At that point it will become possible to see through the West’s alarmist propaganda. It will also become more difficult to stoke artificial fears that Russia, for reasons known only to NATO war planners and neoconservative pundits, will attack NATO. As long as Russian hardliners do not push President Vladimir Putin aside, Moscow will continue to reject its assigned role as bête noire.
The existential threat to NATO comprises a different kind of Russian “threat,” which owes much to the adroitness and sang froid of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who flat-out refuses to play his assigned role of a proper enemy – despite the Western media campaign to paint him the devil incarnate.
Over time, even the most sophisticated propaganda wears thin, and more and more Europeans will realize that NATO, in its present form, is an unnecessary, vestigia organ already a quarter-century beyond its expiration date – and that it can flare up painfully, like a diseased appendix. At a time when citizens of many NATO countries are finding it harder and harder to make ends meet, they will be reluctant to sink still more money into rehab for a vestigial organ.
That there are better uses for the money is already clear, and President Trump’s badgering of NATO countries to contribute ever more for defense may well backfire. Some are already asking, “Defense against what?” Under the painful austerity that has been squeezing the Continent since the Wall Street crash nearly a decade ago, a critical mass of European citizens is likely to be able to distinguish reality from propaganda – and perhaps much sooner than anyone anticipates. This might eventually empower the 99 percent, who don’t stand to benefit from increased military spending to fight a phantom threat, to insist that NATO leaders stop funding a Cold War bureaucracy that has long since outlived its usefulness.
The West is lucky to have Putin in power when you think of the kind of hawkish hardliners in the US administration. Putin is polite and very diplomatic, and yet the West tries portray him as an evil autocrat.
Could Europe begin to cotton on that they are being taken for a ride? McGovern argues how NATO, like any bureaucracy, has expanded beyond it means and just offers jobs to the boys, as well as being an unnecessary expense for arm companies profits. Let's hope McGovern is right and NATO begins to break up.
Europe could come to its senses and build trade ties with Russia, or they could build their own military forces. Could call it EUTO
ReplyDeleteI would like Europe to have stronger ties with Russia. US hegemony needs do be cut down.
DeleteTrump will take U.S. out of Paris climate deal, reports say
ReplyDeleteAfter 192 states and EU signed agreement, U.S. would join Syria and Nicaragua against the deal
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-paris-accord-decision-1.4139037
US isolationism means the rest of the world can move on.