Our host describes activities in the political and diplomatic domain and I have no argument with this analysis. If we want to know why NATO persisted after 91 then we need to consider what other purposes it has served since then and that may help us look to the future. I have two to offer.
First, NATO is a shell organization for moving money from national treasures to elsewhere. If you can influence NATO then you can redirect that money. Complexity in purchasing standards is an advantage for the suppliers that can best master that complexity. In other words the biggest equipment and services vendors end up almost dictating procurement standards to the buyers through NATO and new members need to get up to standard.
Second, and related, is organizational inertia. As in any public or private organization, the component parts are all people with their interests: careers, org charts, budgets, pensions, status and reputations. Only oversight from political leaders can call these people to account when they are acting as a class and that almost never happens because the politicians are acting as a class too, as Aurelien has described at length, and partly due to the influence of donors, e.g. the suppliers I mentioned above, and the revolving door. When Donald Trump made a stink about NATO costing too much for the value it was delivering to the USA, all other politicians (excepting the overtly Trump aligned) sang in a perfect chorus of aghast indignation along with the NATO staff. It's hard to be a mainstream Euro-pol and anti-NATO.
So there exists a complex (did Eisenhower borrow that word from Jung? irdk) mostly visible by its capital extraction and self preservation that only political will could possibly bring under control.
NATO channels European public money into the predominantly Anglo-American defense industry. It's likely to be a substantial portion of the payoff that allow European bourgeoisie to "free ride" on the American empire's terms of trade with the rest of the world. For the vast majority of European politicians and business class, the benefits of vassalage still outweigh the cost of losing Russian resources and possibly the Chinese import/export market.
Most European NATO equipment is of European origin, often collaborative between European countries (like the Typhoon fighter). Indeed, European NATO states have historically preferred this to avoid becoming too dependent on the US. Ironically, you have to go outside NATO to find heavy users of US equipment: Japan and Korea, for example, although both are now moving away from dependence on the US.
Fair enough. I haven't studied this closely and may well be completely wrong on this. I'm just trying to puzzle out what Europeans are so willing to commit economic suicide at America's command. Maybe they're all still hoping that somehow Russia breaks and resets to 1992 or just mentally conditioned to never think of Russian victory as a possibility, but I am probably just not sufficiently elevated to appreciate the thought processes of the governing class.
The European political elite does not know it is committing economic suicide. They are able to maintain such beliefs because they are deranged.
They are the priesthood of the Church of the End of History. Their ordained destiny is to bring liberal democracy and expert administration, which is their vision of Western Civilization, to ever more lands and people. They are entrusted with preserving everything enlightened in European traditions and culture. As priests they can't be wrong, in other words they only talk to people who share these beliefs. And the consequences for theological heresy are severe, in case they might be inclined, as Orban, to state the plainly obvious from time to time. They cannot change directions or admit to errors. It's just not possible for them and so the only way forwards is to continue believing their own statements and policies are good and true.
Most Europeans, as opposed to the political elite, don't have much say in what happens.
Interesting to hear that RoK and Japan are moving away from US weapons systems. I assume a lot of foreign military sales from the Middleast will also go to Russia or China in the future. It would be very interesting if one of the biggest losers from Ukraine ends up being the American weapons manufacturers. That was the one party that I pegged as the sure winner at the start of the SMO.
The ROK began to move away from US weapons in the 1990s, with purchases of ships, aircraft and electronics from countries like the UK and Germany. The aim was to use technology transfer to build their own defence industry, which they have now done: the tanks Poland is talking about buying would come from there. The Japanese have been more circumspect but are moving gently that way.
"If there is one thing worse for NATO than the present crisis, it would be some kind of civil war in Ukraine where the alliance was forced to take sides" as opposed to the situation for the 8 years prior to 2022 which can be described as Ukraine in a state of civil war in which NATO chose to take sides? Really this just demonstrates the state of zugzwang that the west seems to have entered with regards to Ukraine: go forwards - lose; go backwards - lose.
Oh goodness me, you haven't seen anything yet. A civil war in a member state is about the worst thing you can imagine: different delegations turning up in Brussels and demanding to be seated, different NATO countries supporting different factions ....
Though probably safe to say, NATO will be strongly supporting a particular side and the other side would likely be wanting to go to Brussels with pitchforks and torches.
After coup d'etat Maidan in 2014, Ukraine already is in civil war: western Ukrainians have been shelling eastern Ukrainians, killing about 14 thousand of them. That's was the reason Russia after 8 years of trying to establish peace by Minsk Agreements v1 and then v2, launched their SMO at last. Former pres. Poroshenko, pres. Hollande and chanc. Merkel all they speak with one accord that Minsk was only for deceipt Putin and buying time for building the largest Western arrmy in Ukraine. Besides, since 2015 Ukraine participates. year by year, in NATO drillis..
I suspect the authors summary to be quite accurate as to the state of geopolitics in 1990, but it seems apparent that we have since moved into a new era of unbridled US power over the actions and dispositions of the European vassals.
We have, after all, destroyed their economic future and forced them to disarm, there's really no demand they will say no to.
I think if you read some of my other pieces, you will see that I have shown at some length that European hatred of Russia is at least as deep as that of the US. European leaders are engaged in holy crusade with their own countries as collateral damage.
My thanks, as this remark occasioned a more thorough reading of just what you are talking about. It's rather easy to forget the self-moving by Euros...
Hell, look at the Nordstream bombing. The United States committed an act of war against Germany, and all the German chancellor can do is scurry off to Washington to make sure that the official story is straight. "Beat me more, Master! I'm a bad slave and I deserve to be beaten!"
Even if you actually believe the "well, it sort of was Ukraine what done it" crap, that doesn't make Germany's stance all that much less supine.
Well even IF you can believe Ukraine was responsible, it was done with the approval of / or the orders of the USA.
I remain amazed how the Western media have almost forgotten about Nordstream (we know why of course) and there are few journalists willing to risk their careers to investigate the truth. That Germany has turned over and "bit the pillow" on this issue, shows that they really are just a "running lap dog" of US interests.
Arguably one of the largest consequences thus far, is the future impoverishment and irrelevance of Germany. A poor wasteland filled with Islamic immigrants, subsidized on the remaining scraps of social programs...
The German leadership in all mainstream parties has made it plain that they don't care, and they don't care about voters or public opinion, either. Pistorius and Baerbock each said it in black and white.
For their part, Germans meekly take this kind of abuse.
There is a small problem with this, which can generally be attributed to the rather incomplete history education of Americans.
It should be known that the citizens of the Roman Empire believed with the same conviction and confidence that the Empire would survive until the end of eternity thanks to a state of grace ! Well, the result is known ! :) Odoaker is already standing in front of the gates and knocking, but the deaf listen to a baseball game much more !
To ascertain some of the statements made here, from the mouth of a former CIA working under Dick Cheney:
“The choice that we faced in Ukraine — and I'm using the past tense there intentionally — was whether Russia exercised a veto over NATO involvement in Ukraine on the negotiating table or on the battlefield,” said George Beebe, a former director of Russia analysis at the CIA and special adviser on Russia to former Vice President Dick Cheney. “And we elected to make sure that the veto was exercised on the battlefield, hoping that either Putin would stay his hand or that the military operation would fail.”
I do think a lot of discussion is pointless though. The war will not end until there is a declaration from Ukraine that it will never seek to join NATO, with the appropriate changes in the Ukrainian Constitution, reverting to the original one, which among other things reflected the statements btw RSF, Ukriane, and Belarus at the dissolution of USSR, that is they will be neutral militarily towards eachother.
But the details of the essay are very informative, especially for those not privy to how big organizations and bureaucracies work.
Very interesting, one of the more worthwhile clarifications of this mess I've seen.
Regarding the persistence of NATO after the Soviet collapse it would be useful to look more closely at the maneuvering that occurred during the Yugoslav crisis. Grossly summarizing work by Peter Gowan, Diana Johnstone and Susan Woodward, the option of supporting continuation of the Yugoslav federation by offering IMF help in dealing with its Volcker-related debt problem was scotched in favor of a breakup that would allow greater economic penetration by Germany, France, and the US. Once the breakup was underway, the US encouraged a militarization of the conflict, most significantly by early on supporting Bosnian factions who threatened Bosnian Serbs, encouraging Serbian retaliation. Intervention to manage the ensuing conflict required military resources beyond the immediate capacity of European states and they chose to ride along on the wings of US jets to a "resolution."
In the process, the possibility of a European-based security order organized around the OSCE and including Russia vanished into the memory hole. A program of excluding Russia from European security arrangements, a hallmark of the Cold War, continued. This was the primary goal of the US and set the stage for the current catastrophe.
Perhaps this is tendentious, but in my view it is a plausible account and should be directly addressed. Too often what we are presented with are more detailed histories that fail -- in many cases deliberately I suspect -- to clearly define how broad US geostrategic goals shaped the post-Cold War international order.
I always think the test of a good historian is to identify the real patterns of history while avoiding creating artificial ones. There was no "western" policy towards Yugoslavia: it was the most chaotic and divisive episode I have ever been involved in. It was unwanted and unwelcome, and almost derailed the European Political Union negotiations by pitting European states against each other. The most you can say, I think, is that there was a common western opinion that Yugoslavia was another of these artificial Communist creations, like the USSR and the Warsaw Pact, and that nothing should be done to keep it together. Some states, like Germany, were actively keen to go further and encourage republics to secede. Mostly, this was based on ignorance: "if Poland can leave the Warsaw Pact without violence, why can't Bosnia leave Yugoslavia?" said one German diplomat in my presence. Indeed, the German role at the time was very controversial and created bitterness that lasted a good decade afterwards. Kohl's CDU/CSU coalition was facing a difficult election, and the CSU, whose vote came from the catholic rural areas of the south, was furiously agitating for recognition of Croatia, which eventually happened.
Like everyone else, the US had forty-eight hours of other problems to cope with every day, and there was little time for Yugoslavia. The nearest thing the Bush administration had as a strategy was to try to be involved in decisions (hence a role for NATO) since they argued that if there were a serious conflict, the Europeans would want them to be involved anyway. This changed when Clinton took power, because the Democrats were in hock to the NGOs that had supported them since the defeat of Carter. Few had any knowledge of the area, but they wanted to punish those they thought responsible for the crisis: thus we had the first outing of the Humanitarian Fascism that has characterised western security policy ever since. The same pressures existed in Europe but were much less powerful, because the Europeans were a lot closer to the action. The confusion, in-fighting and division in Washington was the largest single problem in resolving the conflict, and probably delayed its resolution by 1-2 years.
Robert Baer, a former CIA agent, spoke about the breakup of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Baer claims he and his colleagues then received millions of dollars to influence politicians and bring about the division of the former Yugoslavia.
"We bribed parties and politicians who fomented hatred among nations," Baer said.
In the end, these are all the good and complicated reasons why having Ukraine join NATO is a bad idea. It will make the alliance unmanageable if not useless. And probably some members though about that. If suddenly some of them think that far ahead anyway.
But is it no just much more simple ?
The US want to keep this card when, sooner or later, there will be negotiations with the Russians. After all, isn't it one of the reasons Russia intervened in Ukraine ? So if Putin wants this political victory, he will have to give something else. Something more valuable to the US than the Ukrainian NATO membership...
You assume that in such negotiations the US will have an equal (or upper) hand. From what I have seen recently the military situation is swinging towards the Russians and they dont have to pay for the massive cost of upkeep of the Ukrainian nation. Indeed with grain exports suspended indefinitely Ukraine has now lost almost all its foreign currency earnings. It is now almost totally dependent on the USA (with a little extra help from the EU and UK). It seems to me that if I were the Russians I would be pressing for a demilitarized Ukraine, no Nato membership and ceding all of the Donbas to Russia as a minimum acceptable deal. What has the USA got in its card hand?
Quite the contrary. As the Russians might well have the upper hand, NATO membership might not worth a lot anymore anyway to the US. But it will still have a symbolic value for Putin. So it will be time to accept a no NATO membership and ask for something else. Maybe a little something regarding China or Iran or whatever. So better not waste this last card now.
Of course, it all depends on the way the situation will unfold.
But what does the US have to offer? The US NEVER removes sanctions, the domestic politics make this impossible. There really is no way to step down from where the toddlers have climbed to in their rage...
"Something more valuable to the US than the Ukrainian NATO membership..."
It appears, from Vilnius, and from this post, that Ukrainian NATO membership is not valuable to the US, or is valuable only insofar as the threat of such keeps the europeans confused and divided
The Russians, anyway, would call the bluff - and, who knows, may even encourage NATO to try to invite Ukraine - there would be a few NATO members who would refuse such
The Russians wish for the destruction of NATO, easier to achieve in this way than by force of arms
There is nothing left for the US to ask or demand. The situation as is now in the Ukraine is that the only reason that the Ukraine has not yet lost is restraint from Russia. Do note that most of that restraint is due to Russia's capability to wage war and not tank the Russian economy.
The war will not stop until either the Ukraine ceases to exist as a(n independent) political entity or Russia gets what it wants. Which means that for as long as the US/NATO thinks they can keep waving a NATO membership for Ukraine around the war will continue.
The robber doesn't care how correct you are, how close and nuanced your reading of the law is. The robber is utterly indifferent to the high-minded sentiments expressed in "Thou Shalt Not Steal".
NATO's existence spans my life, so far. Hopefully I outlive it.
I cannot pinpoint the year where performing arts subsumed serious deliberation over substantive policy, but NATO seems to be a show running past its drawing power. The newer members motivation for joining appears to be marketing -- pictures of the leaders on a stage with the old colonial powers which these leaders think projects gravitas.
To me it appears that the losing side of World War 2 wrote the history. Russia's enormous contribution was denigrated and the US and GB happily took credit for the win. That Russia had enormous manufacturing capacity, coupled with highly trained troops under competent generals escaped notice. Of course, in the late stages of my life this should not come as a surprise -- Russia has been the target of vicious propaganda since 1917. Germany, GB, and the US had more in common than GB and the US with Russia.
So when one considers that the US has not fought a major land war on its soil and is configured as an expeditionary force it is not too shocking to see that NATO just is not prepared for a major conflict with Russia. This is really not a shame other than the dumpster fire of cash burned up on overly complex and unreliable weapons systems.
Western citizens need to take these matters into their own hands and throw out the warmongering leadership. The billionaires will have to make do without Russian resources under their thumb.
You may want to read into Operation Unthinkable, Operation Paperclip, Congress for Cultural Freedom, and Operation Gladio. Also The Devil's Chessboard by David Talbot.
I believe our gracious host is writing honestly based on his substantial experience. However, there really are darker powers at work that even very high level people may not see. Much of the control comes through subtle promotions and funding for one thing over another, occasionally it's more violent and in the open, as we see in the cases of the Kennedy assasinations or overwhelming falsifications surrounding Ukraine 2014 and after.
This is a very enlightening description of the history and mechanisms of NATO.
Though it should be noted this is a conflict between East and West. A fault line in human relations in which the Iliad and the Odyssey are only the point where The Narrative became passed on. Given it goes to the Homo Sapiens moving in on the Neanderthals and the Cro Magnon.
Up through Genghis Khan, it was primarily East pushing West, but recently, with colonialism and the Great Game, as well as Napoleon and Hitler, it's been the West pushing back.
Ukraine might be a country, but it's not a nation, with a singular history. If it was, the logical course of action would be something similar to Turkey, playing the sides off each other and being a bridge, not the battleground. Basically it's a civil war, between its western Europe oriented side and its eastern, Russian oriented side.
Just theorizing here, but my sense is that Europe, being composed of nations with fairly immoveable territorial boundaries, such as channels, mountains, forests, peninsulas, rivers, etc. has developed such that the various cultures can sustain some fairly distinct animosities for very long periods of time, Such that the feedback between nature and nurture, human foibles and situational realities, has produced a mindset that is distinctly European.
While Russia and the various Stans have evolved on the steppes, where the territorial boundaries between tribes and cultures are not as clear cut, emphasizing different psychological factors. Such as both a stronger reliance on cultural bonds to hold groups together, as well as a greater need to interact across those group boundaries. Which might help explain how all the various ethnicities that make up Russia can function as a larger nation, in ways Europe is finding it profoundly difficult to do so, without a recent war to remind them why it's necessary.
Ukraine might be a nation, but it's not a country. Meaning it do have a culture and an history but it doesn't fit its 'official' borders. Hence the war.
I would use the meaning that a nation is a cultural construct, while a country is a civil construct. As you say, the borders are not identical.
The problem isn't that it doesn't have a culture, but that its civil boundaries include a combination of both eastern and western cultural constructs. The western side might see itself as a nation, called Ukraine, but the eastern side still sees itself as Russian.
thanks for your commentary aurelien... i especially liked your insight in this paragraph below -
"At some point in the 1990s, the concept of a “security guarantee,” never very robust in the first place, began to break down completely, but without anybody really noticing. This helps to account, I think, for the vengeful and hysterical attitude of so many western leaders over the Ukraine crisis: their anger is directed in part against their own predecessors, who left them a delayed action bomb, which they now no longer have the capability to defuse, and alleged “security guarantees” which now turn out to be worthless."
but overall - i think you are over thinking in your post here - not a bad habit and some fruits come from it, but i think it is much simpler then this.. nato is a cia creation meant to keep russia out, germany down and the usa on top.. in this regard it has worked.. think back to the 1962 missile crisis... how is what the usa is doing here any different? they want to have nukes on russias border.. any security agreement can't work with a recognition of all countries security needs..
nato has been a successful cia project, but inside the success has also been the seeds of its own demise.. we are seeing this now, although i suspect nato will stick around for some time still.. bottom line - the pedals are off the rose and the end is in sight...
I've set out the origins of NATO, which have been massively studied and are well understood. The US presence and interest in Europe has always been useful to Europeans as a counterweight to Russia and as a guarantee against German revanchism and the unforeseeable consequences of re-nationalisation of defence. Indeed, in the Cold War the concern was not of US dominance but of US lack of interest, and a risk of Washington cutting a deal with Moscow over the heads of Europeans. Hence the stationing of US forces, in part as hostages, to make sure that in any war Americans would be the first to die.
Things haven't radically changed since, at least in my personal experience, except that US influence has been diluted somewhat by the sheer number of member states and the tensions between them. Most European states still think on balance that NATO is useful: there are so many tensions and unresolved historical issues that everyone finds some advantage in keeping it going.
The Europeans' fear that Washington would have been receptive to an agreement with Moscow strikes me as extremely paranoid, given the McCarthy era and the domino theory, but plausible given the traumas of the war. What does not seem at all plausible to me in this context, however, is a lack of interest on the part of the United States in containing communism.
It's understandable in the sense that nobody ever really believed that Washington would put the lives of its citizens at risk in a potentially nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union. The best that Europeans could hope for from an ally they privately viewed as unreliable, because self-interested, was that Moscow would have to take the possibility of a strong US reaction into account. (The European view was best put by one French diplomat who described the difference between France ("integrated in practice but not in theory") and the US("integrated in theory but not in practice.") The fear was that in any really serious crisis the US would blink, and find a face-saving accommodation with Moscow. Because the US effectively controlled the command structure, Europeans would not be able to continue the fight on their own. So a lot of time and effort went into making sure US troops were near the front line, and preferably the first man to die would be an American. I'm not sure anyone really ever privately trusted the US: the French went over to a national command system of their own because they reasoned, logically enough, that the US would never put Washington at risk to save Paris.
Reminds me of how Daniel Immerwahr describes the machinations that went into crafting the US reaction to the combined Japanese offensive of 8 December 1941: out of concern that the general public wouldn't regard the combined slate of US imperial holdings/interests in the Pacific as worth spending American lives to defend, the administration decided to place an artificially strong emphasis on the relatively minor Japanese airstrike against US naval assets in Hawaii, reasoning that "the American island of Oahu" (as FDR put it) was the only target with a large enough white settler population to stand a realistic chance of future US statehood, a differentiation conveniently aided by Hawaii's happenstance location on the other side of the International Date Line from the rest of the targets -- so even now, most Americans still regard the (far more significant) Japanese seizure of Western imperial holdings on the 8th in what's now dubbed the Indo-Pacific as a minor footnote, while the 7th still "lives in infamy" as the date on which Japan's war against the United States began with "the attack on Pearl Harbor," i.e. an attack against America itself.
Who knows, maybe if humanity survives the outbreak of WWIII, Ramstein Air Base could become the 51st state?
I never though the US forces in Europe as hostages. Much more like a last ressort option to ensure that pro-US faction prevail whatever could happen. Hence De Gaulle asking US troops to leave France.
But in a way, in February 2022, Ukrainians didn't manage to prevent US troops to (officially) leave Ukraine and then Russians attacked. So it make sens.
i would also add that the additional members to nato all view the usa as the leader of this alliance.. nato is and always has been a tool for control over europe, specifically getting all the members to buy usa military goods and keep the military industrial complex generating money - lots of it..
Thank you for an interesting and informed discussion with a lot of points on which I agree. I suggest though that perhaps you exaggerate the European "fealty" to Nato. Leaving aside mon Général, the Western European tendency has been to resist US encroachment while reluctantly buying expensive US equipment for years before things like Eurofighter / Typhoon &c got, er, off the ground. And with good reason in that the US defence industry could generally shave prices for run-on production for instance, and cut them to prevent the growth of a competitor.
And the resistance to Ukraine as a Nato member has wider ramifications than the limited range of scenarios that you adumbrate. Assuming a continuing Russian state (of some description), there are plenty of arguments for not including Ukraine in Nato - while perhaps supplying various levels of guarantees of independence - so as to maintain a dialogue with Russia.
A more worrying possibility perhaps is that suggested by the economic tendency inside Ukraine with the attempted destruction of trade unions and a general neo-liberal approach to the economy (I hope that claims of the Kyev council taking over destroyed buildings to flog them off to developers is not a serious issue, but you never know.) If this tendency continues Ukraine will have a quite different set of taskmasters to answer to, in the global financial world; and even if they are not all Elon Musk, the direction of travel might be very worrying.
Another possibility is simply a hard-headed government that decides that the priority is good relations with Russia, since ultimately the West cannot be relied upon, and so is ready to make whatever concessions Russia requires. If such a government results from a democratic election (which it might well) it would be hard for NATO to oppose its policies, though the alliance would doubtless try.
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Not going to happen, the votes for that traditionally came from the areas that Russia is now in the process of annexing. As it is just suggesting this as politician with the current mood in the rest of the Ukraine is (political) suicide. Would such a government be formed by some miracle then there is a good chance that the Ukraine will descent into a civil war where the Nazis, Neo-Nazis, and other assorted anti-Russia hardliners would go after the government.
I have long felt that part of NATO's job was to place a lot of American military north of Africa. After 1991 this became a major focus; but they can't talk about it.
Thank you, Aurelien, for going through the structure of NATO and the ways in which Ukraine would be able to participate in and influence the decisions of the various parts of NATO, for better or worse, mostly worse.
I suspect most people think of NATO as this amorphous military group that is tasked with protecting Europe from the nasty Russians. Very few people understand the workings of organizations like this and how they have a very important and widespread influence on foreign policy and world affairs.
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Have you thought about asking Yves Smith if she would include a link to your latest piece in the daily Links post at NC? Otherwise, perhaps she wouldn't object if you put a link in the comments section of Links. Your comments there are always full of good information and analysis, and I think you could get a lot of traffic from doing that.
Yves and Lambert occasionally link to my pieces in NC, but I don't bother them systematically, since that would be discourteous. But I do ask, at the end of each essay, readers to forward links to other sites if they think they are interesting enough. So feel free!
Well done, Sir. Your well-researched, depth understanding of geopolitical realities is quite advanced. So far as my own delving have progressed, I've yet to discover another source which achieves the behind the scenes multinational depths which this posting developed.
Considerably later in the season, when my time will mostly be geared to indoor matters, my intent is to develop a Substack site. Though it will cover a number of geopolitical matters along with philosophical and visionary musings; the primary focus will feature a trans-abstract international alphabet, based upon the Anglo-Latin one currently occupying the driver's seat. In my estimation, abstractions engender obstructions, as they are deeply left-brain, rationalistic, academicist and scientistic perspectives...virtually exclusively.
That said, when time and resources allow, I will give strong consideration to becoming a subscriber to your highly informative offerings.
Our host describes activities in the political and diplomatic domain and I have no argument with this analysis. If we want to know why NATO persisted after 91 then we need to consider what other purposes it has served since then and that may help us look to the future. I have two to offer.
First, NATO is a shell organization for moving money from national treasures to elsewhere. If you can influence NATO then you can redirect that money. Complexity in purchasing standards is an advantage for the suppliers that can best master that complexity. In other words the biggest equipment and services vendors end up almost dictating procurement standards to the buyers through NATO and new members need to get up to standard.
Second, and related, is organizational inertia. As in any public or private organization, the component parts are all people with their interests: careers, org charts, budgets, pensions, status and reputations. Only oversight from political leaders can call these people to account when they are acting as a class and that almost never happens because the politicians are acting as a class too, as Aurelien has described at length, and partly due to the influence of donors, e.g. the suppliers I mentioned above, and the revolving door. When Donald Trump made a stink about NATO costing too much for the value it was delivering to the USA, all other politicians (excepting the overtly Trump aligned) sang in a perfect chorus of aghast indignation along with the NATO staff. It's hard to be a mainstream Euro-pol and anti-NATO.
So there exists a complex (did Eisenhower borrow that word from Jung? irdk) mostly visible by its capital extraction and self preservation that only political will could possibly bring under control.
NATO channels European public money into the predominantly Anglo-American defense industry. It's likely to be a substantial portion of the payoff that allow European bourgeoisie to "free ride" on the American empire's terms of trade with the rest of the world. For the vast majority of European politicians and business class, the benefits of vassalage still outweigh the cost of losing Russian resources and possibly the Chinese import/export market.
Most European NATO equipment is of European origin, often collaborative between European countries (like the Typhoon fighter). Indeed, European NATO states have historically preferred this to avoid becoming too dependent on the US. Ironically, you have to go outside NATO to find heavy users of US equipment: Japan and Korea, for example, although both are now moving away from dependence on the US.
Fair enough. I haven't studied this closely and may well be completely wrong on this. I'm just trying to puzzle out what Europeans are so willing to commit economic suicide at America's command. Maybe they're all still hoping that somehow Russia breaks and resets to 1992 or just mentally conditioned to never think of Russian victory as a possibility, but I am probably just not sufficiently elevated to appreciate the thought processes of the governing class.
The European political elite does not know it is committing economic suicide. They are able to maintain such beliefs because they are deranged.
They are the priesthood of the Church of the End of History. Their ordained destiny is to bring liberal democracy and expert administration, which is their vision of Western Civilization, to ever more lands and people. They are entrusted with preserving everything enlightened in European traditions and culture. As priests they can't be wrong, in other words they only talk to people who share these beliefs. And the consequences for theological heresy are severe, in case they might be inclined, as Orban, to state the plainly obvious from time to time. They cannot change directions or admit to errors. It's just not possible for them and so the only way forwards is to continue believing their own statements and policies are good and true.
Most Europeans, as opposed to the political elite, don't have much say in what happens.
Interesting to hear that RoK and Japan are moving away from US weapons systems. I assume a lot of foreign military sales from the Middleast will also go to Russia or China in the future. It would be very interesting if one of the biggest losers from Ukraine ends up being the American weapons manufacturers. That was the one party that I pegged as the sure winner at the start of the SMO.
The ROK began to move away from US weapons in the 1990s, with purchases of ships, aircraft and electronics from countries like the UK and Germany. The aim was to use technology transfer to build their own defence industry, which they have now done: the tanks Poland is talking about buying would come from there. The Japanese have been more circumspect but are moving gently that way.
These are two very good points Tom, very good indeed.
"If there is one thing worse for NATO than the present crisis, it would be some kind of civil war in Ukraine where the alliance was forced to take sides" as opposed to the situation for the 8 years prior to 2022 which can be described as Ukraine in a state of civil war in which NATO chose to take sides? Really this just demonstrates the state of zugzwang that the west seems to have entered with regards to Ukraine: go forwards - lose; go backwards - lose.
Oh goodness me, you haven't seen anything yet. A civil war in a member state is about the worst thing you can imagine: different delegations turning up in Brussels and demanding to be seated, different NATO countries supporting different factions ....
Though probably safe to say, NATO will be strongly supporting a particular side and the other side would likely be wanting to go to Brussels with pitchforks and torches.
As long as the Empire reduces Russia to irrelevance, the Empire could not care less about Ukraine or what happens there.
If there were no Russia, Ukraine would be a pariah state.
After coup d'etat Maidan in 2014, Ukraine already is in civil war: western Ukrainians have been shelling eastern Ukrainians, killing about 14 thousand of them. That's was the reason Russia after 8 years of trying to establish peace by Minsk Agreements v1 and then v2, launched their SMO at last. Former pres. Poroshenko, pres. Hollande and chanc. Merkel all they speak with one accord that Minsk was only for deceipt Putin and buying time for building the largest Western arrmy in Ukraine. Besides, since 2015 Ukraine participates. year by year, in NATO drillis..
I suspect the authors summary to be quite accurate as to the state of geopolitics in 1990, but it seems apparent that we have since moved into a new era of unbridled US power over the actions and dispositions of the European vassals.
We have, after all, destroyed their economic future and forced them to disarm, there's really no demand they will say no to.
I think if you read some of my other pieces, you will see that I have shown at some length that European hatred of Russia is at least as deep as that of the US. European leaders are engaged in holy crusade with their own countries as collateral damage.
My thanks, as this remark occasioned a more thorough reading of just what you are talking about. It's rather easy to forget the self-moving by Euros...
Hell, look at the Nordstream bombing. The United States committed an act of war against Germany, and all the German chancellor can do is scurry off to Washington to make sure that the official story is straight. "Beat me more, Master! I'm a bad slave and I deserve to be beaten!"
Even if you actually believe the "well, it sort of was Ukraine what done it" crap, that doesn't make Germany's stance all that much less supine.
Well even IF you can believe Ukraine was responsible, it was done with the approval of / or the orders of the USA.
I remain amazed how the Western media have almost forgotten about Nordstream (we know why of course) and there are few journalists willing to risk their careers to investigate the truth. That Germany has turned over and "bit the pillow" on this issue, shows that they really are just a "running lap dog" of US interests.
Arguably one of the largest consequences thus far, is the future impoverishment and irrelevance of Germany. A poor wasteland filled with Islamic immigrants, subsidized on the remaining scraps of social programs...
The German leadership in all mainstream parties has made it plain that they don't care, and they don't care about voters or public opinion, either. Pistorius and Baerbock each said it in black and white.
For their part, Germans meekly take this kind of abuse.
There is a small problem with this, which can generally be attributed to the rather incomplete history education of Americans.
It should be known that the citizens of the Roman Empire believed with the same conviction and confidence that the Empire would survive until the end of eternity thanks to a state of grace ! Well, the result is known ! :) Odoaker is already standing in front of the gates and knocking, but the deaf listen to a baseball game much more !
To ascertain some of the statements made here, from the mouth of a former CIA working under Dick Cheney:
“The choice that we faced in Ukraine — and I'm using the past tense there intentionally — was whether Russia exercised a veto over NATO involvement in Ukraine on the negotiating table or on the battlefield,” said George Beebe, a former director of Russia analysis at the CIA and special adviser on Russia to former Vice President Dick Cheney. “And we elected to make sure that the veto was exercised on the battlefield, hoping that either Putin would stay his hand or that the military operation would fail.”
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/russia-s-ukraine-invasion-may-have-been-preventable-n1290831
I do think a lot of discussion is pointless though. The war will not end until there is a declaration from Ukraine that it will never seek to join NATO, with the appropriate changes in the Ukrainian Constitution, reverting to the original one, which among other things reflected the statements btw RSF, Ukriane, and Belarus at the dissolution of USSR, that is they will be neutral militarily towards eachother.
But the details of the essay are very informative, especially for those not privy to how big organizations and bureaucracies work.
Very interesting, one of the more worthwhile clarifications of this mess I've seen.
Regarding the persistence of NATO after the Soviet collapse it would be useful to look more closely at the maneuvering that occurred during the Yugoslav crisis. Grossly summarizing work by Peter Gowan, Diana Johnstone and Susan Woodward, the option of supporting continuation of the Yugoslav federation by offering IMF help in dealing with its Volcker-related debt problem was scotched in favor of a breakup that would allow greater economic penetration by Germany, France, and the US. Once the breakup was underway, the US encouraged a militarization of the conflict, most significantly by early on supporting Bosnian factions who threatened Bosnian Serbs, encouraging Serbian retaliation. Intervention to manage the ensuing conflict required military resources beyond the immediate capacity of European states and they chose to ride along on the wings of US jets to a "resolution."
In the process, the possibility of a European-based security order organized around the OSCE and including Russia vanished into the memory hole. A program of excluding Russia from European security arrangements, a hallmark of the Cold War, continued. This was the primary goal of the US and set the stage for the current catastrophe.
Perhaps this is tendentious, but in my view it is a plausible account and should be directly addressed. Too often what we are presented with are more detailed histories that fail -- in many cases deliberately I suspect -- to clearly define how broad US geostrategic goals shaped the post-Cold War international order.
I always think the test of a good historian is to identify the real patterns of history while avoiding creating artificial ones. There was no "western" policy towards Yugoslavia: it was the most chaotic and divisive episode I have ever been involved in. It was unwanted and unwelcome, and almost derailed the European Political Union negotiations by pitting European states against each other. The most you can say, I think, is that there was a common western opinion that Yugoslavia was another of these artificial Communist creations, like the USSR and the Warsaw Pact, and that nothing should be done to keep it together. Some states, like Germany, were actively keen to go further and encourage republics to secede. Mostly, this was based on ignorance: "if Poland can leave the Warsaw Pact without violence, why can't Bosnia leave Yugoslavia?" said one German diplomat in my presence. Indeed, the German role at the time was very controversial and created bitterness that lasted a good decade afterwards. Kohl's CDU/CSU coalition was facing a difficult election, and the CSU, whose vote came from the catholic rural areas of the south, was furiously agitating for recognition of Croatia, which eventually happened.
Like everyone else, the US had forty-eight hours of other problems to cope with every day, and there was little time for Yugoslavia. The nearest thing the Bush administration had as a strategy was to try to be involved in decisions (hence a role for NATO) since they argued that if there were a serious conflict, the Europeans would want them to be involved anyway. This changed when Clinton took power, because the Democrats were in hock to the NGOs that had supported them since the defeat of Carter. Few had any knowledge of the area, but they wanted to punish those they thought responsible for the crisis: thus we had the first outing of the Humanitarian Fascism that has characterised western security policy ever since. The same pressures existed in Europe but were much less powerful, because the Europeans were a lot closer to the action. The confusion, in-fighting and division in Washington was the largest single problem in resolving the conflict, and probably delayed its resolution by 1-2 years.
Robert Baer, a former CIA agent, spoke about the breakup of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Baer claims he and his colleagues then received millions of dollars to influence politicians and bring about the division of the former Yugoslavia.
"We bribed parties and politicians who fomented hatred among nations," Baer said.
Full article here!
https://sarajevotimes.com/former-cia-agent-claims-they-gave-us-millions-to-split-up-yugoslavia-2/
Thanks for this explanation.
In the end, these are all the good and complicated reasons why having Ukraine join NATO is a bad idea. It will make the alliance unmanageable if not useless. And probably some members though about that. If suddenly some of them think that far ahead anyway.
But is it no just much more simple ?
The US want to keep this card when, sooner or later, there will be negotiations with the Russians. After all, isn't it one of the reasons Russia intervened in Ukraine ? So if Putin wants this political victory, he will have to give something else. Something more valuable to the US than the Ukrainian NATO membership...
You assume that in such negotiations the US will have an equal (or upper) hand. From what I have seen recently the military situation is swinging towards the Russians and they dont have to pay for the massive cost of upkeep of the Ukrainian nation. Indeed with grain exports suspended indefinitely Ukraine has now lost almost all its foreign currency earnings. It is now almost totally dependent on the USA (with a little extra help from the EU and UK). It seems to me that if I were the Russians I would be pressing for a demilitarized Ukraine, no Nato membership and ceding all of the Donbas to Russia as a minimum acceptable deal. What has the USA got in its card hand?
Quite the contrary. As the Russians might well have the upper hand, NATO membership might not worth a lot anymore anyway to the US. But it will still have a symbolic value for Putin. So it will be time to accept a no NATO membership and ask for something else. Maybe a little something regarding China or Iran or whatever. So better not waste this last card now.
Of course, it all depends on the way the situation will unfold.
But what does the US have to offer? The US NEVER removes sanctions, the domestic politics make this impossible. There really is no way to step down from where the toddlers have climbed to in their rage...
Toddlers have a habit of falling. It's part of the educational process.
"Something more valuable to the US than the Ukrainian NATO membership..."
It appears, from Vilnius, and from this post, that Ukrainian NATO membership is not valuable to the US, or is valuable only insofar as the threat of such keeps the europeans confused and divided
The Russians, anyway, would call the bluff - and, who knows, may even encourage NATO to try to invite Ukraine - there would be a few NATO members who would refuse such
The Russians wish for the destruction of NATO, easier to achieve in this way than by force of arms
There is nothing left for the US to ask or demand. The situation as is now in the Ukraine is that the only reason that the Ukraine has not yet lost is restraint from Russia. Do note that most of that restraint is due to Russia's capability to wage war and not tank the Russian economy.
The war will not stop until either the Ukraine ceases to exist as a(n independent) political entity or Russia gets what it wants. Which means that for as long as the US/NATO thinks they can keep waving a NATO membership for Ukraine around the war will continue.
Like quoting Bible verses to an armed robber.
The robber doesn't care how correct you are, how close and nuanced your reading of the law is. The robber is utterly indifferent to the high-minded sentiments expressed in "Thou Shalt Not Steal".
The robber is going to do what he wants to do.
NATO's existence spans my life, so far. Hopefully I outlive it.
I cannot pinpoint the year where performing arts subsumed serious deliberation over substantive policy, but NATO seems to be a show running past its drawing power. The newer members motivation for joining appears to be marketing -- pictures of the leaders on a stage with the old colonial powers which these leaders think projects gravitas.
To me it appears that the losing side of World War 2 wrote the history. Russia's enormous contribution was denigrated and the US and GB happily took credit for the win. That Russia had enormous manufacturing capacity, coupled with highly trained troops under competent generals escaped notice. Of course, in the late stages of my life this should not come as a surprise -- Russia has been the target of vicious propaganda since 1917. Germany, GB, and the US had more in common than GB and the US with Russia.
So when one considers that the US has not fought a major land war on its soil and is configured as an expeditionary force it is not too shocking to see that NATO just is not prepared for a major conflict with Russia. This is really not a shame other than the dumpster fire of cash burned up on overly complex and unreliable weapons systems.
Western citizens need to take these matters into their own hands and throw out the warmongering leadership. The billionaires will have to make do without Russian resources under their thumb.
You may want to read into Operation Unthinkable, Operation Paperclip, Congress for Cultural Freedom, and Operation Gladio. Also The Devil's Chessboard by David Talbot.
I believe our gracious host is writing honestly based on his substantial experience. However, there really are darker powers at work that even very high level people may not see. Much of the control comes through subtle promotions and funding for one thing over another, occasionally it's more violent and in the open, as we see in the cases of the Kennedy assasinations or overwhelming falsifications surrounding Ukraine 2014 and after.
This is a very enlightening description of the history and mechanisms of NATO.
Though it should be noted this is a conflict between East and West. A fault line in human relations in which the Iliad and the Odyssey are only the point where The Narrative became passed on. Given it goes to the Homo Sapiens moving in on the Neanderthals and the Cro Magnon.
Up through Genghis Khan, it was primarily East pushing West, but recently, with colonialism and the Great Game, as well as Napoleon and Hitler, it's been the West pushing back.
Ukraine might be a country, but it's not a nation, with a singular history. If it was, the logical course of action would be something similar to Turkey, playing the sides off each other and being a bridge, not the battleground. Basically it's a civil war, between its western Europe oriented side and its eastern, Russian oriented side.
Just theorizing here, but my sense is that Europe, being composed of nations with fairly immoveable territorial boundaries, such as channels, mountains, forests, peninsulas, rivers, etc. has developed such that the various cultures can sustain some fairly distinct animosities for very long periods of time, Such that the feedback between nature and nurture, human foibles and situational realities, has produced a mindset that is distinctly European.
While Russia and the various Stans have evolved on the steppes, where the territorial boundaries between tribes and cultures are not as clear cut, emphasizing different psychological factors. Such as both a stronger reliance on cultural bonds to hold groups together, as well as a greater need to interact across those group boundaries. Which might help explain how all the various ethnicities that make up Russia can function as a larger nation, in ways Europe is finding it profoundly difficult to do so, without a recent war to remind them why it's necessary.
Funny. I would rather said the opposite.
Ukraine might be a nation, but it's not a country. Meaning it do have a culture and an history but it doesn't fit its 'official' borders. Hence the war.
I would use the meaning that a nation is a cultural construct, while a country is a civil construct. As you say, the borders are not identical.
The problem isn't that it doesn't have a culture, but that its civil boundaries include a combination of both eastern and western cultural constructs. The western side might see itself as a nation, called Ukraine, but the eastern side still sees itself as Russian.
thanks for your commentary aurelien... i especially liked your insight in this paragraph below -
"At some point in the 1990s, the concept of a “security guarantee,” never very robust in the first place, began to break down completely, but without anybody really noticing. This helps to account, I think, for the vengeful and hysterical attitude of so many western leaders over the Ukraine crisis: their anger is directed in part against their own predecessors, who left them a delayed action bomb, which they now no longer have the capability to defuse, and alleged “security guarantees” which now turn out to be worthless."
but overall - i think you are over thinking in your post here - not a bad habit and some fruits come from it, but i think it is much simpler then this.. nato is a cia creation meant to keep russia out, germany down and the usa on top.. in this regard it has worked.. think back to the 1962 missile crisis... how is what the usa is doing here any different? they want to have nukes on russias border.. any security agreement can't work with a recognition of all countries security needs..
as for usa and ukraine, it was brought to our attention that in 1994 the usa was working on creating the perfect storm for russia in ukraine.. see barry r posen - this might not be the full picture, but you get the idea http://ssp.mit.edu/news/2022/from-1994-posens-a-defense-concept-for-ukraine
nato has been a successful cia project, but inside the success has also been the seeds of its own demise.. we are seeing this now, although i suspect nato will stick around for some time still.. bottom line - the pedals are off the rose and the end is in sight...
I've set out the origins of NATO, which have been massively studied and are well understood. The US presence and interest in Europe has always been useful to Europeans as a counterweight to Russia and as a guarantee against German revanchism and the unforeseeable consequences of re-nationalisation of defence. Indeed, in the Cold War the concern was not of US dominance but of US lack of interest, and a risk of Washington cutting a deal with Moscow over the heads of Europeans. Hence the stationing of US forces, in part as hostages, to make sure that in any war Americans would be the first to die.
Things haven't radically changed since, at least in my personal experience, except that US influence has been diluted somewhat by the sheer number of member states and the tensions between them. Most European states still think on balance that NATO is useful: there are so many tensions and unresolved historical issues that everyone finds some advantage in keeping it going.
The Europeans' fear that Washington would have been receptive to an agreement with Moscow strikes me as extremely paranoid, given the McCarthy era and the domino theory, but plausible given the traumas of the war. What does not seem at all plausible to me in this context, however, is a lack of interest on the part of the United States in containing communism.
It's understandable in the sense that nobody ever really believed that Washington would put the lives of its citizens at risk in a potentially nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union. The best that Europeans could hope for from an ally they privately viewed as unreliable, because self-interested, was that Moscow would have to take the possibility of a strong US reaction into account. (The European view was best put by one French diplomat who described the difference between France ("integrated in practice but not in theory") and the US("integrated in theory but not in practice.") The fear was that in any really serious crisis the US would blink, and find a face-saving accommodation with Moscow. Because the US effectively controlled the command structure, Europeans would not be able to continue the fight on their own. So a lot of time and effort went into making sure US troops were near the front line, and preferably the first man to die would be an American. I'm not sure anyone really ever privately trusted the US: the French went over to a national command system of their own because they reasoned, logically enough, that the US would never put Washington at risk to save Paris.
Reminds me of how Daniel Immerwahr describes the machinations that went into crafting the US reaction to the combined Japanese offensive of 8 December 1941: out of concern that the general public wouldn't regard the combined slate of US imperial holdings/interests in the Pacific as worth spending American lives to defend, the administration decided to place an artificially strong emphasis on the relatively minor Japanese airstrike against US naval assets in Hawaii, reasoning that "the American island of Oahu" (as FDR put it) was the only target with a large enough white settler population to stand a realistic chance of future US statehood, a differentiation conveniently aided by Hawaii's happenstance location on the other side of the International Date Line from the rest of the targets -- so even now, most Americans still regard the (far more significant) Japanese seizure of Western imperial holdings on the 8th in what's now dubbed the Indo-Pacific as a minor footnote, while the 7th still "lives in infamy" as the date on which Japan's war against the United States began with "the attack on Pearl Harbor," i.e. an attack against America itself.
Who knows, maybe if humanity survives the outbreak of WWIII, Ramstein Air Base could become the 51st state?
Ahh...now I understand.
Interesting...
I never though the US forces in Europe as hostages. Much more like a last ressort option to ensure that pro-US faction prevail whatever could happen. Hence De Gaulle asking US troops to leave France.
But in a way, in February 2022, Ukrainians didn't manage to prevent US troops to (officially) leave Ukraine and then Russians attacked. So it make sens.
i suppose it depends on whose eyes as to how this is viewed - the europeans or the americans, isn't it?
i would also add that the additional members to nato all view the usa as the leader of this alliance.. nato is and always has been a tool for control over europe, specifically getting all the members to buy usa military goods and keep the military industrial complex generating money - lots of it..
with - without
Thank you for an interesting and informed discussion with a lot of points on which I agree. I suggest though that perhaps you exaggerate the European "fealty" to Nato. Leaving aside mon Général, the Western European tendency has been to resist US encroachment while reluctantly buying expensive US equipment for years before things like Eurofighter / Typhoon &c got, er, off the ground. And with good reason in that the US defence industry could generally shave prices for run-on production for instance, and cut them to prevent the growth of a competitor.
And the resistance to Ukraine as a Nato member has wider ramifications than the limited range of scenarios that you adumbrate. Assuming a continuing Russian state (of some description), there are plenty of arguments for not including Ukraine in Nato - while perhaps supplying various levels of guarantees of independence - so as to maintain a dialogue with Russia.
A more worrying possibility perhaps is that suggested by the economic tendency inside Ukraine with the attempted destruction of trade unions and a general neo-liberal approach to the economy (I hope that claims of the Kyev council taking over destroyed buildings to flog them off to developers is not a serious issue, but you never know.) If this tendency continues Ukraine will have a quite different set of taskmasters to answer to, in the global financial world; and even if they are not all Elon Musk, the direction of travel might be very worrying.
Aurelien wrote:
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Another possibility is simply a hard-headed government that decides that the priority is good relations with Russia, since ultimately the West cannot be relied upon, and so is ready to make whatever concessions Russia requires. If such a government results from a democratic election (which it might well) it would be hard for NATO to oppose its policies, though the alliance would doubtless try.
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Not going to happen, the votes for that traditionally came from the areas that Russia is now in the process of annexing. As it is just suggesting this as politician with the current mood in the rest of the Ukraine is (political) suicide. Would such a government be formed by some miracle then there is a good chance that the Ukraine will descent into a civil war where the Nazis, Neo-Nazis, and other assorted anti-Russia hardliners would go after the government.
Thanks Aurelien
This also may be useful, NATO turning into to a (now) global police operation
'Perpetual Police?: Kosovo and the Elision of Police and Military Violence'
by Howard Caygill
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13684310122225000
I have long felt that part of NATO's job was to place a lot of American military north of Africa. After 1991 this became a major focus; but they can't talk about it.
Thank you, Aurelien, for going through the structure of NATO and the ways in which Ukraine would be able to participate in and influence the decisions of the various parts of NATO, for better or worse, mostly worse.
I suspect most people think of NATO as this amorphous military group that is tasked with protecting Europe from the nasty Russians. Very few people understand the workings of organizations like this and how they have a very important and widespread influence on foreign policy and world affairs.
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Have you thought about asking Yves Smith if she would include a link to your latest piece in the daily Links post at NC? Otherwise, perhaps she wouldn't object if you put a link in the comments section of Links. Your comments there are always full of good information and analysis, and I think you could get a lot of traffic from doing that.
Yves and Lambert occasionally link to my pieces in NC, but I don't bother them systematically, since that would be discourteous. But I do ask, at the end of each essay, readers to forward links to other sites if they think they are interesting enough. So feel free!
Always the diplomat, aren't you? :-)
I will consider sending them your links on a regular basis, although probably not every one. Of course IMNSHO I think they are all very interesting.
Stay safe.
Well done, Sir. Your well-researched, depth understanding of geopolitical realities is quite advanced. So far as my own delving have progressed, I've yet to discover another source which achieves the behind the scenes multinational depths which this posting developed.
Considerably later in the season, when my time will mostly be geared to indoor matters, my intent is to develop a Substack site. Though it will cover a number of geopolitical matters along with philosophical and visionary musings; the primary focus will feature a trans-abstract international alphabet, based upon the Anglo-Latin one currently occupying the driver's seat. In my estimation, abstractions engender obstructions, as they are deeply left-brain, rationalistic, academicist and scientistic perspectives...virtually exclusively.
That said, when time and resources allow, I will give strong consideration to becoming a subscriber to your highly informative offerings.