UKRAINE SHORT COMMENTARY. NATO: MAKING FEAR PAY

The mistakes made by the political elite of substantially all western powers in recent decades have been enormous and have brought us cascading down to this moment.

The chief mistake was not to fully embrace the opportunity that the end of the Cold War brought but instead to raise the temperature once more, ironically by recreating another set of barriers to replace the ones that had just been broken down. Through NATO, primarily the USA steadily built the walls back up between western nations and Russia. And of course for the administrative and military empire within NATO this was ideal.

NATO could not have continued to exist without some credible enemy, some opposing power to contend against, to create fear about and with which to protect the continuance of its internal empires, structures, career ladders and influence. NATO needed Russia as an enemy therefore the framing for Russia could not be as a friend or ally but only as an enemy. In effect world peace was sacrificed, at least potentially and in real terms at least in part, to ensure that NATO continued and not be disbanded.

Like most organisms and all empires NATO wished to survive and the best way to ensure your survival is to grow. The very idea of a decrease rather than an increase in NATO's power and influence is therefore anathema to all those within the NATO empires charged with its continuance through expansion. It follows then that the elites within NATO would never agree to any limitation of its existential need to grow,

To ensure survival needs more than continual growth however, it needs a product to sell that acts to attract, maintain and strengthen the organism. In NATO's case that product is fear. Without the fear of an enemy why would nations join NATO? To simply belong to a big, well-heeled club? Perhaps, but the binding force that national elites can sell to their populations to gain their acceptance that NATO membership is a good thing, is fear.

Fear is at the heart of NATO's existence. Like keeping a fire burning to run let's say a steam engine, you need ever more fuel. Fear is the primary fuel that keeps NATO going... and expanding. And the more NATO expands the more fear is generated... on both sides.

NATO : MAKING FEAR PAY