eastwestaccord

NATO is facing the greatest crisis in its history. What appears to be its strength is increasingly accelerating its internal decline. Like Mephistopheles in Goethe’s Faust, the alliance often achieves the opposite of what it intends.

Nowhere is this contradiction more evident than in the lead-up to the NATO summit in The Hague, with its sweeping militarization agenda. President Donald Trump has proposed nearly doubling NATO’s military spending—to three trillion dollars, or 5 percent of GDP. European allies seem willing to follow his lead. For Germany, the implications are stark: nearly half of its federal budget—around 225 billion euros—would be directed toward military expenditures. The result would likely be a self-inflicted economic and social crisis.

Robert Skidelsky, Richard Balfe, Anthony Brenton, Thomas Fazi, Anatol Lieven, Ian Proud, Geoffrey Roberts, Richard Sakwa and Brigitte Granville respond to Fiona Hill’s assessment of the current Russian threat to the UK.

There are two main justifications for European rearmament. The first, and arguably the most important, is that President Trump has demanded it. Historically, the United States has contributed about 70 percent of NATO’s budget. Europe’s rearmament is in part a response to his demand that it pay its “fair share.” This goes in hand with the feeling that the US is poised to disengage from Europe—partly because of Trump’s desire to do business with Putin, partly because of the American pivot on the challenge of China. The two, of course, are linked in the current American geostrategy.

On June 1, Ukraine used swarms of drones hidden in trucks smuggled across Russia’s border to attack one leg of its nuclear triad of missiles, submarines, and aircraft.

This time, the bombing was no joke. But the Western reaction hardly took the prospect of nuclear escalation seriously.

Jeffrey Sachs, economist and U.N. consultant, talks about JFK’s “peace speech” at American University in June 1963 as a unique and powerful vision of America’s role in the world that died on Nov. 22, 1963 with terrible consequences for the country that are evident today.

Georgia is a small country on the border of large powers. Russia has legitimate security concerns, although the efforts by the US and its allies to use Georgia as a proxy raise security concerns. How can Georgia navigate the complex geopolitics that also divide its society?

“Lets us re-examine our attitude toward the Cold War…”

What Kennedy said is still relevant today, says Professor Kuznick.

THE SIMONE WEIL CENTER OFFERS IN WHAT FOLLOWS FOUR PERSPECTIVES ON JOHN F. KENNEDY’S FAMOUS JUNE 10, 1963, SPEECH AT AMERICAN UNIVERSITY.  THE AUTHORS – JAMES CARDEN, PETER KUZNICK, PAUL GRENIER AND MATTHEW DAL SANTO – EACH ADDRESS IN TURN ITS POLITICAL, INTERNATIONAL, PHILOSOPHICAL AND THEOLOGICAL DIMENSIONS..

The best way for America’s NATO allies to assist Washington would be to take over their own defense in Europe.

The illusion that Washington has both the right and duty to teach Georgia how to govern itself persists in the American media and in the halls of Congress.

The US Empire is on its last leg and the people in charge have no clue about it, says Macgregor.

The discursive rhetoric President Trump deploys when speaking about Russia and its apex-leader, Mr. Putin, risks lending the impression that once the unfortunate business of the war wraps up, he and Mr. Putin will at last be free to guide US-Russian relations to unimaginable levels of peace, prosperity and cooperation between the two nuclear superpowers.

Yet, in point of fact, the war in Ukraine is only one of a number of obstacles toward normalization. The administration should be encouraged to tackle those obstacles, but pretending they don’t exist does no one any favors.

When Sheila Fitzpatrick first went to Moscow in the 1960s as a young academic, the prevailing understanding of the Soviet Union in the West was governed by the ‘totalitarian hypothesis’, of a system ruled entirely from the top down. Her examination of the ministry papers of Anatoly Lunacharsky, the first Commissar of Enlightenment after the Revolution, challenged this view, beginning a long career in which she has frequently questioned the conventional understanding of Soviet history and changed the field with works such as Everyday Stalinism.

The Congressional Budget Office has calculated the “modernization” cost of the U.S. nuclear arsenal will be at least $1 trillion annually over the next ten years. Cost overruns for ongoing nuclear weapons programs have boosted total nuclear weapons costs 25% over CBO projections just two years ago.

Every day the war continues, the billions in aid Europe will need to provide to Ukraine into 2026 and beyond will grow. Who knows how much they’ll need in 2027.

Professor Steven Starr, the former director of the Clinical Laboratory Science Program at the University of Missouri, looks at the danger of nuclear escalation in Ukraine.

Peace talks between Russia and Ukraine have been rare since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Part of the blame falls on Europe and the mainstream media for attempting to suffocate diplomacy.

If the Trump administration truly makes good on its threats to walk away from its efforts to settle the war in Ukraine, the situation is very likely to get worse for all parties to the conflict, including for the United States. Potentially far worse.