War in Pieces

Is this the end of NATO?

(An unlikely message for hopeful minds. Creative commons.)

“In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.”

~ Leo Tolstoy, from his essay On Patriotism (1894)

Joel Bowman with today’s Note From the End of the World: Buenos Aires, Argentina...

Your editor spent most of the weekend offline; reading, writing and otherwise safely ensconced in what used to be known as the “real world.”

We trust we didn’t miss anything...

Just jesting. Human beings almost always miss something... and not only when their attention is diverted elsewhere. Often, they are most blinded by an object when they are staring right at it.

When we left off last week – right before “going dark” over the weekend – it appeared as though the world was bracing for the imminent outbreak of peace.

The tables had been set... the canapés plated... the Champagne chilled. Volodymyr Zelensky was en route to the White House to meet POTUS, having ironed his favorite t-shirt for the big occasion.

The offer on hand – a lucrative minerals agreement binding US economic interest to that of Zelensky’s cratered nation – was supposed to be a stepping stone towards a lasting peace deal.

“The idea,” according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, “is that, with joint U.S.-Ukraine investment in the nation’s resources, the United States will continue to have a stake in Ukraine’s security, stability, and lasting peace and therefore be incentivized to uphold and defend Ukrainian security.”

All Hollywood’s favorite actor-president had to do was smile for the cameras, sign on the dotted line and not find Hunter Biden’s stash of Bolivian marching powder hidden under the sink in the guest bathroom.

Alas...

Peace, Averted?

After forty minutes of live discussion, which provided just enough context for the mainstream media to dutifully ignore it when crafting their prime time cuts, talks descended into a full scale Oval Office communication breakdown. No doubt you’ve seen the clips... and the memes.

Following the diplomatic spat, Zelensky was sent back to his country without any supper while, presumably, the White House staff made do with an impromptu luncheon of Berry caviar and Krug Grande Cuvée.

By the time we returned to our desk Monday morning, it appeared as though defeat had been snatched from the jaws of victory. Peace had been averted. But by whom?

Cue the predictable “he said-she said” cacophony ringing out across the Interwebs, in which all the usual actors began lining up on their respective sides, explaining their own unique version of exactly the same event.

To some, the faultless Zelensky was “ambushed” by Trump and his attack dog, Vice President JD Vance. This was the claim advanced by the chattering class, many of whom have cheered the war from the beginning and would sooner see the world turned to ash than suffer the ignominy of peace in Trump’s time.

This camp includes all the usual chickenhawks in DC and the EU, who are only too happy to watch other people’s sons and brothers marched off to the frontlines while they bravely hoist digital Ukrainian flags in their BlueSky bios (having fled the perilous free speech zone that is X).

Others held that Zelensky came across as entitled and disrespectful and even suggested that he should be grateful for any aid – military or otherwise – from a country which, along with having no shortage of its own problems to contend with, also enjoys something of a geographical convenience when it comes to conflicts on the other side of the world.

(Indeed, it was Zelensky’s veiled “you have nice ocean, and don’t feel it now... but you will feel it in the future” comment that appeared to rouse Trump’s ire in the first place.)

No, No, NATO

The upshot of all this is that, within the space of a long weekend, the world went from taking one step closer to peace... to key players in and around the United States government calling openly for the immediate withdrawal from not only the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), but also the United Nations (UN).

Here’s The Independent:

Elon Musk shared his support for the US leaving NATO and the UN on Saturday night and was joined in the cause by Utah Sen. Mike Lee.

The head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) took to X to write “I agree” to a post stating “It’s time to leave NATO and the UN”

Musk is joined by several Republican lawmakers, such as Lee, who have questioned U.S. membership of NATO.

Hmm... what might a post-NATO world look like, you wonder?

For those of us who were not around on April 4, 1949, when NATO was formed – between the member states of Europe’s Western Union (France, the UK and the three Benelux states) plus the United States, Canada, and a handful of other European nations – it is difficult to imagine a world without such a supranational entity.

Of course, the alliance has undergone many transformations during its 75-plus year history and, arguably, even served a purpose during the Cold War years as a necessary counterbalance to Soviet geopolitical interests. (Though there are those who hold that it only served to escalate tensions and further fuel the nuclear arms race.)

Either way, today, more than three decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall (and NATOs repeatedly broken promise not to move “one inch to the east”), it is the United States that is left footing the overwhelming brunt of the alliance’s “defense” budget... even though, as Messrs. Trump and Zelensky point out, in their own ways, there is that “beautiful ocean” separating the continents, one from the other.

Here’s a graphic representation of the budget breakdown...

(Source: NATO budget, as of July 2023)

This is what it looks like when, as Polish PM Donald Tusk stated this week, “500 million Europeans are asking 300 million Americans to defend them against 140 million Russians.”

Defund and Defang

News that European NATO states might soon have to “go it alone” must have sent chills through the cold, dark hearts of warmongers from Brussels to Bethesda, Munich to McClean, who were suddenly faced with the threat of a defunded and defanged alliance.

We can only imagine their silent prayers, their desperate pleas under drone-free skies, as they envisioned the order books of Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon, and Northrop Grumman drying up faster than a mother’s tears under the looming prospect of a ceasefire.

Which begs the hypothetical question, without an aggressive military alliance conscripting member states around the world (and orchestrating coups d'état when citizens of those states don’t vote accordingly), who’s going to buy all those shiny Javelin missiles and F-16 fighter jets? Without a US-led NATO to do the heavy lifting, what will become of the poor ol’ Military Industrial Complex?

Jilted former Trump adviser and reliable permahawk, John Bolton, took to the pages of The Wall Street Journal over the weekend to address just that question... only, he did so with a straight face.

Note that the article was not titled or “How to Promote and Protect Peace” but rather...

How to Protect NATO and Other Alliances From Trump

In other words, “How to protect supranational military alliances from democratically-elected leaders that don’t toe the line.”

Meanwhile, Donald Trump is due to address the nation in a joint session of Congress this evening. After his customary fashion, the 47th president has promised to “tell it like it is.”

Fathers and daughters... mothers and sons... war pigs and deep state politicians alike...

…the world will be listening.

Stay tuned for more Notes From the End of the World…

Cheers,

Joel Bowman

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