During his visit to Ukraine on November 20, 2023, the US Secretary of Defense L. Austin reiterated the commitment of the USA and other NATO members to continue supplying weapons to Kiev. NATO politicians and experts do not hide the fact that Russia’s victory in Ukraine means that NATO will lose this war. But, a conflict can only be won or lost by the parties involved. Consequently, NATO’s fear of losing in the Ukrainian conflict is an admission that the alliance and its members are a party to the conflict.
Since the beginning of the Ukrainian conflict, the US and its NATO allies have been at war with Russia. It was the US and its NATO allies, through their puppet Zelensky, who interrupted negotiations on a peaceful resolution of the crisis in the relations between Kiev and Moscow in 2022. NATO has organized arms shipments to Kiev to wage war against Russia. The Pentagon Chief L. Austin was the initiator of the establishment of the NATO Ukraine Defense Contact Group on arming Ukraine at the American military base in Ramstein, Germany.
Over the past 20 months of the war in Ukraine, the US alone has provided Kiev with more than $44 billion worth of weapons. Kiev has received more than $35 billion worth of arms from other US allies and partners. NATO supplies heavy weapons (tanks, multiple rocket launchers, etc.) and their ammunition, including such prohibited or inhumane types as cluster munitions and depleted uranium shells. On November 20, 2023, the US State Department reported that Washington had already transferred more than 100 thousand anti-tank systems, including 10 thousand Javelin, 30 thousand air-to-ground missiles, 500 artillery systems, including 155 mm howitzers and HIMAR, about two thousand armored vehicles (Abrams, Bradley, etc.) to continue the war in Ukraine.
Following the refusal of the US Congress to approve a new military aid package to Ukraine worth several tens of billions of dollars, the Pentagon reported the transfer of $125 million worth of ammunition to Kiev. Thus, formally, the US continues military supplies to Ukraine. However, such aid would only last for a few days of fighting. But, its allocation allows Austin to talk about continued US military supplies to Ukraine. Meanwhile, this symbolic aid is aimed at supporting Washington’s European allies rather than Kiev. The Pentagon is thus encouraging the European members of NATO to concentrate all their available resources on continuing the war in Ukraine, but on their own, without the United States. This situation is very similar to what happened in Afghanistan, where Washington withdrew its troops without warning and essentially abandoned its NATO allies in the face of a Taliban offensive. The situation is repeating itself. The Europeans will be left alone in the war in Ukraine. And Washington is doing so despite Europe’s incapability to fill the gap in support for Ukraine, as the EU officials claim. Instead of supporting the Russian–Ukrainian peace talks and working together with Moscow to build a pan-European security system, the European officials have chosen to support the US course of unleashing a major war in Europe. Now it is time for the European governments to answer for their choice, but without Washington’s support, or rather with only the moral support of Biden’s administration, which has about a year to lead the European and the Ukrainian puppets from the White House.
![nato-for-conflicts](https://orientalreview.su/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/nato-for-conflicts.webp)
For how long will NATO be strong enough when the alliance is a party to and a sponsor of more than just the Ukrainian conflict? Hundreds of thousands of weapons worth billions of dollars supplied by NATO to Kiev are spreading around the world. The weapons sent to Ukraine are used in the Palestinian–Israeli conflict and have contributed to the violence of the conflict. At the same time, NATO emphasizes the supply of large-caliber, long-range weapons to conflict zones, the indiscriminate destructive properties of which lead to mass civilian casualties. This is confirmed by the results of the use of NATO military equipment in Donbas and the Gaza Strip.
What is happening in Donbas and Gaza shows that NATO does not control the use as well as the whereabouts of the weapons it supplies. International norms require both the supplying and the receiving parties to control the use of weapons. In the event of lack of control, inhumane use of the weapons, or if it is discovered that the weapons are in another country or are being used in another conflict without the consent of the supplier, the supply must be terminated.
However, Austin said he would continue to supply weapons to Kiev even if they were found in the hands of Hamas. What are the conclusions? The United States and NATO allow Zelensky to resell weapons to third parties, despite the fact that NATO has stated that the purpose of supplying weapons to Kiev is solely for the defense of the Ukrainian territory. It is worth noting that NATO was initially said to be supplying defensive weapons. But then NATO began to supply offensive weapons as well. Kiev did not conduct an offensive, even the name of the operation conducted by Kiev was not an offensive, but a counter-offensive, at the time when Russia was not on an offensive, but was engaged in organizing its defense, which was beyond the capacity of either Ukraine or NATO.
Instead of Zelensky, Hamas led an offensive against Israel from the Gaza Strip. The question is: maybe NATO’s offensive weapons were not originally intended for Kiev? One of the two things: Zelensky is using the conflict with Russia to smuggle weapons or is an intermediary in an illegal arms trade chain. And NATO turns a blind eye or is complicit in such schemes.
There is nothing surprising about the current situation in Ukraine. After all, the European Union has recognized the penetration of corruption into all branches of the Ukrainian government as Kiev’s biggest problem to have reached the most extensive level in Europe, and perhaps the world. But neither the EU nor NATO stopped it when deciding whether to support Zelensky, supply arms to Kiev, and continue the war with Russia. So the world gets conflicts here and there in Europe or in the Middle East. It is time for politicians, governments, parties, and citizens of NATO member and partner countries to realize that by supplying weapons to conflict zones, they become parties to the conflict and complicit in causing casualties and destruction through the use of the weapons their countries have supplied. And it is happening in different parts of the world thanks to NATO.
NATO is undermining global security by creating a chain of successive conflicts around the world. How many billions of dollars does NATO have in mind for the continuation of wars? How many years does NATO intend to wage war? There is only one answer, because the alliance also has the same task – constantly – to destabilize the world in order to maintain the global domination of the United States at the head of the “golden billion” representative of the Western community, in contrast to the billion population of China, India, the billions of inhabitants of the Global South.
Comments