The Ultimate End of NATO

By militarizing the Ukraine crisis, Russia has exposed the absolute military impotence of NATO. First and foremost, after dangling the bait of NATO membership before Ukraine for the past fourteen years, NATO was compelled to confess that it would not be able to come to the defense of Ukraine in case of any Russian military invasion because Article 5 only allowed collective defense to be invoked for NATO members, which Ukraine is not.

Moreover, the "massive" economic sanctions that NATO has promised to unleash in lieu of a military response have turned out to be as impotent as NATO's military power. Despite what the political leadership of NATO and the United States may say to the contrary, there is no unity of purpose when it comes to imposing sanctions on Russia in the event of a military incursion into Ukraine.

In short, any sanction package that targets Russian energy and/or access to banking institutions will hurt Europe far more than Russia. While the United States continues to push for Europe, and in particular Germany, to wean itself off Russian energy supplies, the fact is there is no viable alternative to Russian energy and, moreover, Europe is increasingly recognizing that the U.S. position has less to do with European security and more to do with a play by the U.S. to grab the European market for itself.

Under normal conditions, the U.S. cannot compete with Russia in terms of price and volume when it comes to natural gas deliveries. If, through sanctions, the U.S. can cut off Europe from Russia, then the U.S. will be able to impose its own energy products on Europe at prices that otherwise would be uncompetitive.

NATO's Realization

The individual members of NATO are beginning to awaken to the reality that their organization is little more than an impotent tool of American global hegemony. Hungary has cut its own gas deal with Russia, in defiance of U.S. directives to pull back. Croatia and Bulgaria have made it clear that they will not be deploying troops in support of NATO posturing on Ukraine.

Turkey has stated that it views the Ukraine crisis as little more than a thinly disguised effort by NATO and the U.S. to weaken Turkey by forcing it to fight Russia in the Black Sea. But perhaps the most telling moments came when the two European powerhouses of NATO, Germany, and France, were compelled to come face to face with the reality of their subservient role vis-Ã -vis the U.S..

When French President Emmanual Macron flew to Russia to try and negotiate a settlement to the Ukraine crisis, he was confronted with the reality that Russia won't negotiate with France without the U.S. first expressing support for the positions being put forward by the French President. The U.S. matters; France does not.

Likewise, the German chancellor was forced to stand mutely during his visit to the White House while U.S. President Joe Biden "promised" that he would unilaterally shut down the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project, even though the U.S. had no role to play in the construction and administration of the pipeline. Germany, Biden was saying, is little more than a colony of the United States.

The final nail in the NATO coffin came on Feb. 4, when the Russian president met with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the opening of the Winter Olympics in Beijing. The two leaders issued a 5,000-plus word joint statement in which China threw its weight behind Russia's objection to NATO expansion into Ukraine.

The Sino-Russian joint statement was a de facto declaration that neither Russia nor China would allow the U.S.-led "rules based international order" being promulgated by the Biden administration to go forward unchallenged. Instead, the two nations announced that they will be pursuing a "law based international order" which draws on the United Nations Charter for its authority, in contrast to unilateral rules which only serve the interests of the U.S. and small blocs of allied nations.

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