When Donald Trump encourages Russia to attack our NATO Allies there should be more than a red flag. When it comes to danger as well as derangement we are at Def Con 1.
Is anyone surprised that Trump has no sense of history? A man who warns that Joe Biden will lead us into WWII certainly has no sense of the state of the world post-1945
75 years ago NATO was born in the aftermath of WWII out of a desire to prevent WWIII.
Conceived out of necessity, this enduring alliance was initially forged to prevent Soviet expansionism. The shared democratic values of its members formed a unique bond. An alliance meant to provide reliability in an unreliable world.
For three-quarters of a century, Europeans have known that America’s foreign policy and priorities would be consistent with theirs.
Until now.
As president, Donald Trump’s broadsides against NATO rattled this long and formidable military alliance that largely defined the global post-war order. His veiled threats to pull out play right into Putin’s hands. Now his latest threats have caused international outrage.
From its Cold War inception, Russia has bristled at the formation of NATO, wanting nothing less than a dissolution of the organization. The North Atlantic Treaty was at heart a military alliance intended as a defense against the Russians.
It is likely Trump has never bothered to understand why the partnership was formed in the first place.
In case he never understood it, all roads lead to Russia.
The Hungry Bear
The fear of Soviet aggression and the spread of communism defined the post-WWII world.
Cast as the Evil Empire during the Cold War, an expansionist Russia was viewed as a “hungry bear” whose insatiable appetite needed to be controlled. The media was flooded with maps depicting the Soviet Union’s aggressive tendencies appearing ominously, splotched in red, depicting the global pattern of the spread of the Red offensive
Convinced that comrades in the Kremlin were busy spinning a web of control, hell-bent on forcibly enslaving free people everywhere, the U.S. and her Western European allies needed to contain the cunning Russian bear.
Or a cold war could turn very hot.
Bear Hug
WWII Soviet Allies (L) Life Magazine cover 3/29/43 featuring warm and fuzzy Joseph “Uncle Joe” Stalin (R) Life magazine cover 2/12/45 featuring our brave ally a Soviet Soldier courageously driving on to Berlin
The big chill almost made us forget that only a few years earlier this big brutal Russian bear had been our warm and fuzzy teddy bear of a wartime ally
During WWII, no one could hold a candle to those brave Stalingrad sacrificing red white, and blue Russians. Led by twinkly-eyed pipe smoking “Uncle Joe Stalin they were our comrades in fighting the Nazis.
Songwriters cheered and praised our Soviet comrades as we whistled “You Can’t Brush Off a Russian” and “Stalin Wasn’t Stall’in.” Selling the Soviets to us like a bottle of Pepsi, one ditty went:
“The Soviet Union hits the spot
12 million soldiers that’s a lot
Timashen and Stalin too
The Soviet Union is Red white and blue.”
The Big Chill
As the war came to a close the Soviets and Americans converged in Berlin, toasting each other at their shared victory.
The guns fell silent in Europe in May 1945 but the post-WWII world would have very little peace. A hot war might have ended with those 2 fiery Atomic Blasts in Japan but another war a cold one began with our former allies in arms, the Russians.
By 1946 the world was changing at a dizzying pace.
Maps had been redrawn, swelling and shrinking the areas of countries creating new boundaries, as cards were re-shuffled and friendships dissolved. Like so many war-born marriages, it turned out our grand alliance with the Soviets was more a marriage of convenience. Uncle Joe, our warm and fuzzy teddy bear quickly turned into a cold-blooded grizzly bear ready to gobble up crippled Europe turning its starving shivering population into godless Communists. As Soviet tanks angrily roamed Eastern European streets, Churchill warned of an Iron Curtain descending over Europe.
Our war-born goodwill faded as quickly as Elizabeth Arden’s vanishing cream.
Better Dead Than Red
Convinced the Russians had embarked on an aggressive campaign to destroy our government, establishing the American Way of Life as an ideal became even more crucial during this time contrasting it to the “Ruthless, Godless Communist” way of repression. We were to be on alert to the menace of Communism.
As the Cold War was heating up a series of events in the late 1940’s pointed to the fact that the security of Western Europe was tied to the security of the U.S. The threat of Soviet invasion of Western Europe pushing further into the freedom-loving democracies hung over the continent.
As if shifting gears between enemy and ally was as effortless as the automatic transmission in your Chevrolet the considerable fury and fear that had fueled our hatred of those bloodless Nazis had been and swiftly rerouted to those Godless Russian commies.
Germany, in fact, was a constant cause of concern.
After the war, Germany had been carved up into 4 occupied zones between the Allied victors of WWII. Berlin itself was divided up into Communist East Berlin and democratic West Berlin. But Berlin was stuck deep inside the Soviet-occupied parts of East Germany. West Berlin was a thriving, cosmopolitan city. In Soviet East Berlin the destruction of the war was still visible, the people far from prosperous, with luxury items scarce. Every year tens of thousands of East Berliners fled to capitalist West Germany.
The fear was that the Soviets wanted Germany to be the communist centerpiece of Europe. With Germany a Soviet satellite, Stalin licked his chops with the thought of Western Europe falling under the domination of the USSR. In June 1948 the Soviets imposed a blockade of Berlin in hopes of starving the Western Allies out of Berlin.
The same year the Soviets launched a coup in Czechoslovakia overthrowing a democratic government. They had already placed a communist government in power in Poland and extended its sway to every Eastern European country it occupied since 1945.
Atomic Blast
Adding fuel to the fire, America’s nuclear monopoly came to an abrupt end in 1949.
We were just digesting the Communist takeover of China when on a hot summer morning in August the Soviets detonated an atomic bomb sending a shock wave around the world. Many feared an impending war with Russia. As long as the aggression existed in the form of the Evil Empire and “their unrelenting drive to enslave humanity” the threat of an unwanted nuclear war would cast a long shadow.
The clear Soviet provocations created the urgency for the collective defense of Western Europe.
This was the grave backdrop as talks proceeded on a North Atlantic Treaty.
Europe was still clawing its way out of the destruction of the war and to be credible, any collective defense had to include the U.S. and Canada. After the war much of the world was economically shattered, returning home to cities that were often just rubble of broken bricks and smoldering wood, the desolate shell of a former city not yet done burning.
In our country, our economy was booming and there wasn’t a single building demolished by bombs, a brick displaced, or a window broken, and the only geographical scar was the one we ourselves had made on the empty deserts of New Mexico.
America had come out of the war as the only major industrial power not severely damaged, the richest country on earth.
President Harry Truman signed the North Atlantic Treaty which marked the beginning of NATO in a special signing ceremony on Aug. 24, 1949
European leaders met with U.S. defense, military, and diplomats at the Pentagon exploring a framework for a new and unprecedented alliance.
All members agreed to defend one another – that is still the core of the alliance. It was a security pact stating that a military attack against one would be considered an attack against them all. NATO was both a military alliance and also ideological. These were all liberal democracies and the will to push back against totalitarianism and Communism ran deep.
The North Atlantic Treaty, signed by twelve nations on a Monday afternoon in April of 1949 in Washington D.C., saw the United States accept the lead in the free world’s postwar resistance to Communist aggression and subversion.
We accepted our banner as leaders of the Free World with pride purpose and commitment
Today
Today NATO is the strongest, most successful alliance in history
But it has never been just a purely military alliance. There is a special emotional bond between America and the European allies. It is a political alliance as well based on the common aspirations of its members of freedom and peace. As the NATO treaty states its members are determined to safeguard individual freedom and the rule of law.
These values are far from obsolete
Copyright (©) 2024 Sally Edelstein All Rights Reserved
Envisioning The American Dream 
This is pretty good commentary, but the picture of Putin and trump is hilarious!
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The image does say it all.
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This is brilliant. Trump has no sense of ANYTHING that doesn’t affect him directly. If it doesn’t make him richer and/or keep him out of jail, he doesn’t care.
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Thanks. Trump’s myopic vision is astounding and history is for losers.
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Great perspective with fantastic illustrations. Should be read by ALL.
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Thank you. It’s shocking that someone of Trumps generation doesn’t know this history,but I wouldn’t be surprised if younger generations really have an understanding of post war world that created the geopolitics that affect us today.
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He is an incredibly, impossibly ignorant man, all the more important reason that we the citizens vote Biden back into the White House. As for the source of that ignorance, he isn’t a reader and I always suspected “Daddy” paid someone who read and learned the course lessons to take the tests Donnie couldn’t pass if 10% were the passing grade.
His attitude toward people who honorably served or serve in the military, to me a veteran, makes that son of a bitch absolutely, under any circumstances, worthy of the presidency.
It was a slap in the face of all former and then-current military personnel that he ever was president, and dishonorable on his part to even suggest the war dead and POW were stupid and losers for dying for their country.
I never liked the bastard because of how he avoided military service. If he had been an honorable person back then, there were non-military ways to serve his country, but I guess that never passed his peanut brain. Peace Corps service, for one, might have broken down that wall of ignorance about how non-billionaire peoples in Third World countries have to live to survive. No “Daddys” there to buy them so much as a free ride through life.
Silly me! “Service to country” is as alien a concept to Trump as the significance of knowledge of history is.
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“Service to self” is all Trump knows. Service to Country is for suckers. His moral compass isn’t broken, it was never formed in the first place. Though he prides himself on being a graduate of an Ivy League school, the only reason he got into a good school like Penn was through Daddy. His first 2 years were at Fordham University in the city a perfectly adequate school, but as a transfer student it was much easier to get into a better school.
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It all comes to fruition on the 16th with that monster judgement against him and three-year exclusion from doing business in NY state. Should be interesting to see how reaality affects him.
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“the war dead and POW were stupid and losers for dying for their country” – oops! You know I lumped POWs in the “dead” category, thtough I hope all those POWs survived and are among us
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Hello beautiful Madame Sally.
I see that your beliefs are unshakable, so I will not show the impertinence and prudence to try to change them. But still, since I happened to come across your site anyway, let’s I say: don’t worry, to date, the world is unprecedentedly united around a common perspective for the future, which applies with full force to both Russia and the United States.
Everything you see and hear happening around the so-called war in Ukraine reflects only in one way on Russia: it greatly accelerates Russia’s transition to the new technological order (this would never have happened if it had not been for the so-called war).
The society of the new technological order is so different that it is necessarily preceded by significant destruction at the system level (while at the same time the most active work is done to replace the old models with those of the new technological order). None of the talk about the destruction and danger to the future of Russia is true (I follow especially closely and know).
There could never have been such a huge reason for this transition if it were not for this with Ukraine. There was no literally life-saving circumstance that would unite and concentrate power and resources for the sake of a goal that determines Russia’s very future.
I don’t mean by any of this that it’s a good thing. On the contrary, it sucks very much. It is a real end to almost all life, the way people are used to living it. And this, probably in a slightly different way, comes to the West, to the United States, and everywhere.
For example, if you want, look here a unique perspective on Tucker’s interview (backed up with all the necessary sources). I mean, there really is nowhere else to meet it, backed up by the necessary factual justification. In case you are interested in more details, scroll down and review the next comments of the same person.
I know you won’t accept it, I’m sure. And I don’t mind. Just so and so I’m here, and to say. 🙂
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When Xi Jinping was in America last time didn’t Biden mention a nuclear war?
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I do not recall that.
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Who Runs any Government? Specifically, Who Runs the post WWII US Shadow Government? Who Runs, beneath the surface, the United Nations?
The nationalization of the Suez Canal by Nasser in 1956 imposed a major blow to British and French influence in the Middle East. The June 1967 Arab-Israeli War further weakened the influence of England and France in the region, as Israel’s decisive victory drastically changed the regional balance of power.
An immediate reaction to this disaster for British and French interests in the Middle East, France drafted UN Resolution 242 in an effort to negate Israel’s gains from the 1967 war and return the borders to the pre-1967 status.
Quite amazing that France, having lost WWII, appointed to sit on the UN Security Council as a permanent member. Neither Germany nor Japan to this day sits as a permanent member of the UN Security Council.
Britain separated the area of Trans-Jordan from the Palestine Mandate territories, establishing the Jordan River as the international border. In 1950, the UN condemned Jordan’s annexation of the West Bank as illegal. Since Jordan attacked Israel in the 1967 war, and Israel subsequently recaptured the Samaria region (the West Bank), Israel cannot be considered an “occupier” of lands within its own established borders as determined by Britain during the Mandate period.
The historical record shows that foreign-imposed two-state solutions or border demarcations have always failed to bring lasting peace in various regional conflicts. Utterly misleading or disingenuous to automatically associate discussions of UN Resolution 242 and UN Resolution attempts thereafter to determine Israel’s borders with the rhetoric of “peace.” The reality simply much more complex, with competing interests and perspectives at play.
Examples of India-Pakistan, North-South Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq-Kuwait — Great Power interventions, illustrates how externally-driven border arrangements and partition plans have always failed to resolve deep-seated tensions and conflicts. The use of that rhetoric propaganda language, employed to gloss-over the political realities and power dynamics involved. A more nuanced and impartial analysis that challenges the corruption of Bureaucratic intelligence agencies of the Great Powers emphatically warranted, when discussing such sensitive geopolitical issues, rather than relying on simplistic “peace” narratives of propaganda.
Addressing the complex issues surrounding UN Security Council resolutions, such as Resolution 242 on the Arab-Israeli conflict, requires examining the role and influences of foreign state intelligence agencies and bureaucracies. The behavior and motives of these state actors, absolute critical factors that shape the geopolitical landscape and the outcomes of such UN resolutions.
Competing intelligence assessments and interests: Different states’ intelligence agencies clearly have diverging analyses and priorities when it comes to regional conflicts like the Arab-Israeli dispute. This can lead to inconsistent or self-serving policy positions.
Bureaucratic inertia and institutional biases: Intelligence and foreign policy bureaucracies can develop entrenched habits, narratives and biases that perpetuate certain approaches, even as regional dynamics shift. Covert influence operations: States may leverage intelligence capabilities to covertly shape public opinion, pressure political actors, or manipulate the information landscape around these issues.
Power struggles and proxy conflicts: The Arab-Israeli conflict post WWII, an arena for larger geopolitical rivalries and proxy battles between global and regional powers. The Cold War struggle between the US and USSR domination of the Middle East oil reserves a stark example. Nixon’s establishment of the petro$ monopoly over OPEC States.
Examination of the role of state intelligence agencies and their institutional dynamics; these concealed, unreported and unseen forces play a profound impact on the formulation, implementation and long-term propaganda impact of these reactionary UN Resolutions/rubber stamps. Intelligence agencies shape the information and assessments that inform the development of all UN resolutions. These hostile Great Power bureaucratic intelligence spy agencies, by their mandate definitions: they pursue agendas that go beyond the ostensible goals of the resolution.
Bureaucratic interests and biases can become embedded into the wording and framing of resolutions. Intelligence agencies leverage covert operations, information warfare, and proxy actors to influence how resolutions, interpreted by the Main Stream Media propaganda organs of the Great Powers, and applied attempts to dictate terms to “client” banana republic States.
They seek to subvert the consequences of the Israeli victory in the June 1967 war. UN Resolutions 242, 338, 446, 2334, through selective enforcement or undermining compliance, seek to carve Israel into two hostile States like the post WWII Allies divided Germany into 2-State solution and Berlin into a 2-Capital Solution.
The intent behind these resolutions goes beyond their ostensible goals of promoting peace and security. The underlying agenda, one of leveraging the UN framework to diminish Israel’s position and territorial control – outcomes that would align with the interests and institutional biases of certain hostile state intelligence agencies.
Selective enforcement or undermining of compliance with these resolutions, exposes the key tactic employed by Intelligence bureaucracies to achieve their imperialist objectives. Rather than facilitating a genuine conflict resolution. State propaganda rhetoric deceives by means of Peace lies. This speaks to the profound impact that concealed, unreported forces can have on the implementation and legacy of such UN actions.
UN Resolutions like 242, 338, 446, and 2334, part of a broader effort to divide Israel into two hostile states, akin to the post-WWII partitioning of Germany. This speaks to the geo-strategic calculations and power dynamics at play, which often transcend the ostensible goals of promoting peace and security.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has long been a proxy battleground for competing regional and global powers. Intelligence agencies may leverage these UN resolutions to advance the interests of their respective states, even if it perpetuates the underlying conflict.
Institutional Biases: Bureaucracies within foreign policy and intelligence establishments can develop entrenched narratives, preconceptions, and institutional incentives that make them resistant to solutions that don’t align with their preferred outcomes. This can lead to the selective interpretation and application of UN resolutions.
Covert Information Warfare: State intelligence agencies have ignoble reputations, known to employ sophisticated information manipulation tactics, including the strategic leaking of information, the promotion of favorable narratives, and the suppression or distortion of inconvenient facts. This can shape the public perception and historical framing of all these UN anti-Israel actions.
Long-Term Strategic Objectives: Rather than seeking immediate conflict resolution, the subversion of UN resolutions may be part of a longer-term strategy to gradually erode Israel’s position and create the conditions for a more favorable geopolitical arrangement from the perspective of certain state actors.
The complexities involved in these dynamics highlight the importance of looking beyond the explicit text and intent of UN Security Council resolutions. Accounting for the hidden influence of state intelligence agencies and their institutional biases, absolutely crucial toward understanding the true forces shaping the implementation and legacy of such international frameworks and imperialist hidden agendas.,
Resolutions like 242, 338, 446, and 2334, part of a broader effort to gradually erode Israel’s territorial control and position, with the ultimate objective of carving the country into two hostile states. This strategic objective aligns with the geopolitical interests and institutional biases of certain state intelligence agencies.
An important dynamic to consider, the role of covert information warfare tactics – employed by these hostile foreign “international” agencies. They have a known reputation: to selectively leak information, promote favorable narratives, and suppress or distort inconvenient facts in order to influence public perception and historical framing of these criminal UN actions.
For example, hostile intelligence agencies often strategically release partial or misleading information about the implementation of these resolutions, obscuring the true extent of non-compliance or even undermining of the resolutions’ intent. This can create the impression of progress and compliance, or the reverse, even as the resolutions’ transformative potential – quietly subverts the publicly stated political rhetoric of the Resolutions. UN Resolution 181, serves as an excellent example. That UN General Assembly resolution which all Arab countries rejected at the time does not compare to the 10 commandments written in stone.
Furthermore, the bureaucratic inertia and institutional biases within foreign policy and intelligence establishments can lead to the selective interpretation and application of these UN resolutions. Preconceived notions, organizational incentives, and entrenched narratives can all contribute to a reluctance to pursue solutions that don’t align with the preferred outcomes of these state actors. For example: the repeated rhetoric of “occupied territories” or “the State of Palestine” etc.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has long served as a proxy battleground for competing regional and global powers. Intelligence agencies may leverage these UN resolutions to advance the interests of their respective states, even if it perpetuates the underlying conflict.
The subversion of UN resolutions exposes part of a long-term strategic hostile Quartet foreign objective. Rather than a sincere effort at immediate conflict resolution. The Quartet intelligence bureaucracies seek a gradually eroding Israel’s position through selective enforcement and undermining of compliance disputes. These state intelligence agencies seek to create the conditions for a more favorable geopolitical arrangement that better serves their hostile perspectives.
This complex interplay of covert information warfare, institutional biases, and geopolitical manoeuvring highlights the need for a more comprehensive analysis of these criminal UN Security Council resolutions. Understanding the hidden foreign Intelligence bureaucratic forces which shape their implementation and legacy. Simply crucial to unveiling the true dynamics at play.
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