NATO celebrates its 70th anniversary this week. How should we evaluate the result? NATO says that it's the most successful alliance in human history. But it seems to me that this is the most inefficient alliance that you can only imagine. But where, in this case, is the evaluation criteria? As for me, it would be legitimate to apply Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin's engraved formula from his letter to his friend Bestuzhev. It's known to everyone here from school. It's a timeless classic.
"The dramatic writer must be judged by the laws he himself recognized over himself".
Actually, this is the case with NATO. NATO must be judged by the laws it recognized over itself. How else? On the occasion of the anniversary, the U.S. Permanent Representative to NATO, the unfading blonde Kay Bailey Hutchison, stated that the North Atlantic Treaty literally "protects Europe and North America from Russian aggression". Excellent. From this point of view, who has NATO really defended for 70 years? And from which exact Russian aggression? That's funny. NATO's aggregate budget is under $1 trillion per year. It's over 20 times larger, it's over 20 times larger than Russia's military budget. Can you imagine the proportions? It means that NATO spends over 20 times more than Russia on countering Russia and still talks about the Russian military threat. Can we call this efficient? Honestly, we can't, because it's disproportionate.
If NATO was privately owned, then the owner would certainly have wondered how efficient the expense to counter the Russian threat is, if the military expenditures of the two sides are so disproportionate? In this case, you involuntarily think that the declared objective of NATO — defense from aggressive Russia — is different from the real objective. And then, the analogy with a private firm already works. NATO isn't a mechanism to counter aggressive Russia but a machine for siphoning off money from its allies for the purchase of American weapons. This is the first point. It's a way to control the market through military discipline. In this case, yes, we can admit that it's efficient. Everyone, well, except for Turkey, regularly buys American weapons. That was the first point. The second point is that NATO is a mechanism of like-mindedness through a paradox. It's backwards: "if we spend so much money, then the threat is serious". We aren't idiots to spend so much money. We aren't idiots. So, that is their argument.
It's also complicated by the fact that NATO still accuses Russia of approaching NATO's borders. It's because Russia creates a military counterweight in its territory to what we call the expansion of NATO. Yes, that's true. But we act according to our laws and within our borders. If we look at how the North Atlantic Treaty Organization spread toward us, it'll be clear who appeared on whose doorstep.
In 1949, NATO was originally founded by 12 countries. In addition to the USA, they were Belgium, Great Britain, Denmark, Iceland, Italy, Canada, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, and France. Three years later, in 1952, Greece and Turkey joined. In 1955, Germany joined. In 1982, Spain joined. In 1990, in exchange for an agreement on the reunification of Germany, the Kremlin received a promise not to expand NATO to the east. However, less than ten years later, in 1999, NATO was joined by Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic — the so-called "fourth expansion" of NATO. And in 2004, the fifth expansion took place — Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, and also Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, and Estonia joined the bloc. 2008 was the sixth expansion of the alliance, with Croatia and Albania joining. In 2014, the United States and NATO had their eyes on Sevastopol, but the Crimeans voted against. In 2017, Montenegro became the 29th member of NATO. Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia are next. Not long ago, Trump offered even Brazil to join NATO.
Here, in fact, is the picture in dynamics. Out of the joint military operations of the bloc, there's the shameful bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999. Already in the 21st century was the inglorious actions in Afghanistan. Then, they destroyed Libya. It's shameful.
But there is a movement inside the alliance. It's important to understand the essence of what is happening. In military terms, the Eastern European countries participating in NATO become the U.S.'s priority. If earlier Germany and France were its main allies in the bloc, now they're not. Macron dreams of a European army without the U.S. Merkel in Germany is stingy with money, uncompromising in negotiations, not ready to participate in the bloc's foreign adventures, doesn't want to deploy new American weapons, and generally says that it's time for Germany to stand on its own two feet.
But there's Poland and Pilsudski's unforgotten concept: Międzymorze. In simple terms, this is a group of countries between Russia and Germany, between the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea, which must be formed as a single community as opposed to both Russia and Old Europe. And when we imagine today the transatlantic axis, it's primarily an axis between the U.S. on one side, and Romania and Poland on the other side. It's in these countries that the U.S. deploys its launchers for interceptor missiles and intermediate-range missiles. This is where the preliminary stockpiles of weapons are created. It's here that military maneuvers are taking place more and more often. Of course, the Baltic States participate in the Międzymorze. Their dream is to in drag Moldova and Ukraine.
It wasn't a coincidence that on the eve of the 70th anniversary of NATO, the bloc intensified air reconnaissance off our Black Sea shores and sent a whole squadron to the Black Sea, as they say, to ensure Ukraine's freedom of navigation. It's clear that they mean new provocations in the Kerch Strait, which NATO encourages the Kiev authorities to do. They do it on the eve of the second round of the presidential elections to help Pyotr Poroshenko. We wouldn't like to think about it.
In any case, from Moscow, all of the warnings on this occasion have already been made this week. The words of the chair of the State Duma Committee on Defense, General Shamanov, toward NATO were powerful.
Vladimir Shamanov, Chair of the State Duma Committee on Defense: "No matter how many of their own "tubs" they put under our nose, we've created a self-sufficient defense group for causing unacceptable damage to any groups of ships that appear in close proximity to our borders".
