theamericanconservative | 1) It’s clear now that Europeans will increase their
contributions to NATO. But Big Media totally ignored the trillion dollar
gorilla in room: Why does anyone have to spend so much on NATO in the
first place?
Are we planning a ground attack on Russia because we
really think the former Soviet Empire will invade Poland or the Baltic
nations? Are we planning for a land war in Europe to intervene in the
Ukraine? What for is the money? The Trump administration and Big Media,
for all their noise, mainly argue that more spending is good. There is
no debate about the reasons why. Meanwhile Russia is cutting its military spending.
Washington is so dominated by our
military-industrial-congressional complex that spending money is a major
intent. Remember when Washington first insisted that putting up an
anti-missile system in Poland and Romania was supposed to protect Europe
from an Iranian attack? Of course, it was really directed against
Russia. Washington was so eager to spend the money that it didn’t even
ask the Europeans to pay the cost even though it was supposedly for their defense. As of 2016 Washington had spent $800 million
on the site in Romania. Now it appears that Poland and Romania will pay
billions to the Raytheon Corporation for the shield to comply with
their commitment to increase military spending to 2 percent of gross
national product.
2) There was no focus on the real, growing threat of
nuclear war, intentional or accidental. No one, including journalists at
the joint press conference, spoke about the collapsing missile treaties
(the only one who reportedly seemed keen to discuss it was ejected
beforehand). Scott Ritter details these alarming risks here on TAC.
The U.S. is now funding new cruise missiles with nukes
which allow for a surprise attack on Russia with only a few minutes of
warning, unlike the ICBMs which launch gives a half an hour or more.
This was the reason Russia opposed the anti-missile system in Eastern
Europe, because they could have little warning if cruise missiles were
fired from the new bases. Americans may think that we don’t start wars,
but the Russians don’t. The old shill argument that democracies don’t
start wars is belied by American attacks on Serbia, Iraq, Libya, and
Yemen.
3) For all the Democratic and Big Media attacks on Trump
for supposedly caving in to Putin, he gave Putin nothing. His
administration is still maintaining an increasingly stringent economic
attack on Russian trade and banking, announcing (just days after his
meeting) $200 million of new aid to Ukraine’s military
and threatening Europeans with sanctions if they go ahead with a new
Baltic pipeline to import Russian natural gas. Consequently, some
analysts believe that Putin has given up on wanting better relations
with the U.S. and instead is just trying to weaken and discredit
America’s overwhelming power in the world. In a similar vein Rand Paul
writes how we never think about other nations’ interests.
4) The release of intelligence agency findings about
Russians’ intervention in the last election just a day before the
conference precisely shows the strength of the “Deep State” in
dominating American foreign policy. An article by Bruce Fein in TAC argues we should “Forget Trump: The Military-Industrial Complex is Still Running the Show With Russia,” showing how Washington wants to keep Russia as an enemy because it’s good for business.
0 comments:
Post a Comment