The decisions taken as the NATO summit in Washington closed Thursday show the NATO imperialist powers are planning direct military intervention against nuclear-armed Russia. The day before, the NATO alliance had announced the creation of an office in Ukraine and of a NATO command in Germany to coordinate the war offensive against Russia.
This piece is part of a commentary series on the upcoming NATO summit in Washington in which RAND researchers explore important strategic questions for the alliance as NATO confronts a historic moment, navigating both promise and peril.
Le service de renseignement extérieur (SVR) de la Russie a déclassifié le rapport complet de l’un de ses résidents sur l’envoi d’un contingent militaire français en Ukraine en mars de cette année. Le texte intégral du rapport du résident du SVR sous le pseudonyme Felix sur le sujet est publié dans la revue «Éclaireur».
Le chef du SVR, Sergey Naryshkin, a déclaré le 19 mars que Paris se préparait déjà à envoyer un contingent militaire en Ukraine, dont le nombre sera d’environ 2 mille personnes. La France l’avait alors démentie.
As NATO convenes in Washington, it faces internal tensions and Trump’s potential return as U.S. president. But it is the alliance’s approach to Russia that will determine the future of transatlantic security.
NATO has a few worries as its leaders meet on July 9-11 in Washington for a summit marking the alliance’s seventy-fifth anniversary.
Vous vous rendez compte, n’est-ce pas, que tout ce qui se passe autour du fiasco de l’Ukraine du côté de l’OTAN est complètement fou ? Les gens qui dirigent le gouvernement américain – Barack Obama et sa bande de sorcières – ont tout déclenché là-bas, de concert avec une bande d’acteurs du monde des affaires (BlackRock, diverses compagnies pétrolières et gazières, des types d’Haliburton, des fabricants d’armes, un tas de grandes banques), plus l’ignoble WEF pour les «guider» (ha !), cherchant à s’emparer des richesses minérales de l’Ukraine et, en fin de compte, de la Russie elle-même. Belle tentative. Ça n’a pas marché. Des tonnes d’argent ont été jetées dans un trou à rats.
Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in Kazakhstan on Tuesday morning for the 24th annual meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a group created by Beijing and Moscow to manage their shared – and competing – geopolitical interests in Central Asia.
Despite promises to support Ukraine for as long as necessary, many NATO Allies are starting to reach a tipping point in their military assistance to Ukraine. That reality, and the specter of Donald Trump’s reelection this November, has led some within the Alliance to call for the NATOization of the war in Ukraine. Absent consensus on extending Ukraine an invitation for NATO membership, NATO Allies have spent the last few months finalizing plans for alternative ways to show support for Ukraine at the upcoming Washington Summit. Intended to be a ‘bridge’ to NATO membership, the new measures—which will see NATO taking a larger role in coordination of allied training and security assistance—are unlikely to resolve the underlying dilemma the Alliance has faced since 2014: determining how far NATO should go in supporting Ukraine absent a formal collective defense security guarantee by the Alliance. Moreover, by fundamentally altering NATO’s role in the conflict, the new measures could actually increase ambiguity surrounding the Allies’ commitment to the defense of Ukraine, prompting Russian president Vladimir Putin to potentially test the Alliance’s resolve.
Moscow’s anger over Turkish arms supplies to Kyiv and compliance with U.S. sanctions threatens a rift between the on-off allies.
The ever-turbulent relationship between Russia and Türkiye is on the brink of a new crisis. In early June, Russian President Vladimir Putin openly reproached Ankara for providing military aid to Kyiv, and also complained about its cooperation with Western financial institutions over sanctions.
Continentalism, a geopolitical concept coined by Algis Klimaitis, adviser to Algirdas Brazauskas, the first President of Lithuania after it became independent, stands for a Europe focused on itself. (1) Continentalism is directed against transatlanticism, because it stands for a European social market economy, in other words the continental model of “Rhenish capitalism” and not the Anglo-Saxon model of “shareholder/stakeholder capitalism”, for a Christian-conservative culture, as opposed to the “woke” ideology that has come from the United States, and for a European security system that eclipses NATO.
The military spending race that has begun in the world in recent years (primarily because of the war in Ukraine) has become a burden on the budgets of many countries, but for Russia in particular, dependence on military injections could prove disastrous, believes Oleg Itskhoki, professor of economics at the University of California, Los Angeles. While military spending in the world is growing from 2% to 3% of GDP, in Russia it is already almost 9% of GDP and 40% of the budget. And even if the war ends tomorrow, it will not be possible to simply get off this needle of military spending, and the money will run out sooner or later.