NATO Will Dissolve Today In London | 22 comments (22 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: US Gambled with Ukraine Entry to NATO (none / 0)

Europe's Panic as Peace Prospects Emerge | EU Parliament - Jeffrey Sachs |
In Germany, the SPD ruling party has shockingly collapsed in public support. Macron is very unpopular in France. What's puzzling, why I say I'm confused, is that these politicians are not following public opinion. They're not acting like politicians trying to maximize public support or the vote. What are they doing exactly?
I had interpreted and still basically do interpret the last 30 years as US-led, a US-led adventure of unipolarity that was manifest most explicitly in NATO enlargement, and that Europe reluctantly signed on to that.
What we think we know from events like the Bucharest summit in 2008 of NATO, Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France were resistant to following the US line of NATO enlargement and especially a clear commitment, a roadmap for Ukraine and Georgia to join NATO. So they were resistant, but they dropped their resistance at the Bucharest summit under pressure from the United States and then acceded to the US approach.
That included Europe agreeing to the coup and the fact that the United States actively promoted regime change in February 2014, and actually the United States recognized a government brought in by a violent coup a day after European foreign ministers had negotiated almost exactly the opposite, a continuation of the Yanukovych government for many months until there would be national elections later in 2014. So the Europeans folded their hand on February 22nd, 2014 and went the American route.
US Expansion and European Compliance
My interpretation has been that America led what I have called a game. It was a game of US expansion, US unipolarity, US aiming to weaken and extend Russia. The word "extend Russia" is the word that the Rand Corporation used in 2019 to say, "do everything you can to weaken, annoy, undermine Russia." What a policy, by the way, just mind boggling that adults should behave like children in this reckless manner. But that's what they did.
Now, Europe suddenly is given a prospect that this absurd, failed, disastrous approach will end. And they say, "No way. We'll continue the war." Of course, they can't continue the war. Even with the United States, Russia was winning the war on the battlefield and wasn't going to be defeated. Europe by itself, it's preposterous to talk in the terms that they are speaking.