Compare the pair

NATO in 1990
NATO in 2023

Millions of words have been written about the creeping encroachment of NATO eastward towards the border of the Russian Federation.

Recent media reports suggest the Turkey will soon drop its objections to Finland joining the bloc with only Hungary’s objections yet to be overcome.  One can only imagine the pressure Hungarian politicians will endure as the sole ‘hold-out’ but those tribulations will almost certainly be soothed by assorted inducement.  

It is well established that the raison d’etre of NATO was largely to contain Russia but since the collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO’s purpose of existence has not changed significantly.  In fact, NATO over the ensuing years has been very accommodating to those former Soviet bloc nations that wished to join.        

But didn’t the Americans agree not to expand NATO eastward?

The answer to that question is mired in assorted recollections but there was never any formal agreement.  After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, a treaty signed in 1990 extended NATO into East Germany, which had been zoned to the Soviet Union.  

James Baker, former Secretary of State told CNN during a 2009 interview “there was a discussion about whether the unified Germany would be a member of NATO, and that was the only discussion we ever had. There was never any discussion of anything but East Germany.”

But others have said that assurances were made, including Jack Matlock, the last U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, and Robert Gates, the deputy national security adviser at the time.  Gates said the Soviets “were led to believe” NATO would not expand eastward.

Even Gorbachev seemed confused.  He once insisted he was promised NATO would not “move one centimetre further east” but in 2014, he said the question never came up, yet added that NATO’s eventual expansion was “a violation of the spirit of the statements and assurances made in 1990.”

In any event, it’s now moot.  Historians may continue to debate what, if any, comments were made by the negotiating parties during that 1989-90 period but NATO made no written pledge.  There was ‘possibly’ a tacit understanding, but no more than that. 

Which brings us to Georgia.

Hands up all those that think the American CIA fermented the recent disturbances in Georgia.  Yeah, me too. 

Georgia is a small and comparatively insignificant country on Russia’s southern flank but it jumped into world news following several days of protests that were triggered by a bill on the ‘Transparency of Foreign Influence’, that had been initially adopted by the Georgian parliament. 

The bill proposed a national register of “foreign influence agents.”  The register would have listed all non-profit legal entities and media organizations which receive 20% or more of their funding from overseas. 

The reaction to something relatively innocuous may be surprising until you realise the sheer numbers of foreign NGO/NPOs active in Georgia.  In 2020, a report by the Asian Development Bank indicated that of the 12,800 organizations registered in Georgia, the vast majority rely on foreign funding and 7,972 of those operated with foreign founders.  For a nation with a population of only 3.7 million, that equates to around 300 people per foreign NPO/NGO.  

Perhaps not so surprising that many of the foreign (and influential) NGOs immediately understood the potential existential threat of the legislation and acted accordingly.  Their cloak of anonymity would be gone.

Now we get to the guts of the matter.  For the past 30 years, Georgia has become a recipient of US aid receiving an average of (officially) ~$US120m per annum through the US State Department and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

However, the annual budgets of the most influential Georgian NGOs are comparable to the turnover of medium-sized commercial entities.  The Soros Foundation alone invested more than $10 million and the CIA-linked National Endowment for Democracy distributed $1.2 million in grants in one year among a handful of Georgian NGOs.  The main areas of their work were ‘media support’, election monitoring and civil influence over the activities of the executive branch, among others things. 

So, we have influence, money and now threats.

During the recent unrest, the US and the EU warned Georgian authorities that the successful adoption of the law would likely “deprive the country of the chance to acquire EU candidate status and join NATO”.  The bill was dropped although the protests continued for a few more days.

Georgia’s eventual joining with NATO would serve the alliance by creating a border link with Turkey to access Russia via the south.  Covering an area almost identical to Tasmania, Georgia has the right to self-determination but needs to be mindful of the lessons from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.  The voices of some NGOs do not necessarily have Georgia’s best interests at heart.  Beware those offering trinkets and promises of gold – there is a much larger geopolitical game afoot.

Kiev, Ukraine, November 2014
Tbilisi, Georgia, March 2023

A Summary of Hersh’s ‘How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline’

Overnight, Seymour Hersh published How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline. Here are the key points.

The explosives were allegedly planted months earlier, during a mid-summer NATO exercise:

Last June, the Navy divers, operating under the cover of a widely publicized mid-summer NATO exercise known as BALTOPS 22, planted the remotely triggered explosives that, three months later, destroyed three of the four Nord Stream pipelines, according to a source with direct knowledge of the operational planning.

Planning for the operation began months prior to the war in the last quarter of 2021, and Navy divers were used in order to avoid Congressional oversight and the possibility of leaking to the press:

Biden’s decision to sabotage the pipelines came after more than nine months of highly secret back and forth debate inside Washington’s national security community about how to best achieve that goal. For much of that time, the issue was not whether to do the mission, but how to get it done with no overt clue as to who was responsible.

There was a vital bureaucratic reason for relying on the graduates of the center’s hardcore diving school in Panama City. The divers were Navy only, and not members of America’s Special Operations Command, whose covert operations must be reported to Congress and briefed in advance to the Senate and House leadership—the so-called Gang of Eight. The Biden Administration was doing everything possible to avoid leaks as the planning took place late in 2021 and into the first months of 2022.

Continue reading “A Summary of Hersh’s ‘How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline’”

The War in Ukraine: Past, Present and Future: A Conversation between Michael Vlahos and Douglas Macgregor

This is a superb discussion involving two well-placed interlocutors, who have been in the middle of international and strategic affairs for at least the last four decades. It comes in three parts. The first looks at the war in Ukraine, its antecedents, and its prospects, particular whether the situation is entering its culminating phase. The second is concerned with the strategic failure of NATO, the cultivation of poor relations with Russia, as well as the role of the media, think tanks, etc. in propagandizing to the American electorate. And, lastly, the third part, considers how the two are interrelated; namely how the failure of American strategic policy are culminating now in Ukraine, and what prospects there are for correction in the coming years. Highly recommended.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Wokeism, Soft Power and the Globalist American Empire

This is a very good short video that outlines Darren Beattie’s argument that Wokeism is the official ideology of the GAE, which it uses at home and abroad against its enemies. To the extent that it is a successful instrument in the projection of power, the success of Wokeism is inevitably tied to the success of the GAE and the latter will defend the former by all available means. I would add, Wokeism isn’t, as some suggest, simply the march through the institutions of ‘cultural Marxism’, rather, it is the unfolding of political liberalism within our political regime.

Enjoy.