole global hegemon economically, politically and militarily. 

Such hubristic ambitions greatly alarmed most emerging economic powerhouses, like China and Brazil, as well as India and Russia. Two decades later, BRICS’ combined share of global GDP is already higher than that of the G7 nations. The US, the leader of G7 , has these days a share of only 16 percent of global GDP, a far cry from the 50 percent it enjoyed back in 1945. 

Undaunted, the Americans are willing to risk an all-out war with the leading members of BRICS, China and Russia, in the hope of clinging to the self-appointed position of global hegemon. With this objective in mind, the US is dragging along both G7 and the members of the NATO alliance, a fact which actually elevates the importance of BRICS even more, according to the same Jim O’Neill:

“I think if I go right back to my initial paper, I cannot believe how narrow-minded or naïve leaders in the G7 countries are. The whole idea that this group of seven “industrialised” or “more developed” or “earlier developed” countries can run the world is embarrassing. Because, first of all, their share of the world GDP has declined. Japan’s not shown any net increase in its GDP for 20 years. Italy virtually never grows. So, this idea that they are some kind of thing for the whole world to follow is erroneous.

And then on top of it, G7 is effectively a hostage to whatever Washington wants. So how do you solve the mammoth global issues of our time with just those guys ? I mean, it’s embarrassing and that’s quite depressing, because the whole reason why I created the BRICS was to suggest we needed a better form of global governance than the G7.” (interview in African Business, June 1st, 2023)

After more than 20 years, from an economic grouping meant to rival the G7, BRICS morphed into an alliance of countries determined to thwart, in any way possible, the US’ drive for global hegemony. 

Not too many experts are clear about this, and quite possibly not even most BRICS members realise the fact that they actually helped put together a classic, European-style balance of power mechanism, meant to contain and defeat America’s global leadership ambitions.

Sure, there are many differences and even frictions among the leading BRICS countries. These, however, do not interfere with the main item on the 

BRICS’ agenda, namely that of stopping American hegemonism in its tracks. 

This is the key to understanding why more than 20 countries on all continents have expressed a desire to join the group at the recent BRICS summit in Johannesburg. Tired of being bullied by the US and to have their sovereignty diminished, these aspiring countries have decided to side with the BRICS in its quest to contain and defeat America’s hegemonic designs. 

To be sure, the size of this balance of power mechanism put together by BRICS under own eyes is unprecedented as far as size goes and is global in scope, as well. It includes not only Russia and China – the world’s largest and the world’s most populous countries, but also leading countries from Africa and South America. 

With its great economic and human resources , BRICS is fully able - economically and militarily - to tilt the balance in favour of developing countries for good, and thus put a stop to the absurd hegemonic ambitions of the US and its Western allies.

Europe for Europeans

Two hundred years years ago, President Monroe asked the European powers of the time to stop interfering in the affairs of their former colonies, in the Americas. It is now time Europeans ask the US to reciprocate, in order for the EU to be able to build its own security architecture on the continent.

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In his speech before the US Congress on the 2nd of December 1823, US President Monroe outlined what has since become known the "America for Americans" doctrine:

"It is impossible that the allied powers should extend their political system to any portion of either continent without endangering our peace and happiness; nor can anyone believe that our southern brethren, if left to themselves, would adopt it of their own accord. It is equally impossible, therefore, that we should behold such interposition in any form with indifference. If we look to the comparative strength and resources of Spain and those new Governments, and their distance from each other, it must be obvious that she can never subdue them. It is still the true policy of the United States to leave the parties to themselves, in hope that other powers will pursue the same course..."

By and large, European powers heeded Monroe's call. Now it is  European leaders who need to call on the Americans to reciprocate and to dissolve the NATO alliance,  thus enabling European countries to make their own security arrangements.

At the end of the Cold War, German Foreign Minister Genscher, French President Mitterrand and Soviet leader Gorbachev fully expected NATO to be dismantled, as the Warsaw Pact was. They intended to create a new European security architecture, which would have included Russia, but excluded NATO and the United States. The project was rejected out of hand by American leaders, who decided to not only keep NATO going, but opted for its eastward expansion after the implosion of the USSR.

Since 1999, NATO ceased to be a guarantor of peace on the European continent. It started a series of wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and now, by proxy, in Ukraine.

As of two years ago, NATO even intends to drag European nations into military confrontations in the Indo-Pacific with China, a drive which leading European nations oppose. 

Although most leading IR specialists believe that the current war in Ukraine is a result of NATO's expansion, the fact remains that this is but a consequence of not dismantling NATO in 1991.

Accordingly, today's European leaders should collectively push for the dissolution of the Alliance and for its replacement by a collective security arrangement, not only autonomous but independent of the United States.

In truth, stopping NATO's expansion and the neutrality of Ukraine will not address the root cause of Europe's security woes and will not guarantee that Europe can become again a peaceful continent.

As matters now stand, European nations are captive to a military alliance  emulating  Athens' ancient Delian League, which has become toxic to most of its members. It is therefore not in the interest of Europeans to continue to be part of an alliance that has been redefined after 2000 as an instrument of American global hegemonism.

An Agenda for NATO's 2024 Washington Summit

"The most serious danger to the security of the world right now ? The United States itself. The United States has become the most profound source of instability and an uncertain exemplar of democracy." (Richard Haass, former President, Council on Foreign Relations, July 2023)

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It is not by accident that I decided to write this post on the national day of France. 

Since NATO's foundation, the French have always been ill-at-ease with the US' leadership style of the alliance. In 1949, 13 American senators were also opposed to its foundation. Senator Robert A Taft, the son of the 27th American president, William Taft, refused to vote in favour because 

: “If we undertake to arm all the nations around Russia from Norway on the north to Turkey on the south, and Russia sees itself ringed about gradually by so-called defensive arms from Norway and … Denmark to Turkey and Greece, it may form a different opinion. It may decide that the arming of western Europe, regardless of its present purpose, looks to an attack upon Russia. Its view may be unreasonable, and I think it is. But from the Russian standpoint it may not seem unreasonable…. How would we feel if Russia undertook to arm a country on our border; Mexico, for instance?”

To be sure, NATO's recent enlargement around the Baltic Sea cannot obscure the fact that this alliance has outlived its usefulness by some two decades and that it has, unfortunately, become the main war provocateur and a menace to global peace. 

No European expert or politician of note really believes that EU nations are under threat of invasion from Russia. By contrast, Russia has rightfully complained for years about NATO's expansion from Central Europe eastwards, to no avail. Its misgivings were proven prescient, as NATO has expanded right up to Russia's borders.

Since 1999, NATO has become an offensive alliance, as the wars in Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq and the bombing campaigns in Syria and Libya have demonstrated. Gone are the days when NATO tasked itself with preserving peace in Europe. Nowadays there is even talk of dragging European NATO allies into the Indo-Pacific, presumably to deter China from invading Taiwan. American policymakers cannot truly hope to enlist NATO's European allies to participate in a conflict with China: in 2003 the US was unable to convince them to take part in the invasion of Iraq - a much less dangerous adversary.

These are only a few reasons why the upcoming NATO 2024 summit in Washington should have only one item on its agenda: the peaceful dissolution of this alliance. It can no longer justify its existence in geostrategic terms, and it has become toxic to its European allies. NATO officials should forget about building expensive new headquarters in Europe, opening liaison offices in Japan or pressing its members to increase their military spending. The US is no longer in a position to be the global hegemon, since it now lacks a strong industrial base and its budget deficits have become unbearable for the average American taxpayers. Putting its fiscal house in order should be the main priority for the US. Nowadays it can ill-afford to maintain its 750 military bases worldwide and to simultaneously finance NATO's European allies' defence, as well as Ukraine.

As in our nuclear age the dismantling of NATO is the only rational choice, the entire US political class should give their full support to the executive branch and back a decision to curtail the agony of an alliance which lacks a solid geostrategic justification for its existence. In other words, NATO's main preoccupation in 2024 should not be Ukraine or Russia, but how to fold its war tents from Europe as peacefully as the Soviets did in 1991.

A Eulogy for the White World

 The sheer stupidity of NATO leaders gathered in Vilnius is such that they do not realise they are hastening the final demise of their world. 

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Do you know any more stupid race than the white one ? If so, please point it out to me, because I, as a historian, do not know of any other ! 

The story of the white world's impending demise from preeminence (think here Russia, Europe and North America) began 2500 years ago in Ancient Greece. 

In order to be able to vanquish the invading Persians, Athens focused all its diplomatic skill to build the impressive Delian League, which included most Greek city-states. Unfortunately, after their alliance's victory against the Persians, Athenians rather unwisely transformed the League into an alliance dedicated to perpetuating their hegemony over the entire Greek world. This was anathema to Sparta, which fought Athens during the fratricide Peloponnesian war and, in the process, provoked the total destruction of the Greek civilisation, the most advanced in the world at the time.

Athens' brilliant achievements during Pericles's era in the 5th century B.C. were mirrored by Europe in the 19th century. As a result of the industrial revolution and colonial expansionism, the continent - home to the bulk of the white race - reached its zenith.

To the bitter disappointment of the intellectuals of the time, the 20th century proved to be an unmitigated disaster for the white world. The drive to achieve hegemony over it, pitching Germans against an alliance between Great Britain, France and Russia, provoked tens of millions of victims on the continent. This "war to end all wars" was in fact the greatly magnified version of the Peloponnesian war that destroyed Greece during Antiquity. 

The second world war followed within a generation, proving to be at least as destructive as the first. It mortally wounded a white world that completely lost its solidarity, which had hitherto generally been the norm for hundreds of years.

Built on the ruins of WWII, the NATO military and political alliance was formed by the United States, which succeeded in keeping the peace on the European continent for almost 60 years. After the implosion of the USSR, the US unwisely decided - like Athens did - to repurpose NATO as an instrument of hegemonic domination over the entire European continent, Russia excluded. This new Nato has as a result become an offensive alliance which, sadly, needed a new enemy. It therefore designated the Russian Federation, as the successor to its old Soviet foe of the Cold War years.

Back at the height of its economic and military power, as the 19th century drew to a close, the white world decided it was strong enough to conquer and partition China. In the 21st century, the objectives of the Nato alliance are currently more modest. It is now aiming at destroying and partitioning Russia only. Thus the type of conflict engineered by the US in Ukraine can be characterised as a kind of civil war, pitching the white nations of Europe - using Ukrainians as their proxy - against Russia.

This ill-inspired drive against a kin country like Russia, however, could only end up in a total disaster for the whole of the white world. The war now being stoked in Ukraine could be the catalyst to "the End of History" Fukuyama peddled during the '90's. Sadly, however, the history of the white world will not end with the universal triumph of liberal democracy, but in a nuclear holocaust instead. 

If this is not the ultimate expression of stupidity, what is ?

The Avoidable War

It's not that the US lacks competent experts. It's the fact that nobody in Washington heeds their advice.

*

The war in Ukraine is still raging 16 months after its start. Sadly, a totally neglected aspect of the conflict is being deliberately brushed aside by mainstream American politicians and military brass alike.

I am referring to the fact that for the United States this was very clearly an avoidable war. It took Russia 8 years and two abortive Minsk agreements to decide to put a military stop to NATO's designs in Ukraine, which were perceived by Moscow as an imminent threat to its security. During all this time no major American diplomatic initiative took place to lessen the tensions in the region and to avoid the outbreak of a war. This, to be sure, is a first in the diplomatic relations between the US and Russia.

Connected to all this is the fact that for almost a decade the bureaucrats in charge of framing American foreign policy have ignored their own experts' warnings about the high probability of an outbreak of hostilities with Moscow. 

Thus, James W Carden, former adviser to the US-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission at the State Department during the Obama administration, explains in a recent article how the current impasse was reached:

 "For years, the U.S. national security establishment was warned by voices from the right, left, and center that America needed to change its policy toward Russia. It was warned that Russia could not be defeated in their near abroad. It was warned that Kiev—by launching an “anti-terrorist” campaign against its Russian speaking citizens—was recklessly antagonizing Russia. It was warned that making a semi-deity out of a corrupt tool of Ukrainian oligarchs was an obvious mistake. It was warned against conflating the interests of ethno-nationalist far-right factions in Kiev and Lviv (and their allies in Warsaw, Riga, Tallinn, and Vilnius) with U.S. national interests. It was warned to take President Putin’s numerous protestations against NATO expansion seriously. Yet America’s bipartisan ruling elite decided to ignore these warnings, and the results speak for themselves."

This geopolitical entanglement in Europe is not only unnecessary for the US, but it has the potential, if unchecked in a timely fashion, to lead to an all-out nuclear war between America and Russia. 

The wisdom of reversing course in Ukraine and starting peace negotiations with Russia is clear for all to see. Alas, to date no one can claim that the current US administration has the required statecraft skills and political wisdom to come up with a negotiated solution.

AN EPISODE OF COLLECTIVE MADNESS

 For a number of years now, especially since 2014, I have been trying hard to understand the rationale behind Western officials' actions in Ukraine and NATO expansion. 

Alas, despite all my efforts, I haven't been able to find any logical argument in favour of the US and EU's presence in Ukraine or for the rabid Russophobia fanned by their media. 

A few weeks ago, however, I finally realised that I was approaching the whole thing the wrong way. 

What makes Western officials act the way they do is not based on sound strategy or reason, but it is instead the expression of an acute form of collective madness. 

This is best encapsulated in an ancient dictum, which I would like to quote below:

"Quos Deus vult perdere Prius Dementat"

JFKennedy would have certainly agreed with my harsh assessment of today's Washington political elite's actions . In the aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis from 1962, this is what he had to say about the conduct of relations between nuclear powers :

 "Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy — or of a collective death-wish for the world. "  

ENLARGEMENT MASKS NATO'S FAILURE

It should be obvious by now that NATO cannot survive the Ukrainian episode in its current form. It is likely to be reorganised as a maritime alliance of Eurasian peripheric or littoral states and coordinated from Washington instead of Brussels.

* * *

The countdown has begun to the long-delayed dissolution of NATO, which should have taken place 20 years ago .

If it had folded at the right time in history, NATO would have remained in our collective memory as the only politico-military alliance that managed to maintain peace in Europe for 50 years.

Since 2000, however, when it fell into the hands of neoconservatives, NATO has turned into an offensive alliance, imitating the Delian league model of 2,500 years ago. The organization's relentless propaganda and its military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, however, have failed to impress Russia, which decided to end its expansion inbordering regions which were formerly part of the Soviet state, such as Georgia or Ukraine. China is not afraid of NATO either, although the leaders of the organization have recently announced that it will from now on involve itself in possible conflicts in the Indo-Pacific area.

Essentially an alliance whose core consists of US-led maritime and peripheral powers relative to  Eurasia, NATO has decided to hide its failure in Ukraine by expanding into Finland and Sweden. It should be noted that both these countries and member states such as Greece - whose existence the Americans have suddenly started to acknowledge in the last 2 years - are in turn situated in peripheral and coastal areas of Europe, on the Baltic Sea and the Ionian & Aegean seas respectively. (Toynbee considers them representatives of wilted civilizations).

After the dismantling of NATO in its current form, which after what happened in Ukraine is no longer hypothetical but more and more of a certainty, the Anglosphere will try to conclude substitution alliances - as Boris Johnson has already done recently - with other peripheral and/or coastal states of Eurasia, according to the "birds of a feather" principle.

Such an alliance policy direction was suggested by the geopolitician Spykman in 1938 and is called the "Rimland theory". One can only wish them well.

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)

 * * *

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.

NATO is the Delian League 2.0

 During the 19th century, the US elites' emulation of classical Athens' slave-owning democracy led to the American Civil War. In the 21st century, the imitation of Athens' military alliance by NATO is about to bring the world to the brink of nuclear war. If things are to improve, Americans should overcome this propensity to emulate political and military models from 2500 years ago.

***

Between 479 and 431 BC, the Greek world was militarily and economically dominated by Athens, which during the wars with Persia formed an alliance of Greek city-states, becoming its leader for 50 years.

The members of the alliance were obliged to contribute money, ships or soldiers to the military operations decided by the Athenians. Athens' competitors in the Greek world were those who had joined the Peloponnesian League, led by Sparta. We can more easily understand the conflict between the two leagues if we make an analogy - quite common during the Cold War - with NATO, organized and led by the USA, and the Warsaw Pact, the organization led by Moscow.

Many scholars claim that the real purpose of the formation of the Delos League by the Athenians was in fact the defeat of Sparta and the dissolution of the Peloponnesian League. After 460 BC, Athens' efforts led to its transformation into an informal empire, undeclared as such, a situation comparable to the transformation of the United States into a global hegemon after 2000.

No historical analogy is perfect, but this one applies quite well to postwar American developments. Both Athens and the United States  created politico-military alliances after major conflicts - with Persia in the case of Athens, with Nazi Germany in the case of the United States - namely the League of Delos and NATO, and they maintained and expanded these even after the danger which led to their creation disappeared.

Both states had the same democratic organization of society, the same trade-based economic orientation, the same security needs (the safety of maritime trade routes). In both cases, we are dealing with two informal empires, to which those states who needed military protection joined voluntarily, not through Roman-type conquests. At least initially, the members of both alliances enjoyed economic and military advantages which flowed from them. To enforce compliance, Athens and the US in some cases placed military garrisons or bases in allied states whose allegiance was deemed problematic.

In both the Athenian and the American cases, the hegemon insisted on the adoption of democracy by all members of the alliance and on contributions in troops, ships or money (as now in Ukraine) to joint defense or expansion efforts. Over time, however, the leaders of the alliance became tyrannical, seriously violating the sovereignty or prosperity of member states, which generated centrifugal tendencies. 

The similarities do not end here. In the case of both Athens and the United States, we are dealing with two maritime superpowers, less capable of winning wars against continental states, as illustrated by the defeats of Athens in Egypt or Sicily and of those of the United States in Vietnam or Afghanistan. Both the Athenians and the Americans made a fatal error of over-extending the geographical reach and the membership of their alliances. (Incidentally, UK's Boris Johnson - a great admirer of Pericles - is also a staunch supporter of Nato's expansion in Ukraine.)

The use of the Athenian politico-military alliance model by the US began in full force after 2001, when the leadership of American foreign policy was monopolized by the neoconservatives, led by Blinken, Nuland&Kagan . The latter's father, Donald Kagan, was a history professor at Yale and the author of a 4-volume history of the Peloponnesian War. It seems, therefore, that the father's influence on his son was profound. American neoconservatives became fans of the Delos League model, as well as followers of the theories of the causes of war authored by Thucydides, whose writings were misinterpreted in such a way as to make a military confrontation with China and / or Russia appear inevitable.

Likewise, the Athenian model largely explains NATO's change of strategy after the demise of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact. Just as Athens actively contributed to the disbandment of the Peloponnesian League led by Sparta and then expanded, the United States decided after 1997 to expand and include into NATO former members of the Warsaw Pact in Central and Eastern Europe. Instead of being abolished after 1989, NATO instead became an offensive alliance and an essential military tool in perpetuating American global hegemony.

Classical Athens had a competitor who was capable of defeating it: Sparta. Until recently the US had none. Since 2014, however, the United States has acquired its own "Sparta"...

Rolling Back NATO

 Rolling back NATO is not proof of weakness, but of the existence of superior American statecraft skills, as well as a willingness to avoid nuclear catastrophe.

In the fall of 2008 I happened to be in Toulouse studying in the city's library. It is there that I saw a poster announcing a public conference organised at Sciences po on the 11th of November, featuring the Estonian ambassador to Paris. I decided to attend, only to realise that for the ambassador, the conference was an exercise in Russia-bashing, intended to elicit French sympathy for the poor Estonian people having to put up with life next door to their vastly bigger neighbour.

The Science po conference came only a few short months after the Georgian war from August 2008, during which another minuscule European country hoping for NATO accession dared to attack the Russian army stationed in Abkhazia and Ossetia. I also knew that the Estonians had previously stoked up inter-ethnic tensions in their country, including by provoking the Russian minority in Tallinn with the removal of the monument erected in honor of the Soviet soldiers from the centre of the city to its outskirts.

At the end of the conference I was allowed to speak to the audience, reminding them that the 11th of November was Armistice Day, marking the end of the First World War, which resulted in more than 50 million victims. I also reminded the Estonian ambassador that WWI was sparked by an incident provoked by Serbs, who had wanted to expand into Bosnia-Herzegovina but couldn't because it was administered at the time by the Austro-Hungarian empire. The cataclysmic event which followed, I said on that occasion, made large countries in Europe, like France, become extra cautious about being dragged into conflicts with other large nations by insignificant countries, like Serbia, Georgia or Estonia. Naturally, as an historian I knew that behind the bellicose stance of such stamp-size nations are some circles of freemasonry who use them as triggers for starting wars with enemies whose countries they intend to destroy or take over. In our nuclear age, however, this practice does not justify repeating the errors of the past, allowing major European nations to be tricked into yet another major conflict with Russia.

When it comes to Russia, what American policymakers fail to realise is that this country is currently engaged in an existential fight for survival as a state, with the US and its NATO allies. This fight is not about the preservation of its status as global hegemon, as is the case of the United States, or about any desire of Russia's to acquire such a status. No, this is a fight that Russians cannot afford to lose and will not lose. 

Furthermore, for American policymakers it would be an illusion to think that Russia, in order to defend itself, will use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine, or in any other European country for that matter. It follows that the most effective strategy to eliminate the threat posed by NATO on Russia's doorstep would be to deal a mortal blow to the country chiefly responsible for the problem, which is the United States. The 2 "generals" who always protected the US against invasion, the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, make America more vulnerable to a nuclear attack than any other continent except Australia or South America, which do not possess nuclear capabilities and are not a target of Russia's ire. The experts who think this is a repeat of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis are, therefore, dead wrong. A comprehensive nuclear attack against the US is very much on the table if it continues to be on a collision course with Russia over NATO expansion. 

The current predicament in US-Russia relations, however, should not have to reach that point. American policymakers have the option of announcing a rollback of NATO from the Baltic states, preventing the Russians from starting another military conflict with the same objective. By extending an olive branch to Russia in this way, the US would prove that it does have the statecraft skills needed to correct its mega errors in the field of geopolitics, made by State Secretaries from the euphoric nineties, and that it finally understands the importance of Russia's security. (Unfortunately for the Anglo-Saxon powers, Spykman elaborated his Rimland theory before the end of the Second World War and the existence of nuclear bombs or guided missiles. )

From time immemorial, small nations like the Baltic states have had to learn to live in peace with their much larger neighbours, regardless of whether they succeeded in preserving their independence or not. In the case of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, including them into NATO was a catastrophic mistake which should be corrected as soon as possible. After all, a status of neutrality similar to that of Finland or Sweden and membership of the EU are sufficient to guarantee their safety and prosperity.

By now everyone agrees that: first, NATO is overextended, and second, that there is no place for the US and its NATO allies in Russia's backyard. By formally acknowledging this through the announcement of a NATO rollback, US policymakers would show the world that their country still has what it takes to act as a responsible and peace-loving nation. This shouldn't be regarded as a sign of weakness on America's part, but rather as proof that the US has the ability to manage international crises, like the one we are going through right now. This is so because not assisting Ukraine militarily in this conflict is just a small step in the right direction, but not nearly enough to prevent a future nuclear conflict with Russia.