With their latest two-day summit adding a new flurry of hostile rhetoric toward Russia, NATO officials are now openly talking about a wholesale review of their nuclear weapons police, saying the alliance’s nuclear doctrine may need “refreshing” given the latest acrimony with Russia.
NATO has been angry with Russia for awhile, citing the Russian Federation’s annexation of Crimea after the later’s secession from Ukraine last year. Since then, NATO has been dramatically building up military assets around the Russian frontier, claiming a risk of Russia invading Europe.
“There is very real concern about the way Russia publicly bandies around nuclear stuff,” insisted one NATO diplomat, saying that it was only “due diligence” to prepare to ratchet up the alliance’s nuclear presence in Europe, something the US has been talking about doing for quite some time.
Incredibly, NATO continues to insist that they are not going to be dragged into a new arms race with Russia, though this claim comes amid major increases in military spending along the Russian frontier, and rhetoric suggesting that spending will continue to grow in the years to come. It may be a distinction without a difference, though, since either way Russia doesn’t seem to be significantly “racing” in its own spending and NATO likely outspends Russia along their mutual border at any rate.
Time to get the hell out of NATO…it's purpose has been corrupted by those who feel they've been cheated out of their due glory and want to return to the Cold War era. They won't stop the belligerence and threats until they instigate a shooting war with the Bear…and then attempt to blame it on them.
NATO should, of course, have been abolished when the cold war ended, but it wasn`t. Worse, the US vetoed Russian membership of it when the European members wanted to admit Russia, Ukraine and Georgia together. That`s still the ideal solution, but until Russia (i.e. post-Putin) returns to playing the game bzy the rules, that will have to wait. In the interim, the US, having obstructed all European attemps to set up an independent European defence system, is stuck with the monster it created. In addition, since the point of maintaining NATO was to use it as a forward base for the defence of Israel, and Putin has damaged its credibility very severly, the Israel Lobby is not going to allow the US to let Putin "get away with it" eternally.
Nothing incredible about it. An arms race bankrupted the Soviet Union, a much more powerful state than the Russian Federation and which was not under sanction for wrongful conduct. And by bluffing and blustering and threatning, Putin puts his own head in the noose. His latest "victim" is Belgium, where Yukos shareholders and/or creditors are seeking to enforce in the Belgian courts an arbitrator`s sentence (a voluntary deal to which Putin agreed but now refuses to honour) against Russian state property in that country. Clearly, the neocons have lost control of their Russian stooge. Yet another parallel with Hitler!