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NATO ignites

by Bernhard Trautvetter
The instrument of using half-truths is found in Nato propaganda where it cherry-picks Russian law-breaking in the Crimea crisis to portray Russia as a threat, forgetting the Western-blamed law-breaking in the weeks before: before the referendum on the status of Crimea took place, the pro-Western Yatsenyuk "interim government" was installed in Kiev
NATO ignites
by Bernhard Trautvetter
[This article published in Jan 2022 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.ossietzky.net/artikel/die-nato-zuendelt/.]

In an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine on 12/12/2021, Green Party foreign policy expert O. Nouripour advocates "the stationing of additional NATO troops on the eastern flank" if Russia attacks; in this case, "all options are on the table." It is well known that NATO is a nuclear power. To speak of "all options" here escalates tensions in an atmosphere like before a major war even further than they already are.

The background to the threat, which makes use of NATO's deterrence narrative, is NATO's eastward enlargement, with all its incendiary consequences. The basis of the so-called logic of deterrence is the image according to which the deterring NATO is the good force, whereas in the east lurks the troublemaker who can force the good guys into nuclear war. Since the Crimean crisis, the pro-NATO politicians, military leaders and their lobby have been spreading a narrative that takes on the sound of pre-war propaganda. Using half-truth, they focus on a slice of the picture that casts a positive light on their own actors, and the demonization of their counterparts aims to get the public to at least shrug off the buildup of arms and escalation of tension.

This goes so far that NATO uses the Crimean crisis as legitimization for its nuclear armament, although the deployment of the nuclear systems, which according to U.S. General Cartwright are technically far more serviceable and which are produced for the Büchel site near Koblenz, among others, was already decided at the NATO summit in Chicago in 2012. The narrative that with Crimea Russia was the first state to forcibly change the borders in Europe after the end of World War II overlooks the forcible land seizure of the NATO state Turkey on Cyprus, which dates back almost half a century and which is not recognized by any state on earth except Turkey itself.

The instrument of using half-truths is found in NATO propaganda where it cherry-picks Russian law-breaking in the Crimea crisis to portray Russia as a threat, forgetting the Western-blamed law-breaking in the weeks before: before the referendum on the status of Crimea took place, the pro-Western Yatsenyuk "interim government" was installed in Kiev with a breach of the constitution.

In the SundayTimes in May 2016, Gorbachev accused the West of cheering the disintegration of the Soviet Union. At the time, ND quoted him in the article "Gorbachev too would have taken Crimea" as follows: "They were never really interested in Russia becoming a stable and strong democracy." He saw the reason for the cooling off between the West and Russia not in the Crimean crisis, but in "Washington's arrogance."

This dangerous arrogance of the West was also revealed by the fact that in the machinations that accompanied the undemocratic change of government in Ukraine, far-right acts of violence were at least tolerated. The most famous crime of these days took place in the port city of Odessa. At least 46 people who had sought shelter from right-wing provocateurs died in the trade union building there before they carried out a massacre. Commenting on the importance of the right-wingers, Alexander Rahr, an expert on Eastern Europe, said in the March 6, 2014, Panorama program that the "right-wing sector, in my view, was decisive for the overthrow because it is an organization that was also ready to enter into combat with the policemen, with the security forces. They were well organized." The Panorama report text illustrated this: "From the very beginning, far-right forces have also played an important role on the Maidan: the ultra-nationalist Svoboda (Freedom) party, which sits in the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine's parliament, with just over 10 percent of the vote, has been a major player since the beginning of the protests." Party leader Oleh Tyahnybok once railed about the "Russian-Jewish mafia" controlling Ukraine. "But in addition to Svoboda, even more radical forces are active on the Maidan: for example, the paramilitary groups of the 'Right Sector' that are determined to do anything. (...) Its members are mainly members of neo-Nazi associations. On the website, individual members brag about their alleged or actual combat experience in Chechnya or Kosovo. (...) The 'Right Sector' troops, most of whom fought on the front lines on the barricades, played a decisive role in the ousting of the old regime at the end of February 2014. Accordingly, in their own propaganda they also consider the events as their 'national revolution'."

Also in arms with the Nazis were U.S. mercenary troops associated with Blackwater/Academi, as revealed in a Deutschlandfunk interview with then-Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn on May 12, 2014.

"dlf: A quick question about another aspect of this crisis. Yesterday there were reports here in Germany that there are several hundred U.S. mercenaries from a private company working on the side of the Ukrainian government. Do you know anything about that, and what does that mean, that all of a sudden there may be U.S. mercenaries there?

Asselborn: I know (... ) that in the transition phase everything has to be done from Kiev, that dramas like Odessa, where the police totally failed, that you prevent that and that you also, I think - and this is important still - this call is made that military operations from Kiev in the east are not offensively oriented, that they are only defensively oriented if they have to be, and that you also try, of course, in Kiev to really do everything so that this dialogue that I have indicated can take place and that one does not operate with methods that remind us of some bad memories, that remind us of how, for example, in other war zones-we are not in a war zone-in Afghanistan, in Iraq, or somewhere else, it was operated. "

According to the RedaktionsnetzwerkDeutschland of May 4, 2014, German soldiers also supported Yatsenyuk's illegal interim government with, among other things, a "mission led by the Bundeswehr and at the invitation of the Ukrainian regime. Such inspections (...) do not have the broad mandate of an OSCE mission, but are agreed among the participating states themselves."

When NATO and other Western powers, including the German government, turn their pre-war propaganda against Russia, it is maneuvering to distract from the fact that it was and is NATO that is igniting the Russian western border with the risk of a third major war in Europe. And the Alliance Green leadership, now part of the "traffic light" government, is playing its part. Not only does it contradict the founding idea of the Greens as a force for peace and ecology, it chooses its words in a way that is even more escalating than other forces with an affinity for NATO. The peace movement would do well to enter 2022 with vigilance, without false hopes of melodious human rights rhetoric.

The U.S. administration of the Biden administration, however, hinted in talks with Russian President Putin that the U.S. would orient the government in Kiev toward an autonomous status for the eastern Donbass region. That is where the predominantly Russian-speaking part of the population lives, and it is over this area that the conflict in Ukraine, which has repeatedly turned violent, is simmering.

However, Ukraine's accession to NATO, which is being sought by some transatlanticists, remains a simmering point of conflict between the United States and Russia. British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss tweeted Dec. 28, 2021, that she had discussed Russia's "aggressive action against Ukraine" in a phone call with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. She said she agreed with Mr. Stoltenberg that NATO "resolutely supports" Ukraine. Her comment that Ukraine's sovereignty should be taken into account also referred to the Ukrainian parliament's decision on June 8, 2021, to make Ukraine's membership in NATO a priority of Ukraine's foreign policy. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba had recently stated that neither the United States nor NATO would accept Russia's demand to halt NATO's eastward expansion.

Russia, referring to the promises made by the foreign ministers of the United States and Germany during the negotiations on the accession of the GDR (East Germany) to the scope of the Basic Law that NATO would not expand eastward, had demanded that NATO security guarantees preclude Ukraine's accession. Apparently, those responsible at the time were quite able to understand this. In 1997, for example, former U.S. Defense Secretary McNamara wrote in a letter to then-U.S. President Bill Clinton: "We believe that further NATO expansion eastward could threaten the security of our allies and shake stability in Europe." Also in 1997, U.S. diplomat and historian George F. Kennan wrote: "It would be the most disastrous mistake of American policy in the post-Cold War era to expand NATO to Russia's borders."

These words take on a far-sighted explosiveness in the currently acute situation. The peace movement is challenged to counter the NATO propaganda with information about the real processes in order to prevent worse. In the nuclear age, politics has the priority task of maintaining peace in order to open up a prospect of overcoming the threats to the future.
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