NATO was created in 1949 to guarantee US suzerainty over the Western European countries, smashed during World War II and, at the same time, to present a defence shield against the USSR, then glorified for its role in crushing the Nazis.
Things changed in 1989 with the breakup of the USSR, the end of Comecon and the Warsaw Pact. A new hunting ground was opened up in Eastern Europe, to which was added the break-up of the former Yugoslavia, followed by the conquest of small patches of Serbia – North Macedonia, Montenegro and, Kosovo; this one, which is nothing more than pasture for drug traffickers and the location of the installation of the great Boldsteen base, for the surveillance and control of the Balkans by the USA.
NATO, which should have been dismantled as an attitude of political de-escalation in Europe, continued its warlike and destructive drift, extending its activity to Afghanistan - where it manifested a "fabulous" geopolitical vision - and to Syria, destroyed, to Iraq and, in further away from Libya. With Europeans contributing to the dirt and cleaning up the rubbish, without any attitude from which to devise their own intelligent strategy, limiting themselves to collecting the pieces, in the form of refugees and, fattening Erdogan's safe.
Faced with a Europe without a global strategy (Brexit is the stupidest example, it looks like Boris), the US pressured its vassals to spend 2% of GDP in military blunders; which feeds the great arms industry that has at the top, the North Americans Lockheed-Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, Northrup and General Dynamics. In the image, a well-known sales promoter presents a catalogue to the Saudi MbS.
The fabulous NATO never ceased to be an extension of the USA, with a few artists performing according to the geostrategic music of that country - which we usually call Chewing-gum Country - since in Europe there are only a few meek and obedient mummers in Brussels, the European headquarters of NATO, where the report is, more precisely, made to Norfolk where, in turn, they obey hastily the designs defined in Arlington, at the Pentagon[1]. And, with the gray image of a bibelot that goes by the name of Stoltenberg.
Going back to the dismantling of the USSR, with Russia shifted to the East, there was a buffer left over from the NATO countries, made up of Belarus, Ukraine and poor Moldova. The former has remained in Russia's political and economic orbit, and Moldova is a summer camp and an installation camp for Russian pensioners in lands with a milder climate. Ukraine, except for a short period at the end of World War I, never constituted a political unit; in spite of the fact that Kiev had been the seat of the Rus (the Nordics who transited between the Baltic and Constantinople) and from which the name of Russia came. Ukraine has a Catholic and rural population in the west, from the days of the Austro-Hungarian empire and the former Polish-Lithuanian state; and to the east lives a population of Russian language and roots, as seen by the real emancipation capacity of Ukraine, Lugansk and Donetsk, under the protection of Russia.
Ukraine, or rather its southern peasants, shone a hundred years ago in self-management resistance to the “white” reactionaries (the tsarists). And they ended up being betrayed and exterminated by a scoundrel of the worst kind – Trotsky; which, however, is still revered by groups of stooges in Western Europe.
Faced with the manoeuvers of Westerners after the departure of Yanukovych (president close to the Russians), with the high sponsorship of Nazi groups (2014) - self-proclaimed worshipers of the Nazi Stepan Bandera - in power was the “chocolate king”, Poroschenko, who is appointed by unclean practices; and, followed by the comedian Zelensky, current faithful interpreter of western interests.
Facing this situation, Putin recalled that the integration of Crimea into Ukraine was a decision of Khrushchev, himself Ukrainian, within a federation where nationalist statements made no sense. And, without much difficulty, in 2014, Russia easily seized Crimea as well as the Russian-speaking and industrialized Lugansk and Donetsk regions, with access to the Sea of Azov; this sea, with its outlet to the Black Sea, through the Kerch Strait, isolated part of the Ukrainian coastline and gave Russia the possibility of bathing in “warm waters”, as it was said in the 19th century.
Ukraine could have become like Finland or Ireland, which does not belong to military alliances; even if they are part of the EU. However, Uncle Sam benefits from the fragility – if not from the strategic stupidity – of European leaders, where we will remember the well-known Barroso, guided by “President” Blair and the drunk Juncker; although it is fair to mention that in terms of political incapacity, the USA, in the last twenty years, also has a lot to show—scumbags like George W Bush, Trump, or Biden.
The Baltic gas pipeline, after being built by the Russian-German partnership, is met with hostility from the US, which wants to sell its gas to Europe by sea, leave North Stream 2 empty and, consequently, deprive Russia of the revenue from the sale of gas. Ukraine, which has collected good income from the passage of Russian gas from Siberia to EU countries, fears the effects of this loss of income; although it has no political weight to oppose the game between the great powers.
The USA's great game is to maintain strategic leadership over European countries, to bring its means of war closer to the Russian border, incorporating in its orbit a fragile and poor Ukraine; just as it did years ago with the countries that had belonged to the Warsaw Pact.
In this scenario of threat, the US takes the opportunity to sell more weapons to EU Europe, just as it takes advantage of the EU's political indigence to accept a few more US military bases (pardon ... from NATO!), to their Slovak or Polish vassals who will seek, counterbalance its economic and political dependence on Germany. Ukraine's integration into NATO would represent a major setback for Russia, which would reduce its political weight vis-à-vis a thriving China, although it needs the Trans-Siberian corridors to attract Central Asia to its strategy of reducing maritime transport between the China Sea and Europe, more time-consuming and burdened when passing through Suez.
Suez is surrounded by potential conflicts, as in the past Six Day War that closed the canal between 1967 and 1973. Today, the canal can be involved in several conflicts that are taking place in Sudan, Ethiopian Tigray, Eritrea and Yemen; as a preventive measure, in strategic Djibouti, there are US, Chinese, Japanese, Italian, and German military barracks.
Thus, China advanced with its “Belt and Road Initiative” project, dominated by long rail links connecting Europe; and where Europeans and North Americans have remote possibilities of intervention. A bundle of these roads leaves China, crosses Mongolia and enters Russian territory near Irkutsk until it enters Belarus, crossing the Polish border (9288 km). Another route leaves China (Xinjiang) for Kazakhstan, skirts the Caspian to the east and reaches Tehran, passing through Turkey until it enters the Balkans (this last section will be under construction) – around 11,000 km. In Europe, and not surprisingly, these two lines meet in Germany, from where they diversify towards the South (Madrid) and West (London). This description aims to reveal that Ukraine is outside these routes and that, in the world of strategic and long-distance railways, Ukraine is a black hole!
Shipping containers from China or Japan to Europe takes 2-6 days for cargo in Shanghai, followed by a journey that can take 6-8 weeks. On the other hand, a rail journey between Hamburg and Zhengzhou or between Antwerp/Duisburg and Chongqing covers some 13,000 km carrying 250 containers in a 19-day journey. It should be noted that rail transport facilitates a door-to-door service for containers, which takes less time than unloading a ship.
In this context, Mackinder's geopolitical doctrine on the Heartland overlaps, in practice, with the proposals of Mahan, Spykman and Brzezinski, defenders of the creation of a cordon sanitaire that at the time (end of World War II) aimed at the siege and isolation of the USSR.
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http://www.slideshare.net/durgarrai/documents
[1] Few years ago, the Portuguese Army sent two F-16s to the Baltic to contain a Russian invasion of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania; which obviously lacked any hint of realism, but whose costs must have burdened the Portuguese taxpayers' purse.
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