The Trump-Administration killed its commitment to ‘Project Ukraine’, which it inherited from the Biden-Administration, for now. The argument provided is that the US can’t afford to give Ukraine more ‘Patriots’ and more ammo because they are running low on stuff like that themselves, and production cannot keep up with demand. To be fair, the Trump-Administration has prioritized ‘Project Israel’ over ‘Project Ukraine’, and though the ‘Warparty’ in the US may be tempted to block the decision by the Pentagon to hang Ukraine out to dry, it does share Trump’s priorities, for now. Israel is ‘sacred’ because of the huge donations to ‘representatives’ in Congress, which the lobby favoring a bankrupt Ukraine cannot match.
Within the electorate it is a different story. CNN presented a ‘poll’ after the long-standing mayor of New York was defeated by a ‘nobody’ from within his own party, which illustrates how the traditionally *very* pro-Israel Democrats running the city had a change of heart. They now support the ‘Palestinian Cause’ instead, and similar shifts in Europe are underway. Apparently the Republican voters are no longer blind and deaf either, with around fifty percent critical of Netanyahu, Trump’s ally. Which is not to say that those voters losing faith in the policy of doing Israel’s bidding at all times are favoring support for Ukraine instead. Many are simply questioning the wisdom of acting as the world’s police force altogether.
On these pages I commented on the cringe-worthy proceedings in The Hague last week, where the NATO secretary general showered Trump with praise, because he deserved all the credit for ‘convincing’ the European member-states that they had to contribute more to NATO. I noted that Trump was playing along, while openly stating that the ‘Article 5’-provision was open for different interpretations, signaling that it was unlikely the US would rescue European member states if they provoked the Russian Bear. And that Trump said that the commitment to offer five percent of GDP to NATO did not include the US, since they had carried most of the weight up till now. As I wrote previously, this entire show was clearly meant to ‘charme’ Trump into returning to ‘Project Ukraine’, while offering the Europeans various options to present non-military spending as something they did in support of the ‘collective effort’ to defeat Russia. With Meloni in Italy proposing to build a bridge between Sicily and the Italian mainland, which will boost the Italian economy, while selling it as a contribution to the military to acquire favorable loans and subsidies from ‘Brussels’, paid by the ECB, with freshly printed money.
It was obvious to me that Trump would embrace the increased European contributions as an excuse to leave ‘Project-Ukraine’ to the Europeans, the exact opposite of what Rutte and the ‘Coalition of the Willing’ in Europe and Canada were after. ‘Great news! Now *you* can pay for ‘Project Ukraine’!’ But that is not an option. Europe doesn’t have the Military Industrial Complex in place to provide the depleted Ukrainian military with the stuff they are demanding. Setting it up will take decades, and money which will have to be siphoned away from the ‘Well-Fare State’ one way or another, killing the EU almost instantly, unless they impose fascist-rule, doing away with sovereignty of the member states altogether, and continuing the process of ‘streamlining’ the remaining vestiges of democracy. It is crystal clear that those unelected people running the show from ‘Brussels’, both NATO and the EU Commissioners, need the threat of war with Russia for that particular purpose. But not an actual war with Russia. Not one on their own turf, but neither do they have the ability to prop up Ukraine to keep that candle burning. (And yes, there are idiots in Europe who *will* go for the jugular on waves of blind hatred).
While the US is a ‘military powerhouse’, they are ill equipped for the wars they themselves provoked. Both the war with Russia, on Ukrainian soil, and the war with Iran, with Israel getting pummeled as a result. As has been recorded, many Ukrainians simply left Ukraine the moment Russia launched its ‘SMO’, unwilling to go to war to save Zelensky and his fantasy of taking the country into NATO, and likewise many Israeli’s are not going to wait for Netanyahu to pick the ‘Samson-Option’, opting instead to use the ‘Samsonite-Option’ of leaving Israel, a country without a future. In both countries the ‘moderates’ already left, or they are busy packing their things before it is too late, leaving their countries in the hands of fanatics. A return to common sense solutions is becoming more difficult. Those who stay behind are not interested in peace, or they keep their mouths shut out of fear for those running the show. And the US cannot control them any longer.
What do you do when you are losing a proxy-war? You either pull out and call it a day, or you try to ‘broaden’ the war through terrorist tactics and getting other nations involved. Right after the collapse of the Soviet Union NATO supported Muslim extremists in the Caucasus, like they did in Afghanistan, to break up the Soviet Union, and rule over the lot. It backfired eventually, or so we are led to believe, when terrorist groups NATO-countries created began to target the US and Europe. Conspiracy Theorists have their doubts, and point out that an infamous ‘ThinkTank’ like ‘Project for a New American Century’ said they needed a new ‘Pearl Harbor’ to ‘stimulate’ the American people to demand increased ‘defense spending’, and a more ‘pro-active’ attitude of their leaders, so as to secure America’s ‘leading role’ in the world. Thus, when ‘9/11’ happened, and Israeli Mossad-operatives were caught cheering while filming the destruction of the ‘Twin Towers’, subsequently apprehended, but never prosecuted, after declaring they were only there to ‘observe’, while one of the buildings containing damning evidence of wrongdoing related to leading parts of the ‘Warparty’ collapsed without having been hit, many people smelled a rat. And it became worse when a judge in the US condemned Iran, a country which had not exactly been friendly to Sunni terrorist groups, some of which are still working for Israel and the US in Iran to overthrow the regime.
Now, fast forward to today, where Russia looks set to advance ever more rapidly in Ukraine, now that the country is out of men and weapons, because Russia won the War of Attrition, defeating the NATO collective, serving as the sponsor and orchestrator of that war. And all of a sudden the Caucasus appears to be moving towards taking over from Ukraine. Azerbaijan arrested a bunch of Russians which it accused of being Russian spies, after Russia ended a criminal gang operating inside Russia, consisting of Azeri’s living in Russia, but as Russian citizens. Oligarchs in Azerbaijan went public with claims that these Azeri’s were arrested on grounds of their ethnicity, demanding that the government would respond by arresting ethnic Russians, which was what happened. But even though some of those Russians arrested, and ‘roughed up’, were journalists working for Sputnik, others were Russians who had fled to Azerbaijan shortly after Putin launched the ‘SMO’, so as to escape being drafted into the war. In other words, not exactly Putin’s dear friends. Yet, Azerbaijan and Armenia are actively working with Turkey, a NATO-member, to form a ‘ring’ to the south of Russia, completed by Georgia, an early trophy for NATO, but these days doing its utmost to stay neutral. The four of them are crawling with ‘foreign agents’, and Sunni Azerbaijan is said to have been cooperating with Israel as that country launched strikes on neighboring Shia Iran.
In the past Armenia relied on Russia to protect its citizens in Nagorno-Karabakh, a ‘disputed’ region inside Azerbaijan, but the present elected head of state gave up on them, and withdrew its own military from the region, after which move Russia left as well, and Azerbaijan took over. To say that these four countries listed are great friends is a stretch. The four of them are not openly antagonistic towards Russia, and at times they work closely with NATO-countries, although even Turkey, a formal NATO-member, is an outsider in many ways. NATO would kill to turn them into their proxy, and use them to overextend and unbalance Russia, as has been te plan since the Soviet Union ceased to exist. With Ukraine past its ‘due date’, that would be exactly what the doctor ordered to keep the Rand Corp plan alive. And not on Europe’s doorstep. But will these countries allow themselves to be used like that? I doubt it. Some kind of ‘9/11’ moment attributed to Russia might result in war, but would they believe that Russia is capable of such a thing if it hit them? Or would they smell a rat? Turkey shot down a Russian fighter-bomber after that aircraft completed a raid on positions held by ISIS, without Russia lashing out. And the Russians are helping them with a nuclear power plant. But they were instrumental in bringing HTS (Al Qaeda) to power in Syria, after Mark Rutte gave them the green light, yet they also served as hosts for the stalled peace talks between Russia and Ukraine. Four opportunistic countries with Turkey trying to revive the ‘Ottoman Empire’, while serving both NATO and BRICS. Anything to weaken NATO *and* BRICS, would serve Erdogan’s purposes, as long as he can get away with it. Going to war with Russia as NATO’s ‘bitch’ isn’t going to advance his chances to bring about his dream. Likewise Erdogan’s loud protests over Gaza made headlines, but meanwhile he doesn’t commit.
NATO-led efforts to set the Caucasus on fire will continue, since that would cut the North-South trade-route BRICS is developing, while it wouldn’t just be a headache for the Russians, but for the Chinese as well. It has been Turkey which has ‘teased’ China with promoting an Uyghur uprising, assisted by the NATO-countries, but Azerbaijan recently concluded a treaty with China, listed as a betrayal of the ‘East Turkistan’ (Uyghur) cause. In the end I think BRICS, and thus Russia, will win these countries over, and not NATO, because BRICS has so much more to offer, and won’t demand respect for LHBTQ+++++ lifestyle choices, or a ‘membership-fee’ of five percent of their GDP to finance Mark Rutte’s ‘Summits’, and grooming Donald Trump. But never say never. Keep your eyes peeled, and pay attention to the news coming from that region too.