Nato

Jens Stoltenberg says the alliance is ‘not just regional but global’, a Western overreach that will be dangerous and destabilising Alex Lo September 24, 2024 In politics and war, delusion often sounds like vision. Jens Stoltenberg certainly has “that vision thing”, as the late George H.W. Bush once derisively called it. If the retiring Nato chief is anything to go by, and I hope not, the biggest military alliance in history with “North Atlantic” in its title is about to go global. Is this Western alliance about to expand into the East? If so, what do you call that? Western imperialism redux? This article was first printed by the South China Morning Post on September 24, 2024 In his parting gift for world peace or rather world war, Stoltenberg said in an interview with Foreign Policy, which is itself an undeclared information organ of Washington’s security and foreign policy elites,...

It’s produced by The China Academy in Shanghai and speaks for itself with no need for an introduction.

John J. Mearsheimer Aug 05, 2024 The question of who is responsible for causing the Ukraine war has been a deeply contentious issue since Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022. The answer to this question matters enormously because the war has been a disaster for a variety of reasons, the most important of which is that Ukraine has effectively been wrecked. It has lost a substantial amount of its territory and is likely to lose more, its economy is in tatters, huge numbers of Ukrainians are internally displaced or have fled the country, and it has suffered hundreds of thousands of casualties. Of course, Russia has paid a significant blood price as well. On the strategic level, relations between Russia and Europe, not to mention Russia and Ukraine, have been poisoned for the foreseeable future, which means that the threat of a major war in Europe will be with...

Photo: NATO Joan Roelofs* July 25, 2024 Why has NATO been so generally accepted in Europe by almost all the major political parties and especially puzzling, the social democratic ones? Its economic costs, illegal aggressive wars, environmental damage, and the risks of nuclear annihilation would seem to make it a prime platform item. Well-informed political activists are unlikely to believe that an invasion of Switzerland or Denmark is imminent. There are significant anti-NATO movements, such as No to War No to NATO, but so far they haven’t been able to turn the tide. Some reasons are fairly obvious. The US military connections to European defense and foreign ministries began during World War II. These strong ties have continued, now with an emphasis on NATO’s newly acquired feminist face, the Women, Peace, and Security agenda. The photo above, taken at the 2022 NATO summit in Madrid, depicts women Foreign Affairs and...

Jan Oberg July 16, 2024 On July 11, 2024, after the NATO Washington Summit, Global Times in Beijing was so kind as to publish my comparative thoughts on the famous Five Principles on Peaceful Coexistence – just celebrated in Beijing – and five principles I have extracted from NATO’s concepts and policies. Quite a contrast! Here is how it begins: “The West showed virtually no interest in the recent celebration of the 70th anniversary of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence in Beijing. These Five Principles, created by then China’s premier Zhou Enlai and Indian leader Jawaharlal Nehru, are enshrined in the Chinese Constitution and aim to promote peaceful, nonviolent relations among nations. However, this is not the case with NATO, which marks its 75th anniversary on July 9-11. If officially it too had five principles, they would be: 1. offensive deterrence; 2. forward “defence”; 3. nuclear weapons and the...

The issue of state sovereignty under international law and its inconsistencies and duplicities has become more complex than ever, especially after the outbreak of the Ukraine war and the “Ukrainization” of the Taiwan issue (even though Taiwan is not a sovereign state like Ukraine). However, the focus of this analysis is relatively modest: we examine a region of the Western Balkans in which the countries have already (more or less voluntarily) lost or given up their statehood and sovereignty. The concept of the so-called “Western Balkans” (WB) – comprising Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, Kosovo, North Macedonia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina – was concocted in the corridors of power in Brussels and Washington. This artificial sub-region, with its flexible geography and borders, lacks logical coherence. It effectively creates a buffer zone of weak states that are unlikely to ever meet the criteria for EU integration despite being offered European perspectives and hopes. However, these...

Jeffrey Sachs June 23, 2024 For goodness’ sake, negotiate! For the fifth time since 2008, Russia has proposed to negotiate with the U.S. over security arrangements, this time in proposals made by President Vladimir Putin on June 14, 2024. Four previous times, the U.S. rejected the offer of negotiations in favour of a neocon strategy to weaken or dismember Russia through war and covert operations. The U.S. neocon tactics have failed disastrously, devastating Ukraine in the process, and endangering the whole world. After all the warmongering, it’s time for Biden to open negotiations for peace with Russia. Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. grand strategy has been to weaken Russia. As early as 1992, then Defence Secretary Richard Cheney opined that following the 1991 demise of the Soviet Union, Russia too should be dismembered. Zbigniew Brzezinski opined in 1997 that Russia should be divided into three loosely confederated entities in...

Robert Rauschenberg, Untitled (Black Painting with Portal Form), 1952-53 (alternative orientation) San Francisco MOMA. Gordon Hahn June 4, 2024 The NATO-Russia Ukrainian war for and against NATO expansion, is on the brink of expanding to the NATO countries that provoked Russia to invade Ukraine on 24 February 2024 and have supported its continuation ever since, save one—the United States of America—ironically, the real force behind the war’s genesis. Sixteen years ago today’s CIA Director, at the time US Ambassador to Moscow, William Burns was ignored when he informed Washington:  “Ukraine and Georgia’s NATO aspirations not only touch a raw nerve in Russia, they engender serious concerns about the consequences for stability in the region.  Not only does Russia perceive encirclement, and efforts to undermine Russia’s influence in the region, but it also fears unpredictable and uncontrolled consequences which would seriously affect Russian security interests.  Experts tell us that Russia is...

A major publishing event in the field of security studies A unique and very thorough 11-part analysis of the US National Security Strategy from October 2022. Christman began publishing it at the beginning of May 2023. If you want to know what the United States is up to in terms of its ‘national security’ and what the costs and risks will likely be – to itself and to the world – this is where you begin. Kristin Christman’s eleven articles were originally published by Countercurrents. Note that they were not published by a leading American magazine or the weekend edition of a large daily; they were not in any mainstream media in the US or Europe. And we know why. TFF is proud to follow up and give her genuinely independent and tremendously knowledgeable research a further boost. All her texts are also published on Christman’s YouTube Channel. The links to the following ten...

“This was never about Ukraine, it was about weakening Russia.” Ex-NATO analyst, Colonel Jacques Baud, is a special guest with Afshin Rattansi’s “Going Underground” April 15, 2024 Jacques Baud is a legendary expert on Ukraine – not the least thanks to his book, “Operation Z”, his former life at NATO’s HQ and his being in Ukraine at the time when the historical changes took place… that you never heard about. You know, you only began to hear about Ukraine under the headline of Maidan and then when Russia took over Crimea. But it all started a bit earlier, and everything the West/NATO did was about getting control of Ukraine – not because that country has any importance to the West – but because it could be used to “weaken Russia.” The US/NATO “useful idiots” in our media, politics and research continue to deceive you (and themselves?) that it all started...

Jan Oberg April 8, 2024 This 7-minute video was shot by The China Academy in January 2024, posted on Wave Media on YouTube and then picked up by Taiwan’s CTi News and the Chinese Global Times magazine. This means a very large audience. Here is the link to see the many comments it created. I’m simply trying, in the shortest possible manner, to summarise what is happening these years from a macrohistorical perspective. If you think this way of thinking is interesting, why not reward TFF for bringing you fresh, different perspectives and always with a touch of a better future and a more peaceful world? It’s fast, simple and safe. Just hit this Big Red Button

Meeting between NATO Secretary General Manfred Woerner and Russian President Boris Yeltsin at the Chateau du Stuyvenbergh, December 9, 1993. From left, Russian Foreign Minister Andrey Kozyrev, Russian Defense Minister Pavel Grachev, Yeltsin, and Woerner. The National Security Archive at George Washington University April 8, 2024 New evidence on the high hopes of 1992-1995 Documents include transcripts of NATO secretary general with Russian parliament leaders,U.S. defense secretary with high-level Duma delegation, andreports on Russian defense minister at joint U.S.-Russian exercises Washington, D.C., April 4, 2024 – Top NATO and U.S. officials worked out cooperative agreements with senior Russian leaders including the defense minister of the newly independent Russian Federation during three years of high-level dialogue and hands-on engagement from 1992 to 1995, according to previously secret Russian and American documents published today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University. Marking the 75th anniversary of the signing of the NATO Treaty...