The head of NATO’s Military Committee has called on European businesses to prepare for a “wartime scenario” amid soaring tensions between the Western military alliance and Russia.
Dutch Adm. Rob Bauer said Western businesses must adjust to become less vulnerable to both Russia and China. “If we can make sure that all crucial services and goods can be delivered no matter what, then that is a key part of our deterrence,” Bauer said at a European Policy Centre event in Brussels, according to Reuters.
Bauer said energy supplies could be targeted or used as weapons of war. “We’re seeing that with the growing number of sabotage acts, and Europe has seen that with energy supply,” he said. “We thought we had a deal with Gazprom, but we actually had a deal with Mr Putin. And the same goes for Chinese-owned infrastructure and goods. We actually have a deal with (Chinese President) Xi (Jinping).”
US and European officials have accused Russia of weaponizing energy, but Moscow began reducing gas shipments to Europe in 2022 in response to Western sanctions meant to destroy the Russian economy.
Bauer also said Western economies were too dependent on China. “We are naive if we think the Communist Party will never use that power. Business leaders in Europe and America need to realize that the commercial decisions they make have strategic consequences for the security of their nation,” he said. “Businesses need to be prepared for a wartime scenario and adjust their production and distribution lines accordingly. Because while it may be the military who wins battles, it’s the economies that win wars.”
Last year, Bauer called for NATO countries to consider shifting to a “war economy” where civilian factories would begin producing military goods, similar to what the US did during World War II. “Those priorities should be discussed about, partially, a war economy in peacetime,” he said in January 2023.
Bauer also said at the time that NATO was “ready” for a direct confrontation with Russia. Today, that confrontation is much more likely following the US authorization of long-range strikes on Russian territory with NATO missiles, a step Moscow has made clear risks a nuclear escalation.
Europe is experiencing a catastrophic case of schadenfreude for war. Too young to have experienced what actual horror took place in Europe some near 80 years ago, Europe pines for the thrill of adrenaline racing through the veins, of placing a boot on someone's neck, of destroying some other person's hard-won home. Too, in some remote tiny region of their brains they believes the old lie, that we were united then, happy then, suffering together. It was the best of times. As to the US, well, it's money and domestic politics in its ugliest form.
I am an American living in Europe and have for many years. I do not know anyone, not a soul, who "pines" for "the thrill" of war or putting any boot on anyone's neck. This is nonsense. You are referring to the "EU" which is a globalist construct, a WEF annex and Neocon vassal suprastate. The Europeans, educated and all too aware of their past, detest the Brussels suprastate, which may have begun as a fair minded idea and is now just as detached from reality as Washington
How do you explain how "The educated and aware of their past" are doing absolutely nothing?
We're trying to do something but it gets very hard with the press and social media in the wrong hands, in Wall Street hands. Anyone who stands out against the US imperialist agenda (very especially on Palestine) is being censored more or less openly and excluded from the discussion, while Zionist or other fascistoid bots, often calling themselves "liberals", "social-democrats" or "greens" take over the Internet and control the political scene. It's social engineering at its worst.
Identity politics shouldn't stop people from complaining about sending their children to certain death. I'm sure Europe still has streets. I would be out in the streets!
Not sure what "identity politics" has to do with this, really.
Anyway, there are streets, some of us march for Palestine and against the Genocide, but most just go on with their lives. War is not a concern for anybody: nobody sees it coming, not even myself most of the time. Sometimes I think it will actually splash around somehow but it's not clear how.
Do you really think that Europe (NATO) will be involved in any war directly any time soon? If so which one, how and when? Most of us rather think that the Ukraine war will be over next year (Russian victory) and that some semblance of normality will return to Eastern Europe. Just because (say) Estonians are hysterical about Russia it doesn't mean most of Europe is. Estonia is a very small country and pretty much irrelevant.
I don’t disagree, but that’s the problem: “nobody sees it coming.” I know I sound like an idiot, but I have Europeans in my family who are more Russophobic than Adam Schiff and Hillary Clinton, combined–Almost as much as someone we know right here in this forum.
I probably have her blocked already but I can imagine who you mean. The Propaganda is strong and has an effect, censorship is also growingly a problem, but mostly people see Ukraine or Palestine as “distant conflicts” that are somehow contained outside of “Europe” (EU and related countries). There is another ongoing war even closer to where I live, which is the West Saharan one, and it’s also totally under the radar most of the time, even when Algeria almost went to open war with Morocco… most people were barely aware of such thing happening at all. The mainstream media distracts a lot.
My bad. Identity Politics: Identity politics is politics based on a particular identity, such as ethnicity, race, nationality, religion, denomination, gender, sexual orientation, social background, caste, and social class. Race = anti certain race identity like the “Russophobes.” Religion: When religion is expanded to “Science” like “the Greens.” I use it loosely because it is so inclusive (That definition is not all inclusive) and it’s anything that prevents people from thinking on their own.
I understand the concept of “identity politics”, what I don’t understand is how it relates to the conversation at all.
One might well ask why residents of the US are not doing something.
Increasingly, anybody who questions received wisdom is marginalized, silenced, canceled, etc.
The Punch and Judy show provided by the major parties is dominated by slightly different flavors of warmongers. Third parties are suppressed.
Throughout the Yankee Empire, entrenched hegemony is the order of the day.
AFAIK some US citizens are doing something as well: all those campus camps, all those nonviolent interventions by CodePink, etc. are having an impact. Much like with both Trump and Biden, it seems to me that it’s largely (but surely not only) the older generation which is holding all according to not-so-neo conservative imperialist tendencies that don’t seem to hold much water anymore, that are almost as nostalgic of a “glorious past” as was whoever in Britain and France tried to (re-)conquer the Suez Canal in the 1950s… and failed miserably.
While younger leaders come with their own set of problems surely, gerontocracy is a big and rather terminal problem on its own right.
I agree the PEOPLE don’t want war.
I concur with A Reader: Europeans don't want war and almost certainly don't even consider it a real possibility at all. Another thing are politicians, who are elected on local "national" agendas, which are in turn agitated by Wall Street, which owns everything that matters in Europe now. Europe is being looted, used and abused and deceived into agreeing to it.
Yes I agree PEOPLE don’t want war.
Begins to look more an more like the period of warenthusiasm in certain sectors of the public right before the Great War. The Europeans have not learned anything from two World Wars. They gather and solemny keep silent in front of an artfully stapled stack of stones each year. And swear over and over: "never again", "never again", "never again." This year while they are participating in a genocide. An exclusively symbolic ritual, empty and void and meaningless, they keep repeating the same mistake. But there is a difference to the last two WW's the Europeans started. This time truly there is not going to be an ever again.
It's not so much "the Europeans", most of which are anti-Zionist (and definitely anti-Genocide), but our treacherous leaders. See my separate more recent comment on the issue of the economy and the looting of Europe for further details.
I'm with you and agree, but why all the APATHY!?
Neoliberalism destroyed social cohesion, we have been largely turned into individualist entities who barely look beyond our nearest scope and fear to take a stand because of social and even labor repercusions. On top of that the media spawns very extremist discourse that many people parrot too easily, including self-proclaimed far right forces. Here in Spain it's most apparent with proclaiming Venezuela "a dictatorship" or crying a river about the poor ultra-nationalist Ukrainian regime, the Palestinian issue is much better understood however and almost everyone is anti-Zionist to one degree or another.
In the last decade or two nearly all political opposition was assimilated into the "extreme center" discourse. There are survivors or even new dynamic forces but they are rather small and marginal so far. The strongest opposition is probably in France, where the New Popular Front technically won the elections but only achieving that the "moderate" right and the extreme right joined forces around Macron. Another interesting place is Slovakia, where a socialist force led by Robert Fico won the elections and now rules the small but dignified Central European country. Otherwise it's a quasi desert: Corbynism was carefully driven to destruction in Britain, Italy has not got a semblance of left wing politics until the last European elections, Spain is pretty much trapped with "radical" (reformist) pro-NATO Podemos and its rival Sumar, who applauded Zelensky in his visit to Madrid two years ago (some more radical neo-Leninist forces are emerging however but avoid electoral politics so far), in Germany the Sarah Wagenknecht List (Fico-style) became very promising and even a containment to neonazi AfD but now seems to be faltering in the polls, etc.
Well said, my brother.
The political caste (if that's who you mean) are at best a tertiary power, a factotum. It's the entire big bourgeois ruling class has betrayed us. K St., representing all the main corporate sectors is the real gov't. They know they've run out their string -the financialization of the economy is the final stage of Capitalism; and the only retrieval lies in starting over, for which all-out-war is the requirement.
They are the ones with the power to make the decisions and arguably with the charisma to lead (as they are elected after all, even if the media distorts everything). They are not “factotums” but legally and socially empowered managers.
I don’t think they know all what you say, rather that they are utterly corrupt (Von Der Leyen for example) or self-deceived (Borrell for example, who I don’t think is corrupt but is tolerant of corruption and the NATO regime in general).
Even at higher levels (which would bring us to the USA) they don’t think that all out war is necessary or even doable: they’re not that stupid. Everybody knows that full out WW3 would completely destroy the involved countries and Earth overall. We’re talking of more than 10,000 nuclear warheads (much more destructive each than the ones of Hiroshima and Nagasaki), that’s essentially 10,000 cities utterly destroyed in a matter of minutes, hours at most, in Europe, North America and East Asia (primarily). Nobody can want that: there’s no reset, it’s just “the end”.
Yesterday's (Nov 25) guests on the Judge did a good going-over of current frenzy in Washington including how Trump has again fooled the populace with talk and bluster for votes vs. his cabinet appointees as a set of rabid war-hawks. Ritter became especially annoyed and ranting at high rate including suggesting Trump appoint him as some kind of secretary so he (Trump) and the rest could become informed about Russian thinking. Bauer was evaluated at incompetent and Sachs was offended at somebody named Sebastian Gorka calling Putin "a thug," more of the same in line with Biden's Putin as "stone-cold killer" the immature business of name-calling instead of talking and traditional diplomacy. Overall, the Judge's guests painted a picture of salivating for military actions (despite declined capacity in this respect) which is consuming both outgoing and incoming "administrations" as these assholes contemplate what to do to hasten their personal glory. Meanwhile, of course, the US becomes increasingly hated, as though its inhabitants have much to do (lifting their heads from a MacDonald's double engorged cheese and pickle burger with a "Huh?") with anything political other than Oh Gees the Donald is really smart so we'd better vote for him and overall being smothered in ignorance generated by official distorting narratives. Oh, Founding Fathers this is what we have become. Unfortunately, you didn't address the question what if the nation becomes so dumbed down along with its surfeit of materialism it loses its way into the abyss? As George Carlin said, "There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls."
Capitalism tends to monopolism, monopolism tends to war. Better than watching the likes of Napolitano, you should read Marx and Lenin.
“We need to understand that the war going on in Ukraine and what is developing in the Middle East . . . they are connected . . . We and the Israelis are largely on our own.”
Today (Nov 26) Nap follows up with views from Col. MacGregor who speaks on the general theme of Trump needs to end his silence in terms of what's coming out of the mouths of his new advisors.
As with from incoming National Security Advisor Walz and Chief of Counter Terrorism Sebastian Gorka.
Starting about minute 14
ht tps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVshqS0UvXE
This is not so much doomsaying as it is imperial protectionist shock therapy. As European myself I see that quite clearly: the USA is using the wars to hold Europe hostage, degrade our economy towards underdevelopment and make us buy US (or US-authorized) products, all of which is classical colonialism as the very US-Americans surely know from their own history books, because it's exactly what England tried to do to the 13 colonies and was oppossed in the famous Boston Tea Party ultimately.
While Europe has been paying for US failures before, for example after the sub-prime crisis of 2008, my take is that who actually shifted towards a more determined "classical colonial empire" format was Donald Trump since his campaign of 2016. The Dems have just followed suit within their own parameters but, just as they adopted the anti-China focus, they also adopted the "let's loot Europe" strategy.
Of course it's not just the USA: nothing of this would be possible without the treacherous complicity of European politicians. How is that possible? Well, it seems to me that we have lost any semblance of "national bourgeoisie" by absorption of all of our corporations by Wall Street. Who controls the economy, controls the media and the politicians and thus Europe is effectively headless now, a mere toy for Wall Street puppet masters… until we somehow gain consciousness and revolt, which will eventually happen, because winters are cold without Russian gas and without BlackRock owned homes we still call "our" out of self-pity.
US and its European vassals should be defeated economically and BRICS is the only hope…! Russia and China have started this process already…!
BRICS is not a homogeneous thing, if anything it’s BRICSpay, which is an alternative business payment tool to SWIFT. There are also other agreements but I think Algeria is right in snubbing BRICS and keeping it at bilateral interactions, after all, while Russia may be a credible ally (to some extent), China has been flirting with all the wrong regimes, often those strongly aligned with the USA and Israel (Morocco, Saudia, UAE and now also Boluarte’s Peru).
The US-China (West-BRICS) tension is nothing but classical Imperialism, which is how the capitalists organize for their global mafioso competition for markets and resources. As Lenin observed, it leads to war, even if nowadays, because of nukes, it’s rather Cold War II (hot war by proxy often) than outright World War.
We can only flourish in the cracks of this capitalist competition, as happened in a period that largely resembles our own: WWI.
Dude! Even if I had a business degree and could do math, I still wouldn't think WWIII is good for my business. But that's not funny. What's funny is why anybody, no matter how stupid, is listening to this stupid evil clown?
How much 'getting ready' can you do in the 4 minutes before you're incinerated?
Cmon' kiddies, anyone who knows a thimble of human[civilized?] history know that this is the time the rich do some weeding so they can more for themselves. Happens all the time all over the planet in every society…Is the bunker ready honey? Dont forget the caviar..
NATO is a warmonger rabid organization. They have no incentive for peace in the world!
If we have peace and reconciliation then all of those fancy buildings that belong to the NATO organization and their bloated payroll will cease to be required.
NATO is in the business of propagating itself through friction and war.
NATO is the Empire's MIC 'storefront'.