“Pentagon Pete,” as the Daily Beast calls him, put on his “war paint,” as, again, The Beast describes him when he goes to the NATO headquarters (actually, from force of habit he picked up when he was on camera at CNN, he simply powdered his nose with his personal supply of makeup) he shook the Europeans down out of 3% more of their gross national product (GNP)! Before the press appearance, he must have put the squeeze on the NATO secretary-general so hard that Mark Rutte, a Dutch politician who previously served as prime minister of the Netherlands for more than a decade, had to name all the NATO members who should increase their defense budget to 5% of their national income – perhaps Rutte’s adding the name of the U.S. in the list was a gentle European touch that not only the Europeans but also the Americans would also be a “Russian or Chinese target.”
Well, Messrs. Hegseth and Rutke! Shouldn’t you first determine who is going to strike Europe, the U.S. and Canada? Russia or China? If global peace is going to end on the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, shouldn’t 40 million new candidate victims know who is going to kill them? NATO executives are dangerously sure that it is going to repeat; its civilian and military officials, and EU political leaders keep warning us, the public, to be ready for war with Russia or China! Inquiring minds want to know: if we are going to scarify our children, if we have to spend less for our daily life, and if military parades and huge trucks carrying bloodcurdlingly large armaments from one base to another, halting the traffic on major highways, against whom we are enduring this militarization?
Jokes aside! NATO, in particular, and the West in general, have been polarized yet again. All the French and British intellectuals are on one side, and all the congenitally militaristic German left and right together on the other, keep arguing whether the Russian (or Chinese) occupation is imminent. And if it is, which side should we take: Russians or Americans?
I said all jokes aside, but the more you read the war cries in the EU and U.S., the funnier it gets. U.S. President Donald Trump’s push for a negotiated settlement to the Ukraine conflict shows us more division in the Western Alliance. Some EU leaders push war-ready messages and more military support to Ukraine, but they resist spending more of their money on their own defense. Hence, Pentagon Pete’s putting on war colors on his face and repeating the doomsday scenarios in Brussels, the neo-con cabal puts in speech notes in Washington. I mean, how can you take the press conferences at the NATO headquarters anymore?
Do Western Europeans have a coherent strategy? They don’t have group stability to exert influence on the course to end the Russian war in Ukraine, let alone to control overall Russian (and/or Chinese) policies. Clumsily repeating what JD Vance, Little Marco and Pentagon Pete whisper in their ears, Europeans threaten Russia, and when Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov responds, saying, “If you want war, we are ready!” then the EU bureaucrats jump 1 meter high and yell, “See, the Russians are ready for war!”
When one observes the current developments on the European flank of NATO, it becomes clearer what happened between the two world wars. The chaotic situation, the muddle of diplomacy and military, then was probably the same as the shifts created today. The so-called “Coalition of the Willing” – mostly Western and Northern European NATO members – is positioning itself as “the moral and military vanguard of confrontation with Russia” (or China, whichever comes first), pushing Eastern Europeans and Türkiye into the fire – When I say Türkiye, I mean that country which applied for EU membership 60 years ago, and is still waiting! The more you listen to the rhetoric of Western and Northern European NATO members, the better you comprehend how the 400-year-old Ottoman Empire was reduced to rubble in six short years!
The Coalition of the Willing, once again, as they did between the two world wars, will work as the creator of the willing countries ready to be thrown into the fire. But the Eastern Europeans and Türkiye have been there before, and I am sure (I want to be sure) they will not fill any vacuum with the neo-cons’ diplomacy posturing as a strategy to keep liberty alive!
NATO generals, especially Britain’s senior military officers, already began talking about “sacrifices.” Not theirs, of course, but our sacrifice. British Chief of the Defense Staff Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton publicly warned that “Citizens must be prepared to sacrifice their sons and daughters in a future war with Russia” (or China, as the spokesman added, later). France’s army commander Gen. Fabien Mandon said his country, as well as the other EU nations, must be ready to “lose children” in a potential conflict with Russia.
Warmonger-in-chief, NATO’s secretary-general, Rutte, has been calling for sacrificing people’s social benefits so that NATO can meet the 5% target. He announced last month that the European should be ready for a war similar to the one their grandparents fought. Russians, on the other hand, break their spine to dismiss Western speculation that it has any plans to attack the EU or NATO as “nonsense.”
Messrs. Hegseth and Rutke! As the Arabian poem says, “Not every wish that the wretched scoundrel is attainable anymore; the winds blow contrary to what the ships desire,” because after sacrificing 40 million people and several countries and an empire, the Eastern Europeans and Türkiye woke up to reality. I mean, the tables have turned already.
