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At a time in history when there is said to be a “new” Cold War, it is not surprising\u00a0that many people in Europe feel a need to side with Ukraine – portrayed\u00a0as the victim of Russian aggression\u00a0in every US and British mainstream media source from the center-left rightward.<\/p>\n
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Animated map: Note how NATO continued to expand<\/a> after its raison d’etre, the Soviet Union, was gone. Reasons for this continued presence were flimsy, ranging from hypothetical missile threats in Iran to, now, “Russian aggression” in Ukraine.<\/em><\/p>\n The reason it has come to this restoration of the Cold War is the result of one organization: NATO. Even if everything they say about Russia’s aggression is true (all substantive\u00a0evidence for this has been absent, over and over again<\/a>) it does nothing to vindicate NATO’s responsibility for the current crisis and the reversion to cold hostility between east and west. NATO’s very raison d’etre\u00a0is based on that hostility. NATO is based upon systematic, organized aggression and wars of conquest against\u00a0regimes\u00a0it considers to be “rogue”. This\u00a0arrogance affects every one of us, and is reducing the chances of survival for civilization itself. It is pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war, knocking at the doors of sovereign states firmly outside the region this alliance was originally devised to protect.<\/p>\n Let’s consider this:\u00a0If the Soviet Union hadn’t collapsed, how do you think they would have reacted to NATO expanding eastward to include western Germany and the Baltics? Worse, how\u00a0would the USSR have reacted to NATO asserting claims\u00a0to Crimea\u00a0as an integral part of its own security area? Such madness\u00a0would have provoked a nuclear war. None of us would be here to reflect on it. Even the craziest warmongers in the United States would not\u00a0have disputed\u00a0this outcome. Sadly, those\u00a0hypothetical\u00a0events really have taken place – only gradually. They may have happened over the course of years, but for Russia’s security concerns they might as well have happened in days.<\/p>\n In the year 2014, we have\u00a0found\u00a0NATO entrenching itself in territories it was never conceived to defend, even threatening the world with nuclear war over territories inessential to its own security like Lithuania and Latvia. It has become a reckless blackmailer intent on world conquest, pushing the “red lines” and bellicose security commitments\u00a0deep into regions\u00a0it should never have had any designs on. With every withdrawal\u00a0of the Soviet nuclear threat in Europe, it appears that the NATO nuclear shadow has grown, leaving all of Europe at the mercy of the most\u00a0brutal and relentless war machine ever to menace the international community.<\/p>\n I wish I was exaggerating, but I’m not. It would be false for me to say\u00a0the United States wants\u00a0the whole world\u00a0join NATO, even if NATO is an apparatus for world conquest. In many ways, the NATO expansion and collision with Russia is a geopolitical\u00a0accident. Less to do with encircling Russia, the true\u00a0reason for the expansion was to recruit new NATO\u00a0armies in eastern Europe to participate in American-led wars. This is a point that has been made quite resolutely\u00a0by US social scientist\u00a0Immanuel Wallerstein in a recent commentary<\/a>, in which he\u00a0lays the blame \u00a0for NATO expansion on the US disenchantment with its traditional allies in France and Germany. The US saw eastern European countries as more reliable recruits\u00a0for the\u00a0wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and so it tried to add these other countries\u00a0to NATO.<\/p>\n The Baltics don’t have any reason to feel secure by joining NATO. NATO would\u00a0never force the US to defend the Baltics against Russian “aggression” (which will never come), but it will force the Baltics to send\u00a0human shields to bolster\u00a0the US military in any further\u00a0pointless wars in the Middle East.<\/p>\n NATO: Danger to World Peace – The official mythology is that between 1945 (or 1946) and 1989 (or 1991), the United… http:\/\/t.co\/ZZR42mItJl<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Immanuel Wallerstein (@iwallerstein) November 17, 2014<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n .@iwallerstein<\/a>: ‘Renouncing @NATO<\/a> as a structure would be a first step towards #sanity<\/a> and the world\u2019s survival.’ #Russophobia<\/a> #Ukraine<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u2014 Harry J. Bentham (@hjbentham) November 18, 2014<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n The success of the Novorossiya rebellion\u00a0in Eastern Ukraine isn’t just essential to Russia\u00a0obtaining a buffer zone against NATO aggression and strategic nuclear realignments in Ukraine, but to the security of Europe itself. Peace is non-alignment, and the forces for peace in Ukraine are the forces for peace in Europe. Our very lives may depend on their ability to deter the regime\u00a0patched together by Doctor Frankenstein and others from the US State Department in Kiev.<\/p>\n Get some of my best commentaries on world affairs in The Global Tyrant: Collected Foreign Policy Commentaries<\/em><\/a> (2014), and, as always, look out for more of my analysis of international relations\u00a0in the press.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ecx.images-amazon.com\/images\/I\/8119tYEGZhL._SL1286_.jpg\")
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