Europe could become the site of a new global war in the East as tensions build there against refugees and the economic decline fosters old wounds. The EU is deeply divided over the refugee issue and thus it is fueling its own demise and has failed to be a stabilizing force. After five days of demonstrations, Romania’s month-old government backed down and withdrew a decree that had decriminalized some corruption offenses. They were still acting like typical politicians and looking to line their pockets. After one month, the people have rising up saying “We can’t trust this new government.”
On the eastern border of the EU, only a few hundred kilometers from Berlin as well as Vienna, there is a growing danger that the world will stumble into a global war primarily from through the incompetence of the politicians in the EU as well as in the East. The EU is more concerned about punishing Britain and trying to hold on to overpaid political jobs that to address the real issues facing Europe.
While these seemingly regional disputes in the East are being ignored. The problem with NATO has been that most members have not paid into the support of NATO that they had agreed to. Then NATO leaders agreed back in 2016 to deploy military forces to the Baltic states and Eastern Poland for the first time and increase air and sea patrols to reassure new allies who use to be part of the Soviet bloc, that they would defend them following Russia’s seizure of Crimea from Ukraine. This has merely increased the confrontations with Russia on the one hand but the Eastern countries themselves are not really aligned. This also raises a most serious question: Exactly where does the power of NATO end and Russian power end? Effectively, where precisely is the border of influence?
This question cannot truly be answered. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the agreement emerged whereby Belarus, Ukraine and Georgia were to form the buffer for Russia. NATO’s influence on the borders between Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria were to come to an end. Russia directly borders Estonia and Latvia, while Lithuania shares a common border with Belarus. Thereby, a meeting between the West and Russia developed in the 1990s with in agreements between the EU and Moscow along with several treaties with the USA. Russia was to then enter the G7 making it now the G8.
In annexation of the Crimean peninsula by Russia in 2014 is seen as a trigger of the crisis and Russia is described as an aggressor. But Crimea was always Russian territory and it it was given to Ukraine to manage back in 1954. What if Spain wanted Puerto Rico back? It is not part of the United States. The predominant language in Crimea was Russian – not Ukrainian. Ukraine should have been split along the line of language and instead of funding military forces, offered the people to buy their property on either side who desired to move to the West or East. Instead, we have a cold war simply over territory and the people have no say.
Politicians have been carving up the world for a very long time. People mean nothing. They carved up the Ottoman Empire and created the chaos of the Middle East. This is what Trump has been against – nation building. How many lives have it cost when politicians are so concerned over territory rather than the people living in such territories?
From 2004 onwards, NATO has sought to expand its sphere of influence beyond the bounds of peace and go right at the throat of Russia. These activities were first conducted in Georgia. The President at that time was Mikhail Saakashvili from 2004 to 2013. He promoted an active pro-Western policy and was welcomed as a friend and partner of the West. At first, it was supposed to be about democracy, something the EU itself rejected in its new structure, and economic cooperation with the EU and the USA. It did not take long to create the impression in Georgia that NATO would also help the country in an engagement with Russia. Then in the summer of 2008, the conflict escalated. Russia invaded Georgia and occupied the provinces of Abkhazia and Ossetia. These were dominated by Russians originally. Most people have no idea but Joseph Stalin was from Georgia.
NATO did not come to the aid of Georgia. There were no sanctions imposed for occupying Georgia as there were for the occupation of the Crimea. Why? What was the difference when Georgia was actually being solicited by the West and Crimea was not? Was it simply that Crimea was an important military base for Russia all along?
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The EU is no longer an economic community, but a political union that is closely linked to NATO. Most have overlooked the Treaty of Lisbon (initially known as the Reform Treaty) which was an international agreement that amended the two previous treaties thereby creating the federalized constitutional basis of the European Union (EU) without ever putting that to a vote. The Treaty of Lisbon was signed by the EU member states on December 13th, 2007, and went into force on December 1st, 2009. This treaty has decisively altered the very core foundation of the EU transforming from 2009 onwards. This fact is always overlooked in the EU because few have read the text of the Treaty of Lisbon. Ever since, there have been closer ties between the EU which is now linked to NATO, which is why Trump says the USA should exit NATO and Le Pen is arguing the same in France. Additionally, Ukraine was given direct contracts with the EU with regard to a military alliance. This is a “soft” membership in NATO addition Ukraine but not really.
There is no way the US would give up its pacific military basis in Japan at Okinawa. Yet we impose sanction upon Russia for annexing its original territory pre-Ukraine where it maintain its Black Sea Fleet is stationed in the Crimea. The sanctions imposed upon Russia for Crimea are very hypocritical. From Russia’s perspective, the alternative would have been that Moscow’s Black Sea Fleet would be docked in a NATO country. That would present a circumstance that was totally unacceptable leaving the annexation of the Crimea a logical and obvious reaction that the USA would have done if the roles were reversed.
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Ukraine assumes that NATO will intervene. This has not happened so far, but the danger remains that Russia could be forced into an invasion as was the case in Ukraine especially if the EU begins to break apart. Likewise, the border of Belarus against Russia also presents a potential power keg. Belarus is also now in conflict with Moscow. As in the case of Ukraine, Minsk and Moscow are also arguing about gas prices, oil supplies and disabilities in foreign trade. Additionally, Moscow imposed border controls, whereby a two-country agreement on open borders existed for twenty years. Belarus imposed a 5-day visas for citizens of 79 states, including all EU states and the US. This measure is seen in Moscow as the approach of Belarus to the West. Belarus has been courting the West with trade playing both sides of the world Russia v West.
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The new US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson may help and he was a wise choice on the part of Trump. NATO is the focus of attention right now. The military alliance is dominated by Washington yet this is actually contradictory to the Treaty of Lisbon. Donald Trump has questioned NATO as a whole, and the press do not fully explain what has evolved. Is the USA just paying the military bill for the EU yet the Treaty of Lisbon makes the NATO the national force of the EU?
The new US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson expressed it best: “Russia is dangerous, but predictable”. Tillerson does know Russia well and far better than any politician filling that role before. Tillerson could actually establish a dialogue with Russia to secure world peace. The machinations of Obama have merely ended dialogue and reestablished the cold war that took more than 30 years to thaw. Democrats are too preoccupied with trying to stop Trump and fueling protests to distract the press and the American people to the real risk of war they have created.
Full article: Eastern Europe & World War III (Armstrong Economics)
Global Geopolitics 