NATO 2024 Summit: Rampant Hypocrisy

 By Bob Travica

The NATO 75^th annual summit occurred on July 9-11, 2024 in Washington D.C., USA. The war in Ukraine, which has been running since February 2022, dominated the agenda. The war in Gaza, which started in October 2023, wasn’t on the agenda. Around 11,000 civilians died in Ukraine, and at least three times that number in Gaza. The former started with Russia’s response to NATO’s advancement to its borders, and the latter began with Israel’s reaction to small-scale attacks on Israel proper by fighters from Gaza (two million strong Palestinian territory within Israel, which Israel sealed from the land and sea). Russia’s war is against Ukraine’s policies of endangering Russia’s borders, while Israel’s war is against the entire Gaza population (not just the Hamas government’s military) whom most Israelis deem a lower race and terrorists. Russia wants a neutral Ukraine, whereas Israel wants an ethnically cleansed Gaza for Israeli settlers. There are accusations of Israel being an apartheid state by many, including free-thinking Israelis, as well as genocide allegations. But these alarming characteristics of the Gaza war didn’t compel NATO to put it on the agenda. Neither did the similarities between these two wars.

[ “NATO calls out the U.S., as the decisive enabler of Israel’s war on Gaza, to cease all material and political support to Israel’s war effort.” 

The NATO declaration could've read like this, had Gaza been on the agenda,         but it was not. ]

Both the Ukrainian and Israeli governments are backed by the Western powers, most notably the U.S. Both get Western weaponry, surveillance on the battlefield, military training, etc. Neither war would be possible to sustain for longer without the support of NATO countries. Therefore, they could make an impact on the Gaza war should they wish so. Moreover, both wars destabilize large geographical and geopolitical spaces, pose significant security threats, and violate the values alleged by NATO (peace, freedom, stability, democracy, rule of law). Still, NATO remained mute on the Gaza problem as there’s no single cite of “Gaza” or “Israel” in the summit’s declaration (https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_227678.htm). Abundant shouting and rambling about Ukraine happened beside the elephant in the room with the inscription “Gaza”. The aging military alliance chose to celebrate its jubilee in furnishings of smoke and mirrors, covered by hellish-red domes.

Peons on the Eastern Flank

No observer has paid attention to the racial dimension in the Ukrainian war. Russia is the largest Slavic nation (144 million), and Ukraine is the third (38 million). In between lies Poland (40 million) which plays a major role in NATO’s eastward expansion and support to the Kyiv government. In this war, the West succeeded in turning the second and third-largest Slavic nations against the largest one. This is important because there are differences in decision-making stemming from cultural differences between Slavs and Western races (Germanic and Latin).

Roughly speaking, an elevated emotionality outweighing rational reasoning pushes Slavs toward extreme decisions. Specifically, Ukrainian officials don’t balk at the prospect of dragging the world into an all-out war in order to beat Russia; in fact, they invite this! Getting Ukraine into NATO at wartime, would mean that 32 NATO countries would have to come to rescue, no matter that this would most likely cause a devastating nuclear war that would first wipe out Ukraine itself. This standpoint isn’t just irrational but it borders with an intelligence insufficiency.

Enter Poland. It shows eagerness to fight Russians by all means, for example as being the top dog in the American push toward an integrated NATO missile defense system. Throughout its history, Poland had been sandwiched between Russia, Prussia, and Austria, and parts of it were chopped off. So, Poles’ animosity toward the conquering powers was coming in tides. It was turned against Germany which started WWII by attacking and occupying Poland (1939-1945). As Germany lost the war, sympathy turned toward Russians/Soviets who defeated Germans. Poland’s capital was promoted into the formal center of the military alliance of the Eastern block of communist countries: In 1949, the Warsaw Pact was established in response to the formation of NATO. But the period until the disbanding of the Eastern Block germinated an animosity against the former liberators, who over time came to be viewed as occupiers. Since the 1990s, the Polish tide of animosity targeted Russia, while the West (including Germany) was embraced across the board (economy, geopolitics, popular culture, military strategy). A desire for “revenge” against Russia became the backdrop to Poland’s foreign policy and is visible to the naked eye in Poland.

Note that Poland holds grudges against Ukraine due to some territorial disputes and still vivid memories of atrocities that Ukrainian Nazis, serving under the German flag, committed against Poles in WWII. But it appears willing to neglect this temporarily for the sake of the larger vengeful cause. Similarly to Ukraine, it appears that Poland is awaiting the U.S. cavalry to come and deal justice by killing the big bad bear. To the extent that Poland would be targeted by Russia’s nuclear arsenal early on in a war between NATO and Russia, Poland’s decisions aren’t less irrational than Ukraine’s. (Or they may be an effect of film-binging westerns after decades of deprivation.)

Ave, Caesar, Morituri Te Salutant

What about Russia? It certainly fits the Slavic emotional pack: the culture of protecting the grand motherland has been meticulously nurtured across generations of Russians. Even Stalin, a Georgian by nationality, understood that when his propaganda machinery crunched slogans of defending the Russian motherland against Germans in WWII rather than the Soviet Union or communism. There’s no better way to consolidate the Russian nation into a formidable fighting force than with the help of a real foreign threat; Mongols, Swedes, French, and Germans know a thing or two about this. The more NATO presses against Russia’s borders, the more it plays into the hands it tries to cut off.

Cold-blooded decision-makers in NATO’s decision rooms know how to account for nationalistic sentiments in decision-making. In the familiar divide and conquer approach, such a sentiment is an instant yeast for fomenting problems and providing self-serving solutions for them. Eager ears and willing bodies of executioners are ready, awaiting marching orders. Those ready to die are greeting you, Cezar! Cezar of our days, the aged Yankee, who’s six years older than NATO, demonstrated at the NATO summit how he still draws fatal Cold Warrish energy from sending young men to die on the battlefield.

And so, the NATO summit dropped the topic of the devastating war in Gaza, since the master said so. However, it poked China for being “a decisive enabler of Russia’s war against Ukraine through its so-called ‘no limits’ partnership and its large-scale support for Russia’s defence industrial base.” NATO even dared to call out China “to cease all material and political support to Russia’s war effort.” Had Gaza been on the Summit’s agenda, the NATO declaration could also read something like this: “NATO calls out the U.S., as the decisive enabler of Israel’s war on Gaza, to cease all material and political support to Israel’s war effort.”

The key conclusion of NATO’s summit is the promise to Ukraine that it’s on an “irreversible path” to future NATO membership. Ukraine is dissatisfied as there is no clear timetable for this promise, which is actually 20 years old. In fact, there has always been a timetable: Keep fighting against Russia until you reach the line where you fall dead (“deadline”, as ordinary people call it). Too cynical? No, just realistic: Only while being outside NATO can Ukraine be manipulated as an obedient fighting peon to keep straining and weakening Russia. Therefore, the US/NATO will keep fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian. 

As for the Kyiv regime, it can only hope that NATO will continue footing the war bill indefinitely or get tricked somehow to finally engage fully in the war. In any case, such a decimated Ukraine would eventually not be militarily worthy for inclusion in NATO. As for the democratic, economic, and security reforms required again for the membership, the road can even be much longer. It is no secret that Ukraine shares the destiny of the corrupted countries in East Europe, characterized by a strange mix of state, business, and organized crime structures. Therefore, the deadline for joining NATO is practically - never! It would be beneficial for Ukrainians, who awfully suffer, that their government start thinking realistically and cutting losses before these become unbearable. 

The 75^th NATO summit confirmed its historical roots – it’s an instrument of the American empire for holding Europe in a semi-colonial status. The degree of servitude Euro members exhibited by dropping the Gaza topic proves this. Israel is in Europe's backyard and wars in the Middle East endanger Europe's security. The summit also confirmed a newer principle set with the cessation of the Cold War, when NATO transformed into a hot war-mongering alliance. Isn’t this 75^th anniversary also the 25^th anniversary of NATO’s first war of aggression on a sovereign country, FR Yugoslavia? That’s when champions of the New World Order trampled over the international law and global security guaranteed by the United Nations, and imposed an “order” based on “rules” (the champions’ arbitrary decisions). At that point, the history wheel was turned back to the Middle Ages because the master could sue you, and the master could judge and sentence you.

Vivere mori! Live and die much faster with NATO as a custodian of international security.