Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter

That would be a nightmare scenario from the perspective of Israeli interests.

A report circulated last week alleging that Trump cut off all direct contact with Bibi after feeling manipulated by him. For as sensational as it sounds, the larger context suggests that it might be true. For starters, there was bad blood between them since late 2020 after Trump reportedly felt betrayed by Bibi recognizing Biden’s electoral victory while Trump was still challenging it in the courts. This is a very personal issue for him seeing as how he continues to insist that he won so it wouldn’t be surprising.

More recently, Bibi has been pressuring Trump to bomb Iran, which Trump doesn’t want to do since a large-scale war in West Asia would offset his planned “Pivot (back) to Asia” for containing China. In connection with that, Trump reportedly dismissed former National Security Advisor Mike Waltz due to him supposedly coordinating too closely with Israel. Also of relevance are the rumors that Israel was caught off guard by the US’ resumption of talks with Iran and is against any agreement between them.

Then there’s the US’ recent deal with the Houthis that excludes Israel, reports that the US will delink Saudi recognition of Israel from their civil nuclear talks, and even speculation that Trump might recognize Palestine during his attendance at next week’s Gulf-US Summit in Riyadh. Altogether, it’s self-evident that US-Israeli ties are newly beset with a host of problems, thus lending credence to the earlier cited report about Trump cutting off all direct contact with Bibi.

Their rift might even be irreconcilable depending on Trump’s next steps. It was already bad enough from Israel’s perspective that the US reached its own deal with the Houthis right after they announced their plans to impose an air blockade on Israel but delinking Saudi recognition of Israel from their civil nuclear talks, let alone recognizing Palestine, could cross the Rubicon. In that scenario, Israel and the US would remain at odds during the rest of Trump’s term, and perhaps even afterwards if Vance succeeds him.

Jeffrey Silverman
New Eastern Outlook (Part 1)

The West’s attempts to politicize and rewrite the memory of Victory in World War II threaten historical truth and deepen divisions in Europe, where some countries follow the EU’s dictates while others defend their sovereignty and the right to honor the past without geopolitical filters.

It’s true that many European countries have distanced themselves from the 9th of May celebrations, allegedly as a direct result of the geopolitical context—Russia Bad, West Good, supposedly because of Russia’s SMO in Ukraine. But for many in the former Soviet space (and even beyond), that day is still sacred, a commemoration of immense sacrifice and the defeat of Nazi Germany and its likeminded minions.

Unfortunately, Europe itself, is acting more and more like the hundreds of thousands of willing collaborators and executioners who served as volunteers, mostly in the infamous SS.

Divergence in perspective is what’s creating these political and symbolic clashes. There is a deeper worry here: when the remembrance of historical events is shaped more by present-day alliances than by historical truth, the danger is that history gets rewritten—or forgotten. That’s a point scholars like Tony Judt, Timothy Snyder, and others have discussed in their writings on “memory politics” and the weaponization of history.

The memory of WWII, fascism, and communism shaped postwar Europe’s political structures—but these memories are deeply contested and selectively used. It must be remembered that the “Great Patriotic War” is burned into Soviet and now Russian memory and identity as a heroic and sacrificing people, who saved humanity. But it has different meaning for different nations, and some would like to rewrite their own histories.

Sonja van den Ende
Strategic Culture Foundation

Fascism has resurged in Europe, with neo-Nazis masquerading as nationalists – most notably in Ukraine, where a far-right regime tightens its grip.

Today, Russia commemorates the liberation and defeat of the Nazis, who ruled Germany and Austria (following the 1938 Anschluss) from 1933 to 1945. During this time, they invaded numerous European countries and launched the horrific Operation Barbarossa – an attempt to conquer the Soviet Union.

Beyond their pursuit of Lebensraum, the Nazis sought to “cleanse” occupied territories of Jews, Roma, non-Aryans, communists, and political opponents. This was ethnic cleansing, but the Nazis pioneered industrialized methods for their atrocities. Initially relying on mass shootings, they later introduced gas chambers using Zyklon-B, claiming this was more “efficient” and spared their soldiers psychological trauma. Yet, mass shootings still claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, primarily Jews, in Ukraine, Poland, Belarus, and the Baltic states.

One of the most infamous sites is Babi Yar near Kiev, where Ukrainian collaborators murdered approximately 34,000 Jews on September 29–30, 1941. As recent documentaries reveal, the Nazis lacked sufficient manpower to carry out such massacres alone.

By the war’s end, 8,500 members of the SS Galizien Division – Ukrainian soldiers implicated in heinous crimes – were granted refugee status in the UK, with many later emigrating to Canada. The recent honoring of Nazi veteran Yaroslav Hunka in Canada’s parliament underscores how Nazism persists in the West.

eugyppius
eugyppius: a plague chronicle

The pervasive belief in the eternal progress of mankind has been a crucial, driving element of Western liberalism for generations. It is starting to break down.

[Extract:] The most powerful force in Western politics today is a cultural virus that is always chewing away at our instincts for self-preservation. It is why millions of people support infinity wind turbines and infinity solar panels, even if these make their electricity more expensive and less reliable. It is related to out-group identification and the cultural fetish for victim minorities, and thus explains the popular impulses that permit mass migration.

At the broadest level, this force accounts for an important phenomenon in modern politics, whereby millions of people support policies that make their lives objectively worse, while parties responsible for these policies appear utterly immune to their own failures, if they are not actively rewarded for them.

You might call this force “expectant progressivism.” It is the quiet, unstudied belief that things are always getting better, more just, more abundant, more enlightened, more advanced and more human-rights. Expectant progressives view the past teleologically, as one massive Whig-historical fable, and they regard their political preferences as investments in moral futures.

They aim to put their names on the next brave innovations in social and economic justice while these are still culturally cheap – that is to say, controversial and disputed. Once these innovations become new cornerstones in the liberal consensus, the expectant progressives will be able to cash in on their far-sighted, humanitarian convictions. They will enjoy the privilege of proclaiming that they were, once again, on the right side of history.

Martin Jay
Strategic Culture Foundation

Chay Bowes’ arrest and deportation is alarming as it signals a new low on the scumline of EU totalitarianism.

The European Union continues to sink deeper and deeper in its own political excrement as it not only believes its own manufactured consent by its Brussels cabal of wasters who call themselves journalists but is also tightening down its grip on its 400 million citizens. The EU never pretended to be a democracy but these days it is surpassing even the Stalinist period of the Soviet Union in its determination to control every thought of its citizens, which, of course means hunting down and persecuting any journalists who even simply question the narrative.

The latest example – as there are many – is good ‘ol Chay Bowes, an RT presenter-come-journalist who was sent to Romania to cover the presidential elections – second time around, as the original result in March, which didn’t please the EU, was cancelled. It’s what the EU does quite frequently. It simply cancels democratic processes which don’t come up with the results it prefers. Ireland and France experienced the same with their own referendums which had to be done a second time to get the right result. These days the EU simply calls any results which it doesn’t like ‘Russian interference’ and everyone just rolls over and accepts it, amazingly.

Glenn Diesen
Glenn's Substack

Ideological fundamentalism refers to when ideology convinces the public that politics is a struggle between good and evil. People no longer assess states based on what they do in the international system but on the political identities assigned to them.

Kenneth Waltz, the godfather of neorealist theory, observed that Western democracies had a proclivity toward ideological fundamentalism. Waltz wrote:

💬 “Citizens of democratic states tend to think of their countries as good, aside from what they do, simply because they are democratic... democratic states also tend to think of undemocratic states as bad, aside from what they do, simply because they are undemocratic.”

Citizens of democracies also think of their countries as being more peaceful because they are democratic. Because it is believed that democracies are more peaceful and less likely to start wars, it has laid the foundation for “democratic wars” as invading non-democracies to make them democratic is believed to make the world more peaceful. Western democracies have subsequently committed themselves to perpetual war with the promise of delivering Kant’s perpetual peace.

Ideological fundamentalism is to some extent embedded in human nature as human beings are social animals that have organised in groups for tens of thousands of years for security and meaning. Human beings instinctively organise into the in-group (us) versus the diametrically opposite out-groups (them). The out-group as our opposite reaffirms our own identity – we can only identify as white if there is black, only west if there is east, only civilised if there are barbaric, only democratic if there are authoritarians, and only good if there is evil.

Pierre Assouline

Incroyable que Churchill et De Gaulle n’aient jamais été statufiés en situation d’écrire! Car si l’un et l’autre continuent à dominer leur siècle en héros absolus, ils le doivent aussi à leur qualité d’écrivain. Au sens plein du terme qui exclut l’hypothèse de l’auteur de circonstance porté par des événements si grands et si hauts qu’ils ne pouvaient inspirer de médiocres écrits. De véritables écrivains. Sauf que l’un a été fait prix Nobel de littérature en 1953 et pas l’autre. Cherchez l’erreur. La récente publication du premier tome des Mémoires de guerre (440 pages, 29 euros,Tallandier) de Winston Churchill est l’occasion d’y revenir.

Dans sa présentation, François Kersaudy rappelle qu’ils sont le fruit d’un travail d’équipe. En cinq temps: des assistants ont effectué des recherches, puis ils ont interwievé le grand homme avant de décrypter ses souvenirs pour les lui présenter afin qu’il les churchillise en y mettant sa patte à coups de rature, de paperolles et d’allongeails où l’on reconnaît parfois un souffle, un humour et une cadence qui lui ressemblent; et le tout fut envoyé à une quarantaine d’officiers, diplomates, historiens, parlementaires pour correction puis à des proches et des royals pour censure. C’est à un atelier de nègres qu’il eut fallu décerner le Nobel!

On a longtemps dit que dans le choix des cadémiciens suédois, la politique l’avait emporté sur la littérature; mais depuis quelques années, il est de bon ton, des deux côtés de la Manche, de redresser la barre afin de placer le mémorialiste Churchill, également auteur il est vrai de nombreux volumes historiques, au même niveau que le mémorialiste De Gaulle, en lui empruntant jusqu’à son titre dans l’édition française (The Second World War était le titre original).

Ian Proud
Strategic Culture Foundation

The western governments are turning a blind eye once more to activity that they would never tolerate in their own countries.

A number of topics remain taboo in discussing the war in Ukraine. Busification, Zelensky’s democratic mandate, Ukraine’s casualty numbers and anything suggesting that Ukraine cannot win are all off limits. Likewise the problem of alleged neo-Nazis in Ukraine.

One of the most embarrassing episodes since the Ukraine war started in 2022, was when Yaroslav Hunka, was given two standing ovations in the Canadian House of Commons public gallery by MPs during the visit of President Zelensky in 2023. Hunka has been accused by Russia of genocide, because of his alleged involvement in the Huta Pieniacka massacre of February 28 1944 in which more than 500 ethnic Poles were murdered in a village, in what is now western Ukraine. Hunka was a member of the SS Galicia Division, a mostly Ukrainian unit of the Waffen SS, which Commissions in Germany and Poland later found guilty of war crimes.

This was shocking because it opened the lid on a topic of conversation that has been largely silenced by the western mainstream media since the beginning of the war: Ukraine’s contemporary challenge of far-right ultranationalism. But the Hunka case also illustrates how western authorities airbrushed discussion of nazis in Ukraine after World War II too.

On 13 July 1948 the British Commonwealth Relations Office, what is now part of the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office, sent a telegram to Commonwealth governments, proposing an end to Nazi war crimes trials in the British zone of Germany. “Punishment of war crimes is more a matter of discouraging future generations than of meting out retribution to every guilty individual… it is now necessary to dispose of the past as soon as possible.”

After the conclusion of the Nuremberg War Trials in 1946 the western world faced a new enemy in the Soviet Union. Limited security resources in cash-strapped Albion and its colonies were re-deployed to uncover suspected Soviet agents and Communists, rather than to identify and track down lower-order Nazi war criminals.

Bruna Frascolla
Strategic Culture Foundation

In Biden’s America, one would answer without hesitation that women have penises, but you never know.

According to all scientific authorities in botany, a tomato is, without a shadow of a doubt, a fruit. However, in 1893, the United States Supreme Court handed down the decision Nix v. Heden, according to which a tomato, in the context of a tariff law, is not a fruit, but a vegetable. This is a curious choice of words, because the Supreme Court did not decide that the tomato, although a fruit, should be considered a vegetable in a given context; instead, it decided that the tomato is a fruit in law, because the law is made according to ordinary language, which is different from botany. It is very strange, this idea that the Supreme Court legislates on reality, but that is how it works in the most powerful country in the world, an heir to the English Common Law.

The case of tomato in the USA is similar to that of women in Great Britain. On April 16, 2025, in response to the interpretation of a law on gender equality, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom ruled that women are those of the female sex, excluding from the concept “trans women” who hold female documents. Since then, British feminists and conservatives have celebrated the new definition. Thus, women in Great Britain no longer have penises.

Harold Turner
Hal Turner Show

The United States has suddenly imposed full scale, secondary sanctions upon Iran oil sales. | What this means is that the US tells EVERY other nation in the world, that if they buy __any__ oil from Iran, then their entire country cannot do any business AT ALL with the United States.

This is the kind of economic activity that directly causes a shooting war. The entire country of Iran survives on oil sales. Now, no one else in the world can buy their oil for fear of losing access to US markets. This is a death stranglehold by the US upon Iran's entire economy. President Trump made the announcement himself on Social Media:

Peter Akopov (Петр Акопов)
Pravda-EN / РИА Новости

The fact is that no one (except the British and the Balts, but the latter don't count) was actually going to send any peacekeeping troops to Ukraine on their own.

Ukraine — indeed, Ukraine, the whole of Europe — has been saved: the Estonian Prime Minister promised to send a well-armed company to help Ukraine. Two hundred people — that's how many the Estonian company has, which is called "the company" in the local language. Prime Minister Kristen Michal announced his readiness to send "peacekeepers" at a crucial moment for the fate of Ukraine and Europe — a few hours after the British Times reported on the problems with forming a contingent of the "coalition of the willing." Not even about the problems, but about the lack of prospects for assembling the "salvation army of Ukraine" in Europe, which is a contingent designed to guarantee the observance of the truce (if and when it takes place at all).

But how loudly it all started! For the first time, the idea of sending European troops to Ukraine was promoted by Emmanuel Macron at the beginning of last year, and then it was not about peacekeepers: the French president did not rule out even participating in battles with the Russian army. Everyone understood that Macron was bluffing, but at the beginning of this year, talks about sending troops under a peacekeeping flag became commonplace for Europeans. In early March, the idea of creating a "coalition of those who want to achieve a just world" was put forward by Czech President Pavel, and it was immediately picked up by British Prime Minister Starmer, and the work moved into practice. In two months, several meetings of the "coalition" took place in different countries and at different (including very high—level) levels, at which one of the main topics was the formation and deployment of a peacekeeping contingent - and yesterday the Times buried the project.

Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter

Russia wants the world to know that North Korea might play a larger role in the conflict.

Chief of the Russian General Staff Valery Gerasimov’s acknowledgement that North Korean troops helped expel Ukraine from Kursk ended around nine months of speculation about their role in the conflict.

Rumors began to circulate after Russia and North Korea updated their strategic partnership last June and reaffirmed its mutual defense clause. Western, Ukrainian, and South Korean media then alleged that North Korea sent troops to help Russia while the Kremlin reacted coyly to these reports.

It was only in late October that a clearer picture began to emerge after Putin lent credence to these claims by saying that “Images are a serious thing. If there are images, then they reflect something” upon being asked about satellite images of North Korean troop movements. He also said during the same press conference that “We know who is present there, from which European Nato countries, and how they carry out this work”, thus hinting at Russia’s motive in requesting North Korea’s assistance in Kursk.

Adversarial media’s reports about North Koreans fighting within Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders remain unconfirmed, including the disputed regions that Russia claims as its own in their entirety, but it’s now an indisputable fact that they were fighting within Russia’s universally recognized borders. Kursk region was invaded by Ukraine last August as part of an ultimately failed ploy to swap whatever it could occupy there for some of the Ukrainian-claimed land under Russian control.

Just like Ukraine reportedly requested Western assistance for fighting Russia inside its pre-2014 borders per Putin, who also accused the West of assisting Ukraine’s attacks inside Russia’s universally recognized borders, so too did Russia request North Korea’s assistance for fighting Ukraine in Kursk. His motive was therefore to reciprocally respond to the West’s direct but still unofficial military involvement in the conflict by having North Korea enter the fray on Russia’s side in a similarly clandestine manner till now.

Reidar Kaarboe
Hva Mener Partiene

Dramatically different versions—The Russian version of the war in Ukraine dramatically differs from the version we are presented with in Norway. One of the versions is heavily tainted with lies, deception, and propaganda. The problem is which one. Because the Western version is well covered, this post will look at the issues as seen from the East. Such an angle is not only legitimate - it is necessary.

The West did not want to help Russia.—Resentment towards Russia is old. Several of the countries in the old Soviet Union experienced economic problems when the union was dissolved and the Berlin Wall fell. Jeffrey Sachs - a well-known American economist - led the work on economic reform in Poland in the 1990s with financial support from the US. Afterward, he was asked by Russia to assist them in the same process, but this time Washington clearly said NO, helping Russia was out of the question. He has since publicly criticized the US and the IMF for letting Russia collapse, saying: "Washington wanted Russia to go under. There was no interest in a prosperous, stable Russia. The goal was control."

Even then, Russia was an enemy, and the Cold War was still hanging on.—The result for Russia in the 1990s was a massive economic crisis, hyperinflation, and a collapse in living standards. A small group of oligarchs took control of large parts of the country's resources - often with Western assistance and corruption, and Russian fortunes were invested in the West. As Putin came to power and began to re-establish state control over the energy sector (such as Gazprom, Rosneft, etc.), he was increasingly seen as an obstacle to US-style "reforms".

Dmitry Medvedev (Дмитрий Медведев)
Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council
RT.com / Pravovedenie (.pdf)

"Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi" – The world keeps changing, and not always for the better. We have witnessed the rapid degradation of many supranational legal structures, which have fallen victim to their dependence on the will, funding and values of the so-called collective West. This is true, for instance, for the International Criminal Court (the Hague Criminal Court). The good intentions which guided those who established it two decades ago have evidently paved the road to hell. The further, the more so.

Deplorable as it may seem, it is more than natural. Suffice it to remember the history of this legal institution, which has gone a short way from alleged demand to full uselessness on the edge of absurdity, bias and cynicism. It is important to understand what its current actions are conditioned by, how to react to them and what, in the end, shall replace this international body, which has compromised itself so quickly.

Martin Jay
Strategic Culture Foundation

Trump’s China plan is like fishing with hand grenades. But what is floating to the surface?—America is heading towards an abyss which it has never seen before and a new all time low of poverty is coming its way.

Trump’s got a lot on his plate at the moment as he wakes up to the reality that you can’t give a radical boost to the U.S. domestic economy at the flick of a switch. The dream of tariffs being able to do this might have been somewhat realistic in the mid 80s when the U.S. imposed a similar radical measures against Japan on electrical goods. Reagan’s thinking at that time was more rational and level-headed and, given that the move to hike up Japanese goods by 100 percent was expected to not even affect the prices of electrical goods in U.S. stores (as there were many U.S. products competing, which were manufactured locally), the move seemed far from radical. But today’s China is not Japan of the 80s.

Trump’s overarching agenda is pretty clear to most economists. He sees Germany, Japan, and China as exploiting their economic relationships with the U.S. He criticizes their trade practices, alleging that currency manipulation and withholding of dollar reserves contribute to an inflated dollar exchange rate, which of course harms the U.S. economy.

The currency manipulation accusation is of course particularly relevant to China whose government barely denies it. But there would appear to be more about this stunt based on geopolitics than meat-n-gravy economics. Even Trump, who doesn’t appear to understand international trade at all, can’t be this stupid. He must have known that hitting China so hard would impact the U.S. economy as the tariffs themselves are imposed on U.S. firms who actually import the goods from China – and so the prices will be hiked in Walmart and other huge retailers. Americans have nowhere else to go for their cheap goods as, in many cases, the items themselves are not produced by U.S. firms. The other consequence of the childish spat with China is that there is an argument that China’s goods may be heading towards the EU on a scale never seen before as compensation.

Katherine Watt
Bailiwick News

The work of Antoine Bechamp has crossed my field of vision mostly through the work of Tracey Northern. Last week, Bechamp's name appeared in a chapter of Fr. Denis Fahey's 1953 book, The Church and Farming, at pp. 98-101.

💬 Chemical Fertilizers and Microzymas – An important point stressed by Lord Geddes in the English House of Lords, in February, 1944, must be mentioned here. In the course of a very interesting debate on the soil in relation to the health of man, animal and plant, Lord Geddes said:

"There is no doubt whatever that you can produce from the fields a great quantity of food by the use of chemical fertilizers. You can boost production, and that is what I think has blinded a great many people to the real problem. The food that we eat and the foodstuffs which we absorb into our body fluids, and through them into our body tissues, are divided sharply into two parts, possibly more, but certainly sharply into two parts — the part which is required as fuel to provide the energy for movement...and the part which is required to repair and replace and recreate our actual bodies themselves.

The German school — Virchow, Schwann, Liebig — laid the emphasis upon the cell out of which in their millions our bodies are created and they regarded food for the cell as all that was required....

Elena Panina (Елена Панина)
Елена Панина/Telegram

Lieutenant General Yaroslav Moskalik, deputy chief of the Main Operations Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, was killed today in a car bombing in Balashikha. This is a serious loss for our country. The GOU is the main body of the General Staff. Its tasks include, in particular, “strategic and operational planning of the use of the Russian Armed Forces, operational management of troops (forces) in peacetime and wartime.”

 ■ The terrorist attack is similar to the assassination of Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, head of the Russian Chemical Defense Forces, in the way it was carried out. But it's not just the method. The enemy is moving up the ladder of destruction of Russia's top military personnel. They killed the head of a branch of troops, now - the deputy head of the General Staff Department....

We should not be naive and think that in this matter some gradual escalation will be maintained. If the enemies had a real opportunity to assassinate the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, they would not hesitate to do so.

Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter

From India’s perspective, the Pahalgam terrorist attack has Pakistan’s fingerprints all over it, hence why it’s considering at least one surgical strike across the border.

Terrorists massacred 26 tourists who were relaxing in the Baisaran Valley meadow near Pahalgam in the Indian union territory of Jammu & Kashmir (J&K). They specifically targeted Hindus, checking the victims’ IDs and even asking them to pull down their pants to see whether they were circumcised. The terrorists were from “The Resistance Front”, which is an Indian-designated terrorist group associated with the Pakistani-based Lashkar-e-Taiba, itself designated as a terrorist group by India, Russia, the US, and several others.

One of India’s responses has been to hold the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance, which prompted Pakistan to threaten that any curtailment of water to it will be considered an act of war. Pakistan also suspended the 1972 Simla Agreement that ended the third Indo-Pakistani War. Observers now expect that the 2021 ceasefire will soon be annulled. Surgical strikes by India against Pakistan might soon follow after Prime Minister Narendra Modi vowed to “pursue [the terrorists] to the ends of the Earth.”

Amidst the uncertainty over what might come next and whether it could set into motion a possibly uncontrollable escalation that ultimately leads to a nuclear exchange, it’s arguably the case that Pakistani Chief of Army Staff Asim Munir has the most to gain and lose from the latest tensions. Beginning with how he might benefit, the most obvious way is by trying to rally the entire nation behind him, especially in the event of tit-for-tat strikes or worse with India.

Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter

The possibility exists, but it should be centered on enduring economic interests that are less likely than political and security ones to shift with a change in government.

Chairman of the Committee on the Diaspora and Serbs in the Region Dragan Stanojevic told Izvestia late last month that Serbia wants to ally with Hungary and Slovakia, which preceded the signing of a new military cooperation pact between Belgrade and Budapest in early April.

This analysis here argues that any Hungarian-Serbian alliance of the sort that President Aleksandar Vucic proclaimed is in the works would have very real limits since Hungary is unlikely to go to war with Croatia in defense of Serbia.

The same holds true for Slovakia if it signs a similar pact with Serbia, but the trilateral convergence between them and Hungary could set the basis for a new Central European integration platform. Before elaborating on its contours, a few words will be shared about why there’s even an interest in this.

The most effective regional integration platform by far is the Visegrad Group comprised of Hungary, Slovakia, Czechia, and Poland, but internal disputes over the Ukrainian conflict rendered it dysfunctional.

Vladimir Kornilov
Pravda-EN / РИА Новости

Will NATO survive or not? This issue is being increasingly discussed in the West. If we follow the evolution of the headlines of the mainstream media over the past few weeks, we can identify a fairly straightforward trend, indicating a shift from doubts to increasingly confident answers about this issue. Here are just a few such examples:

February twenty-third, Politico: "NATO may die soon";

March 17th, Vox: "Has Trump already killed NATO?";

On March 20th, The Daily Telegraph reported, "Trump won't kill NATO; the alliance is already dead."

It's a funny roll call of headlines, and it can be continued indefinitely — too many analytical articles have been written about this in recent days. Although opinions sound different, in the vast majority of cases, the authors agree that NATO will not stand up for some minor member of the alliance "if the Russians attack it" (and Russia, of course, has nothing else to do but attack a poor, unhappy and defenseless member NATO).

It is clear that most often some Baltic country is mentioned in the list of potential victims of the coming aggression. Retired British Army Colonel Richard Kemp, for example, urges us to think about a scenario in which the Russian population of Latvia will turn to Moscow for help in protecting their ethnic rights. The author, of course, does not suggest thinking about how to eliminate the cause of the problem a priori: did the British ever care about the rights of the Russian population in a particular country? No, he's more concerned about what NATO will do when Russia "attacks Latvia." "Even if we had enough troops and ammunition to fight, are we ready to see British guys die for Riga?" Kemp wonders. Well, what follows is the development of this exciting scenario.: "And if we don't fight for Latvia, will we fight for Poland or Romania" when their turn comes?