The very plain fact of the matter is that most intel agencies expected Russia to have defeated Ukraine by now in a lightning campaign, so it’s too late by far for it to have done “better than expected.” That doesn’t mean the Russians ever stopped gaining ground or that they won’t win, but it does mean everybody involved is barking up the wrong tree. One should be advised to look for media leaks in coming days where Intel folks “in the background” begin to admitting Russia is doing “better” than they “expected.” Why?

They know the engineered narrative is weeks from collapse due to the reality on the ground militarily, the globe diplomatically, and at home economically. Putin, don’t forget, were he able to conquer and control it, invaded the Ukraine because it would be a valuable addition to Russia. He didn’t invade any of the other six NATO countries on his border and they all joined because of Putin’s bellicose threats over the years and because they remember the forty one years of horror caused by the Iron Curtain.

Plus the fact that Russians and Ukrainians have a long history of mutual enmity.

Look over a list of NATO countries in 1989 and compare today’s expansion of NATO to Russia’s expansion. It is obvious that the plan to encroach up to Russia’s borders was planned and executed in order to goad Russia to take action. Over 20,000 Eastern Ukrainian Russian-preferring citizens have been killed by Western Ukrainians since 2014. Much of this slaughter was performed by the Ukraine internal NAZI-Branch of the army named The Azov Battalion.

This was all back of the heels of Prime Minister Winston Churchill calling for America’s help, describing it as the New World redressing the imbalance in the Old. European nations have to provide for their own defense, which means funding weapons and military personnel sufficiently enough to defend themselves. American support should be extra, not fundamental, even with an alliance. The world has many other imbalances to be concerned about.

Besides, so long as the feckless Alzheimer Joe administration is in power, NATO will never be used militarily. Not that the other member countries are willing to fight Russia anyway. Even if they were, they’d just get in America’s way. The various military involved couldn’t be integrated, much less coordinated effectively; not at all, actually. NATO is about as effective as Alzheimer Joe, and he’s a semi-ambulatory vegetable. A toxic vegetable but still a shrub.

The promise of Ukraine to join NATO was the bridge too far and Putin went in to solve the problem with force since talks and negotiations failed. Who do you think is behind the NATO expansion and causing strife among nations? More than likely (and not too surprisingly) – yes, our very own CIA and pitiful Foreign Affairs Department.

Russia, Ukraine and NATO reset? Don’t fall for Russian propaganda. Ever!

Bruce Thornton, FrontPageMag: ‘NATO Needs a Reset’ …

The Ukraine conflict highlights the long-evident dysfunctions of the treaty.

Last week Joe Biden and his foreign policy team attended the NATO Heads of State and Government summit in Brussels. This gathering was more consequential than usual given the ongoing brutal war Russia is waging against Ukraine. Though Ukraine is not a member of NATO, this conflict on the borders of several NATO nations highlights the long-evident dysfunctions of the treaty, some of which are only now being acknowledged.

Yet little went on last week to suggest that NATO member-states are serious about making the deep reforms that should have taken place in the decade after the Cold War ended.

The official NATO statement was certainly filled with “rules-based international order” clichés typical of large bureaucracies suffering from professional deformation and fossilized narratives. It spoke of Russia’s “assault on international norms” that don’t exist, any more than the “international community” it implies will “hold accountable those responsible for violations of humanitarian and international law, including war crimes.” No more substantial are phrases like the “values and norms that have brought security and prosperity”; or “the foundations of international security and stability”; or the “international order including the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity, as enshrined in the UN Charter.”

In reality, all these laws, institutions, and principles are the result of treaties made among sovereign nations that join them not because of shared “norms” or “values,” but because they serve those nations’ interests. And when a treaty stops doing so, those nations will ignore or violate them. That fact of history calls into doubt the statement’s claim that “Our commitment to Article 5 of the Washington Treaty is iron-clad.”

But who really thinks that Germany or the UK or the U.S. will go to war with Russia over Estonia or Romania? If Ukraine had been a NATO member, would Article 5 really have changed the political and security risk-calculus that earlier led Joe Biden to announce to the world that the U.S. won’t go to war with a nuclear-armed Russia over Ukraine? [-]

[+] … That is, NATO will finally honor the requirement––which only 10 of 30 member states do now––of spending at least 2% of GDP on defense, as well as devoting at least 20% of that 2% on developing and purchasing war materiel, and fulfilling Article 3’s requirement that states can ensure their own self-defense. Germany, the fourth wealthiest country in the world by GDP, announced after three decades that it will finally comply. But given NATO’s history of ignoring those requirements, we should be skeptical that such promises will be kept once the current crisis passes.

Indeed, chiding European NATO to pay its fair share didn’t start with the blunt-talking Donald Trump. As I’ve written before, after NATO’s birth in 1949, “It didn’t take long for American politicians to start grousing over American taxpayers having to pay for the defense of some of the richest countries in the world. [-]

[+] … As potential global aggressors, some of them non-state actors like jihadist organizations, were given greater scope, member states needed to field much larger armies with much greater firepower to meet those potential threats. Most importantly, it needed a new, more reliable funding formula, with expulsion as the penalty for deadbeats.

Then expanding NATO would have made sense, for it would have had the military assets necessary for backing up its Article 5 guarantees, and creating the deterrent power that Putin has exposed as sorely lacks. As Ukrainians continue to die, the West now must rely on Russia’s military incompetence, its economic collapse, or a palace coup to bring this war to an end. [end]

Full link below…….

NATO ought to have been dissolved in 1991 along with the Soviet Union but it certainly hasn’t pushed Putin during his reign. He didn’t invade Turkey. He didn’t invade Poland. He didn’t invade Finland. He hasn’t even invaded the other three Baltic states, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. He didn’t invade any NATO country and those are all NATO countries on Russia’s border.

NATO should have dissolved in ’91, because at that point, who were they protecting against? An Invasion by the Maldive Islands? And by remaining in existence and marching right up to Russia’s borders, it could say only one thing to Russia, “the USSR may be gone, yes, but you are and always will be, our enemy.”

Most of us exonerate Putin not in any way, shape, or form, being as he is, a brutal thug. But you can see how NATO pushed him. Which is the height of stupidity, “say, let’s put someone’s back up against a wall, someone from a historically suspicious and raving paranoid culture.”

“Puto” invaded the Ukraine for pure conquest. If he were to conquer it, that would place three more NATO countries on Russia’s Western border. Russia, Ukraine and NATO reset? “If hands and buts were candy-nuts!”

And on that note, time for today’s MAGA Pill – Warrior-president Donald John Trump – MAGA! KAG!

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•  Bruce Thornton, FrontPageMag: NATO Needs a Reset