NATO’s irrelevance self-evident

Crescent International

The recent public spat between head of the fanatic-secular French regime, President Emmanuel Macron and the moron-in-chief heading the regime in Washington DC, Donald Trump, about NATO’s current and future prospects is a positive development for global peace.

The military-political alliance of war-mongering Western neo-colonial regimes, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), has outlived its usefulness.

It should have been disbanded with the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Recent public disagreements between key NATO members that surfaced due to Trump’s crude antics would hopefully generate lively debate about the military alliance’s irrelevance.

At 70, it is time to perform its last rites and consign it to the dustbin of history where it belongs.

The post-WWII military alliance was created in 1949 to confront the Soviet Union and prevent its expansion into Western Europe.

NATO has now expanded much beyond the shores of the North Atlantic and has spread its tentacles even into landlocked Afghanistan and Niger.

From strictly a military point of view, in the age of hybrid and guerrilla warfare, NATO’s conventional military approach rooted in nation on nation warfare is outdated.

This is probably the reason why Kremlin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov responding to NATO’s communique of December 4, highlighted that Moscow would not get involved in an arms race with NATO.

The Soviet Union committed this mistake in the 1980s thereby weakening itself economically.

Russia clearly understands the radically altered military landscape of 2019, where a lightly armed but highly motivated Taliban movement has forced Washington to negotiate its retreat.

Nevertheless, it is not the military aspect that renders NATO irrelevant for the contemporary situation, but its political failure.

Created supposedly to hold Europe together against an external threat, NATO’s arrogance is probably one of the primary reasons for EU’s current crisis.

Despite EU’s many shortcomings, the Western part of Europe is the most successful socio-political project. It has prevented war among these states since the Second World War.

True, wars have been exported elsewhere: Africa, Latin America, and the Muslim East but Europe has remained conflict-free since 1945.

Nonetheless, NATO’s use of EU as a political cover to expand eastward toward the Russian borders, under its “partnership for peace program” triggered harsh Russian responses in Georgia in 2008 and in Ukraine in 2014.

One of the key reasons for EU’s current political crisis is that the bloc stopped being an economic union and was pushed by the US to turn into a political and security project closely linked to NATO.

The EU’s acceptance of East European states as members, while most of them are still not ready to be part of the bloc economically and politically, created an array of economic and political problems.

Influx of cheap labor from Europe into Britain was one of the key contributors to the Brexit disaster.

Apart from clear divisions among NATO member Western regimes, Turkey is also beginning to gradually distance itself from the Western designed security system.

While it is too early to predict Ankara’s date of departure from NATO, Turkey’s disdain for the alliance is a small step towards regional Muslim security architecture.

As Turkish society is becoming more Islamicaly conscious and its government more oriented toward advancing its own interests, at some point Turkey will leave NATO.

It will then seek an alternative and that would most likely be a regional alliance that will include Iran and Pakistan.

Among Muslim countries, these three are the only ones that pack military punch. In the past, they had formed an economic bloc under the Regional Cooperation for Development (RCD).

It petered out due to internal changes in the three countries. Recent developments point toward the possibility of a revival of cooperation between them.

This should be welcomed and encouraged.

NATO at zero point!

By Hanif Ghafari

The NATO summit in London shows clearly that the North Atlantic Treaty is in a serious crisis for its survival. In recent days, Western analysts have analyzed and evaluated various aspects of the tensions and challenges among NATO members. The majority of NATO members are European countries.

The reality is that the crises facing the United States and NATO members will not end soon. At least until the arrival of Trump at the White House, these concerns will remain. On the other hand, the foreseeable future of the president of the United States will face Western actors with serious dilemmas.

U.S. President Donald Trump continues to insist on increasing NATO defense spending. On the other hand, French President Emanuel Macron's recent remarks about NATO's brain death show that some European NATO members are also aware of the White House's negative approach to the North Atlantic Treaty.

Relations between Russia and NATO are now in the worst condition after the Cold War. "Mikhail Gorbachev", the last Soviet President, had warned about the re-start of Cold War between the White House and the Kremlin before. But now Russian officials believe that the constant and extensive conflicts between Moscow and the West lead them too much more complicated conditions than that of the Cold Wartime.

The recent NATO summit in London will not only bring the North Atlantic Treaty Organization closer together, but it will also strengthen the existing crises between the US and Europe.

Finally that One of the issues that has led to the frustration of European citizens from this collection is the European Union's dependence on the United States. While U.S. former  National Security Advisor John Bolton and Trump have repeatedly expressed their opposition to the existence of the European Union and the Eurozone, Europe has not taken any steps towards independence from the United States. European officials have made mistakes in their calculations and attitudes toward the US government. This big mistake could lead to the loss of the European Union and the Eurozone. Undoubtedly, people like the German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron once realized their mistake will be too late. Can European authorities be able to understand this real danger?

Why Germany turned its back on parallel coalitions in Strait of Hormuz

By Maryam Khormaei

Germany recently announced it will not join the French-led mission in the Strait of Hormuz. This is while, not long ago, Berlin’s lack of support for Paris’s position on “the brain death of NATO” became a hot issue.

Berlin’s stance against Paris reinforces the assumption that maybe Germany, on the eve of Brexit, is trying to prevent France to become the dominant power in Europe. The assumption is largely reasonable, provided one does not forget that Germany, in a parallel action, benefits from the cooperation with France to challenge U.S. supremacy and show of power by the EU. 

Britain, from innovation to treason

Where did the idea of creating a European mission in the Strait of Hormuz come from and what countries were involved in it?

What today is known as the French initiative to secure the Persian Gulf was first proposed by Britain in response to the Iranian seizure of the Stena Impero ship in July.

This issue is related to the time before the premiership of Boris Johnson, who follows U.S. President Donald Trump in his extremist policies.

At the time, Jeremy Hunt was serving as the British foreign secretary. Hunt preferred to offer a plan that did not directly involve the EU, NATO and, above all, the United States, in the light of Britain’s ultimate intention to realize Brexit. Instead, Hunt created a far weaker coalition with the participation of the European countries like Norway, which were not a member of the EU. 

The initiative was approved by France and Germany at the beginning because these three countries, as European parties to JCPOA, did not intend to join U.S.-led maritime coalition. The countries did not want to endanger the nuclear deal by assisting the maximum pressure campaign against Iran.

But the plan changed when Johnson took office. Johnson, who was determined to carry out Brexit, did not mind to question the European coalitions and preferred to compete with France and Germany by joining U.S.-led maritime coalition in the Strait of Hormuz. 

The European coalition: From idea to implementation

On November 24, France's Defense Minister Florence Parly announced that a French naval base in Abu Dhabi will serve as the headquarters for a European-led mission to protect Persian Gulf.

Although her announcement formalized the UAE as the headquarters of European-led mission, the decision had been anticipated much earlier and was stated in the August reports.

It was reported that Italy, Spain, Norway, Belgium and Sweden were expected to accompany France, while the Netherlands was not sure to join the European-led naval mission or the U.S.-led coalition. On November 25, the Dutch government formally announced its decision to accompany its European partners. Therefore, the Netherlands will contribute a ship to the French-led naval mission in the Strait of Hormuz for a six-month period starting in January 2020. 

However, for some European countries participating in any extraterritorial mission depends on the approval of the parliament. This issue has become a challenge for Berlin in accompanying Paris. 

Germany constrained by law

From the earliest days when the U.S. was inviting states to create a maritime coalition in the Persian Gulf region, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas opposed the move and insisted on the need to follow diplomacy to reduce tensions in order to preserve the JCPOA.

Germany, like France, was also looking for a European initiative, but what is important now is that Berlin has apparently broken its promise and left Paris halfway. 

But does the decision by Germany ruin the future of the European coalition?

It should be said that, despite refusing to join the coalition, Berlin still politically supports it. What prevents Berlin from joining the coalition is the country’s constitution.

In fact, Germany has set a precondition for its support of the plan. Germany says the French-led initiative must turn into an “EU mission”.  In the current context, the initial core of the plan is still based on the British model, which limits the coalition to the will of the European countries, regardless of direct dependence on the EU and NATO. 

According to the German law, the country is only allowed to participate in a foreign mission if that mission is defensible from the perspective of a "system based on mutual collective security" within the framework the EU, NATO and the UN. Therefore, participation in the coalition proposed by France is not justified from the perspective of the German law.

On the other hand, Berlin’s reason for refusing to join the U.S.-led maritime coalition was not just to preserve the Iran nuclear deal. Legal restraint was also a matter.

Unlike France and Britain, sending forces outside Germany has to be done with the consent of parliament, and almost all German parties are opposed to joining a U.S. mission against Iran.

The fight over establishing security in the Strait of Hormuz represents a small part of the NATO disputes. Currently, there are two parallel coalitions in the Persian Gulf. Iran has approved none of the coalitions, and Germany has not participated in any of them.

At the beginning the U.S. expected 60 countries to join the coalition which was launched under the command of a headquarters in Bahrain in November. At the present time, just Britain, Australia, Albania, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain have joined the U.S.-led coalition.

The European coalition has also failed at the outset due to legal obstacles in certain countries in Europe. 

Meanwhile, Defense Minister Parly affirmed European and U.S. coordination in parallel missions in the Strait of Hormuz. At the same time, Parly accused Washington of being indifferent to what happened in the Middle East in the summer, including the incidents of Fujairah port and Oman Sea, as well as downing of a U.S. drone.

The comments by Parly, in addition to what French President Emmanuel Macron had recently said about NATO's brain death, further fuels the domestic crisis within NATO.

Will NATO follow the same way as the Warsaw Pact?

By Hamid Bayati

French President Emmanuel Macron criticized NATO on November 7, calling the current situation of the organization a “brain death”. Macron’s remarks once again led to heated debates regarding a possible collapse of NATO.

In an interview with the Economist, the French president criticized lack of coordination in NATO as well as the “unpredictability” of U.S. behavior.

Senior U.S. officials have taken similar approach toward NATO. On November 10, Robert O'Brien, the U.S. national security adviser, said, “I think the cracks of that have formed in the alliance are because we have members of the alliance that aren't paying their fair share, that aren't spending money on defense.”

During meetings with European officials and also at NATO summits, Trump and other senior U.S. political and military officials have repeatedly called for greater share of NATO costs by Europe. The U.S. has asked Europeans to increase their military budget to 2% of their GDP.

After taking power, Trump called NATO an obsolete organization that incur significant costs on the U.S. and said he would not support the alliance.

In addition, the United States, in line with Trump’s unilateral approach, does not consider any role or importance for its European allies in significant security and military decisions by NATO. Many NATO members have noticed Trump's negative attitude toward the alliance.

NATO formed in 1949, shortly after the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb. In the beginning, 12 countries joined NATO, including Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Britain, and the United States. The number of countries joined NATO gradually increased to 29.  

A collapse of the U.S.-European military alliance, the intensification of disputes among NATO members regarding the recent Turkish offensive into Syria, and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s purchase of Russian S-400 system, which rivals the U.S.–European military system, are the factors that have caused current chaos in NATO and may accelerate NATO fragmentation just like the Warsaw pact.

Crisis within NATO is headed for more intensification and its collapse seems almost definite.  One of the best evidences in this regard is the joining of two NATO members to the maritime coalition that the U.S. claims has formed to support safe shipping in the Persian Gulf.

The Duplicitous Agenda Endorsed by the UN and NATO

Ramona WADI

To the undiscerning, the United Nations (UN) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) perform different roles in the international arena. Yet both organisations have a common aim – the promotion of foreign intervention. While the UN promotes its humanitarian façade, NATO provides the militarisation of the UN’s purported human rights agenda.

NATO’s participation at the 74th session of the UN General Assembly in September provided an overview of the current collaboration the organisation has with the UN. Jens Stoltelberg, NATO’s Secretary-General, mentioned the organisations’ collaboration in “working closely to support Afghanistan and Iraq”.

Since the 1990s, the UN and NATO cooperation was based on a framework which included decision-making and strategy on “crisis management and in the fight against terrorism.” In 2001, US President George W Bush launched his ‘War on Terror’ which eventually expanded to leave the Middle East and North Africa in perpetual turmoil, as the coined euphemism morphed into the so-called Arab Spring.

While the invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 were led by the US, it is worth remembering that the absence of the organisation at that time is not tantamount to the exclusion of warfare from NATO member states. Notably, the US invasion of Afghanistan invoked Article 5 of the NATO treaty, which stipulates that an attack on a NATO member state constitutes an attack on all member states.

“For NATO-UN cooperation and dialogue to remain meaningful, it must continue to evolve.” The statement on NATO’s website is a bureaucratic approach which detaches itself from the human rights violations created and maintained by both parties, which form the premise of such collaboration.

UN Security Council Resolution 1373 (2001), upon which NATO based its collaboration with the UN, reaffirms, “the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence as recognised by the Charter of the United Nations.” The resolution provides impunity for member-states and other collaborators with the UN, including NATO, to define what constitutes terrorism while eliminating foreign intervention as a terror act, despite the ramifications which last long after the aggression has been terminated or minimised.

The UN-NATO duplicity is exposed in Stoltenberg’s speech when he states, “NATO has also contributed to developing UN disposal standards to counter improvised explosive devices, which remain one of the greatest threats to peacekeepers.” Why are the UN and NATO selecting rudimentary forms of warfare over precision bombing which has killed thousands of civilians in the name of fighting terror or bringing democracy?

In 2011, the UNSC’s arms embargo was supposed to prevent the proliferation of weapons to the rebels in Libya – a contradiction given the UNSC’s authorisation for NATO to bomb Libya. France, however, defied the resolution by publicly declaring its proliferation of weapons to rebels in Libya, on the pretext of their necessity to protect Libyan civilians. NATO denied its involvement as an organisation in providing arms to the rebels, despite the fact that action was taken by a NATO member. With the UN endorsing foreign intervention and NATO implementing the atrocities, the UN can fall back on its alleged peace-building and humanitarian roles, of which there is never a decline due to the irreparable damage both organisations have wreaked upon exploited, colonised and ravaged countries. The cooperation lauded by NATO does not rest on a division of roles but rather on blurring the differentiation between war and humanitarianism, in order to generate both as a duplicitous agenda.

NATO maintains that the UNSC holds “primary responsibility” for maintaining international peace and security. What the statement evades is the individual interest of each member, as well as their collective framework as NATO members. To satisfy the UNSC, individual interests and NATO membership, a common denominator is imperative. For the perpetrators of foreign intervention, war constitutes the binding legacy.

Ramona WADI

Ramona Wadi is an independent researcher, freelance journalist, book reviewer and blogger. Her writing covers a range of themes in relation to Palestine, Chile and Latin America.

U.S. withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA): An unmitigated disaster

By Robert Fantina

At this point, everyone on the planet with the exception of United States President Donald Trump and his own, perverse, neocon circle, must see that the U.S. withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) has been an unmitigated disaster. Let us broadly review the situation:

• In 2015, Iran, China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany and the European Union signed the JCPOA, limiting Iran’s nuclear development program in exchange for the lifting of sanctions. This agreement was praised across the globe by nearly every world leader, with the Zionist entity (also known as Israel) and Saudi Arabia being the two major objectors. The JCPOA went into effect, and trade with Iran and the world increased greatly, to the benefit of everyone.
• President Barack Obama was in office when the JCPOA was agreed to and signed. In January of 2017, the erratic and unstable Trump, who harbors an irrational hatred of his predecessor, became president, and has attempted to undo all of Obama’s accomplishments. He has worked tirelessly to deprive 21,000,000 U.S. citizens of health care, which has not been easy, and is yet to be accomplished (if such a disgraceful action can be called an ‘accomplishment’). It wasn’t so difficult for him to withdraw from the JCPOA, thus voiding that agreement.
• The other signatories to the JCPOA begged Trump not to withdraw; he did so anyway, reinstated sanctions against Iran, and threatened the other parties to the agreement with sanctions if they continued to trade with Iran. Bowing to U.S. pressure, each nation, except Russia and China, ceased all such trade.
• Trump demands that Iran renegotiate the agreement, which Iran’s leaders have, legitimately, refused to do. Had Trump maintained the JCPOA, and expressed to Iran’s leaders that he would like to reconsider some of its provisions, his request might have been favorably received. But as Iran’s leaders have accurately pointed out, sanctions are economic terrorism and, like the U.S., Iran will not negotiate with terrorists.
• Iran, demonstrating remarkably good faith, maintained its commitments to the JCPOA for over a year after the U.S. and the European nations violated it, giving the European parties sufficient time to decide how to circumvent threatened U.S. sanctions. When they were unable to do so, Iran slowly began enriching uranium at a rate higher than allowed by the agreement. The U.S., Britain, France, Germany and the UK all responded with horror. How could Iran do such a thing? They knew its leaders couldn’t be trusted! This is an internationally-approved agreement that Iran is violating!

For some bizarre reason, they were not quite so astounded and shocked when the U.S. violated the agreement, and seemed to conveniently ignore the fact that they had done so, too, long before Iran did. It is completely counter to reason and logic to expect an agreement between eight (8) parties to remain effective when five (5) of them (the U.S., Germany, France, Britain and the UE) have all violated it. Before those nations point the finger of accusation at Iran, they need to clean up their own houses of government.

Europe and the JCPOA: International Hypocrisy, Will the US Start a Disastrous War in the Middle East?

As a result of U.S. actions, tensions in the Persian Gulf have been growing, and reached a dangerous level when a U.S. drone flew into Iranian airspace and was shot down. A few weeks later, Trump reported that the U.S. had shot down an Iranian drone that flew too close to a U.S. ship (which was in the Gulf where it had no legitimate business to be).  However, Iranian officials reported that all of their drones had returned safely, and Trump & Co. haven’t bothered to show any evidence whatsoever that the U.S. did, in fact, shoot down an Iranian drone.

Based on what has been revealed about the Trump White House, how his closest aides discreetly remove from his desk papers that they don’t want him to see, how they brief him with the briefest of information due to his limited interest and attention span, and his own narcissistic personality, it’s likely that, enraged that Iran dared shoot out of the sky a drone of the mighty U.S., he ordered that the U.S. retaliate in like manner. Some aide with a brain in his or her head, recognizing that shooting down an Iranian drone in Iranian airspace could easily be seen as an act of war, probably invented the fairy tale that a drone had been shut down, advised Trump, thereby satisfying his lust for revenge.

The military went along with it, realizing, perhaps, that a war against Iran would be a worldwide disaster. So Trump has been told what he wanted to hear (he appears to have no ability to discern truth from fiction; he recently announced that he was a first responder on September 11!), a war has been averted at least for now, and the U.S. continues to be the laughing stock of the world, since everyone except Trump seems to know that no Iranian drone was shot down.

What will be next? Will the U.S. invade Iran? Surely, there are some people in U.S. government circles who are not willing to shove the world into that deadly abyss, and are in a position to prevent it.

Will Israel get tired of waiting for the U.S. to invade, and do so itself, knowing that the U.S. will come to its aid? One thinks Israeli officials would need some pretext for doing so, but they can certainly draw on the U.S.’s many examples of creating some false flag to start a war.

Will the European signatories to the JCPOA finally create some way to circumvent threatened U.S. sanctions, or will they simply develop some strength of character and advise the U.S. that it can’t tell them how they will run their countries?

With the U.S. democratic farce of a presidential election just over a year away, Trump may do anything, however deadly and irrational, to try to gain another four-year term. Should he not war with Iran before then, his successor (one desperately hopes the Democrats don’t do anything sufficiently stupid to ensure another four years in the White House for Trump, as they did in 2016), will, one hopes, re-embrace the JCPOA.

But the next presidential inauguration isn’t until January of 2020; seventeen months is a long time for someone as unpredictable and unhinged as Trump to have his finger on the war button. We can only hope and pray that he doesn’t decide to push it.

US Stealing Syrian Oil. Controls About 30% of Syrian Territory

By Stephen Lendman

Imperial adventurism is grand theft on a global scale — seizing, controlling, and looting the resources of targeted nations, along with exploiting their people.

Operating from illegally constructed military bases in northern and southern parts of Syria, platforms for war and training of jihadists, the US controls about 30% of Syrian territory, including where most of the country’s oil reserves are located.

Pre-war, Syria was a small producer, the only Eastern Mediterranean country with significant/yet small reserves, estimated at about 2.5 billion barrels earlier by the Oil and Gas Journal, along with around 5.3 billion cubic meters of natural gas.

Looted Syrian oil by US-supported ISIS was earlier transported cross-border to Turkey for refining and sales.

President Erdogan, his family and cronies reportedly profited from the grand theft/smuggling operation.

Russia’s Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov earlier said

“Turkey is the main destination for the oil stolen from its legitimate owners, which are Syria and Iraq,” adding:

“Turkey resells this oil. The appalling part about it is that the country’s top political leadership is involved in the illegal business — President Erdogan and his family.”

Like the US, NATO, Israel, the Saudis, and their Middle East partners, Turkey supports regional jihadists these countries pretend to oppose.

Antonov earlier explained that

Idlib Province Syria: Infested with US-Supported Terrorists

Erdogan and other “Turkish elites conspir(e) to steal oil from their neighbors in industrial quantities along ‘rolling pipelines’ made up of thousands of tanker trucks.”

“We are certain that Turkey is the destination for stolen (Syrian and Iraqi) oil, and (have) irrefutable facts to prove it.”

The illicit trade was worth hundreds of millions of dollars on the black market. Turkey may still be involved as the destination for US-stolen Syrian oil.

On Monday, Russian General Staff/Main Operational Directorate commander General Sergey Rudskoy accused US and allied forces of “highjack(ing)” Syrian oil from ISIS, profiting from its sales — perhaps shipping it cross-border to Turkey and/or elsewhere, the Trump regime running a black market operation with looted Syrian oil, adding:

US-supported ISIS and other jihadists were also trained to destroy Syrian (and perhaps Iraqi) oil and gas infrastructure, along with continuing attacks on government forces and civilians, using heavy and other weapons supplied by Western and regional countries, including Israel, Turkey, the Saudis and UAE.

Rudskoy added that the Trump regime is arming Arab and Kurdish fighters, working with them as well in the illicit trafficking of stolen Syrian oil.

US trained and armed jihadists are also being used against Russia’s Khmeimim airbase in Syria’s Latakia province, attacking it with Western-supplied drones and rocket launchers.

They’re deployed by US transport planes and helicopters to continue endless war in Syria. Thousands are being trained at the Pentagon’s Al-Tanf base in southern Syria near the Iraqi and Jordanian borders.

The US came to Syria, Iraq, elsewhere in the region, North Africa, Central Asia, and other parts of the world to stay — part of its imperial aim for global conquest and control, endless wars its favored strategy.

*Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

A new world order with changes in power balance: Dividing the world into opponents and friends

By Morteza Khansari

TEHRAN - By withdrawing from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), the United States and Russia finally pulled away the iron curtain of the cold war. Seemingly, the two countries want to change the common defensive methods and are now unveiling their high-tech nuclear weapons and missiles and have started threatening each other with nuclear weapons.

With suspension of INF by U.S. and Russia, the world will be officially divided into two opposing military poles. With increasing tensions and development of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) on one hand and renovation of Russian missile defense system on the other hand, the world will face bigger security threats than before and will have to yield in to a new order that is based on arms race.

 In this new bipolar world, however, Russia has not the power to drag the world into a new cold war because it has no choice but to surrender to the economic and cultural power of western countries.

From now on, the world will no longer be a global community that complies with the international laws and regulations that were set after the cold war, on the contrary, it will become the battle field of the countries that are only thinking about their own national benefits and are not afraid of doing anything to gain their goals, even starting a nuclear war.

After the suspension of INF, the power balance between different countries is starting to change; to make the matters worse, NATO has now adopted a new policy for launching pre-emptive attacks on other countries; in this situation, the world will be divided into two poles of friends and opponents.

Is such a world, only the countries that have nuclear weapons might be able to provide their citizens with partial security; other countries, on the other hand, are pushed to become dependent on big powers in order to protect their national security.

U.S. is now focused more than ever on gaining advanced military technologies and investing on new offensive systems; the country has now entered a new round of arms race and is threatening its competitors with war and annihilation in the new “star wars” atmosphere that has been created by U.S. in the first place.

Trump’s new invasive strategy in 2019 is now combined with NATO’s new military strategy passed in 2018 that makes U.S. NATO’s world leader and Germany the Europe’s leader so that they can quickly respond to Russia and China. This new combination will surely increase the military conflicts and future threats and will make the “political militarism” a priority for everyone.

According to NATO plans, U.S. nuclear weapons, including 20 atomic bombs, will stay in Bushel in Germany and NATO’s military bases in North Atlantic Ocean and Germany will restart their activities. The nuclear weapons kept in Bushel, are of type B61-4 and each of them has a power four times greater than the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima. Anyway, by 2020, U.S. will replace these weapons with more modern nuclear weapons.  

The new decisions made in NATO will surely change the general, long-term policy and strategies of this treaty; this will change NATO’s defensive mode into an offensive mode and will expand its activities beyond the boundaries of it member countries; an example of this interregional approach is a new scheme for setting up an Arab NATO.

Over the last few years, Baltic States were also among the regions that had to endure the most hostile and violent military actions of both U.S. and Russia. In fact, after NATO prolonged the deployment of its forces in the Baltic area and enhanced its weapons and facilities in this region, Russia felt compelled to unveil its future nuclear weapons and missiles.

In late 2016, Pentagon official announced that Baltic region is strategically important because from a geostrategic point of view, if Russia occupies the southern border of Lithuania, Europe will lose its on ground connection with the Baltic States including Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

According to NATO, in 2016, there was an unprecedented increase in the number of Russia’s “hostile” and “provoking” activities in Baltic area and the number of alarms given by NATO. Over this period, NATO’s navies sent 870 alarms to Russian fighters in Baltic area; such a large number was never witnessed even during the peak of the Cold War.

Instead of being concerned about Russia’s activities and security issues that might occur, NATO is now prepared for a possible military clash with Russia. The political concerns has now turned into real military threats and operations, in an environment that is even more hostile than that of the Cold War.

Clearly, these security changes are not in favor of Russia, therefore, the country can only face NATO’s constant threats if it cooperates with the major powers of Asia and Middle East.  
Up to now, Russia has been able to give a firm response to such threats by testing its super-advanced weapons and running arms races, but in future, if it wants to maintain the power balance and subtract the huge costs of defense systems, it has to find strategic, powerful allies both among its neighboring countries and in other parts of the world.  

Amid all these tensions and conflicts, Europe will be in the front line of war and peace between U.S. and Russia. Like a “security hostage without a free will”, Europe will be a bystander and might even a victim if any of two sides decide to use banned weapons.

Despite all its political and economic capacities, Europe will be buried in the arms race between U.S. and Russia and will only be a target, even more at danger than it was during the Cold War.

This is why Europe is worried about Iran’s withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as this would disrupt Europe’s power in the Middle East, increases the tension and makes Europe even a bigger target of threats.

Therefore, it seems that in near future, we will see a new order in the world. This new order definitely depends on the destiny of the JCPOA, the Deal of the Century and the military clashes in the Baltic area. The results will come about soon, but at a great expense.

U.S. and Russia are already squandering a lot of money on nuclear weapons and missiles; seemingly they think that their possible clash will come about with a great cost and will cause a severe damage and threaten the lives of many people.

Recently, NATO’s Secretary General threatened Russia with a nuclear defensive and received its response from Russia by deployment of short-range and long-range missiles in European countries that member states of NATO.

Has Trump fulfilled his campaign promises?

By Morteza Khansari

TEHRAN - Donald Trump’s foreign policies and security strategies have been recently called into question, even by the White House staff and the Congress. Since Trump took the office, averagely, at least one person from the administrative office of the White House got fired every month, and some of them were even put on trial. The last person who got fired was Sarah Sanders, the former White House press secretary. 

Under current circumstances, the security and defense departments of the White House are having the most difficulty of all; now that Michael Flynn, H. R. McMaster, and James N. Mattis were fired one after another, the eyes are on John Bolton. On the other hand, Trump’s cabinet are under constant questions from members of the Parliament and this has added up to the frustration of the White House and United States National Security Council. 

The recent attacks on oil tankers and commercial ships off the port of Fujairah in the Gulf of Oman was another failure of U.S. security strategies and proved the incompetency of American national security advisors, in this situation, Bolton could be the next victim. 
In the verge of 2020 presidential elections, Trump lacks a strong and organized cabinet. Trump’s success as a president must be judged by his campaign promises which included the disbandment of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), building a wall at the US-Mexico border, leaving the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and ending the costly wars that U.S. had led all over the world. 

 NATO
Over his presidential campaign, Trump had said that NATO is an obsolete and dysfunctional treaty, but a few months after he entered the White House, he yielded in and officially accepted NATO’s article five. In NATO summit meeting in Brussels in 2017, Trump accepted that NATO’s two new general headquarters will be placed in U.S. and Germany under the title of new centers of operation for tackling new challenges in the Mediterranean area and the Atlantic Ocean. 

NATO’s new command post in U.S., led by Trump, is tasked to coordinate and carry out navy and aerial missions in the Atlantic Ocean and all over the world. 

Trump and the immigrants

Up to now, millions of people in different U.S. cities took to the streets to protest against Trump’s new strict immigration rules. The protesters chanted slogans such as “all Americans are immigrants”, “building walls is against freedom” and “immigrants are not criminals.” 
Trump is the only American president who has categorized illegal immigration as a crime. By his orders, many mothers were separated from their children; these mothers were put in prison while their children were held in captivity in separate cells. Many American citizens and the United Nations condemned these actions and called them pure cruelty. 

Building a war at Mexico border

The wall that Trump had promised to build at U.S.-Mexico borders has cost $33 billion by now, and it is not yet built. In next few months, Trump will enter the 2020 presidential campaign and he will not get a chance to build this wall as democrats are against spending more money on the wall. 

 JCPOA

By leaving JCPOA, Trump did not succeed to solve U.S. nuclear issues with Iran; on the contrary, it fuelled the tensions and proved to the world and the United Nations that U.S. is nothing but an untrustworthy liar. 

Trump’s team thought that if U.S. leaves the JCPOA, Iran will also immediately leave the agreement and will be drilled by UN Security Council while U.S. sits back and calmly watches the process; however, the results were the reverse; Europe, Russia and China who were the main buyers of Iran’s oil, did not approve of U.S.  Unilateral withdrawal from the JPOA and criticized U.S. for its uncustomary behaviors. 

 U.S. and the Islamic Republic of Iran

Trump is drowning in the pool of mistakes that his top security advisors, such as John Bolton, made in regard to Iran. 

Bolton was going to celebrate his victory in Tehran in the 40th anniversary of Islamic Republic of Iran’s revolution, little did he know that U.S. military will face a big challenge against the strong will of Iranian people and the country’s powerful military. 

Trump’s military and security advisors made fundamental mistakes in dealing with Iran, after their plans for an armed conflict with Iran came to a dead end, they tried to cover up their failure by ending “war threats” and switched into an “obstructive strategy.” 

Their obstructive strategy could not restraint Iran either. U.S. next plan was to publish some pictures of the ships and tankers that were damaged over the explosions in Fujairah to prove that Iran was behind the attacks; however, the pictures were so unclear that were met with contempt of all different countries and international entities. 

Over UN Security Council's meeting on the vessel attacks near Fujairah, U.S. did all it could to point the fingers at Iran, but it failed to do so. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, condemned attacking unmilitary ships, but said that the evidence about the attack must be examined separately and they cannot simply establish a research committee to look into the matter. 

 Russia also reacted quickly and asked the member states not to rush into any decision about the attacks. 

U.S. psychological war against Iran has not had any effect on the world countries. Even U.S. allies in Europe did not trust U.S. claims and blamed the country for its fierce policies. 

Only one state hid behind U.S., Britain who is now a loser in politics. Over the last four years, two British administrations fell apart without solving the Brexit problem. The country is now in totally unstable and is trying to divert attention from its own problems by hiding under the shadows of U.S. 

Trump’s security and military advisors were going to run their plans by causing chaos in the Persian Gulf, but all their plans went wrong and U.S. top officials in the country’s National Security Council admitted their failure in running their obstructive strategies in the Middle East. 

In the third and last part of its security strategies, U.S. stopped war threats and obstructive strategies and came up with a new ploy saying that “attacking the oil tankers is a universal problem” and there must be “an international consensus against Iran” to ensure maritime security. It seems that Trump’s security advisors wasted billions of dollars on military deployments near Iran, running obstructive plans and buying Boeing B-52 Stratofortress and other jet fighters. 

The phrase “international consensus against Iran” means how U.S. has retreated from his former plans, it is good news for all Iranian citizens and the armed forces because it means that U.S. has failed in crushing Iran and launching its military plans against the country.