NATO’s Betrayal of Democracy: How Europe Silences Its Populist Right

AMUSE on X ^ | 31 Aug, 2025 | @AMUSE

[MtnClimber]

Notice that it is always the left that does this. The left in the USA does it too.

[Socon-Econ]

Yet NATO nations and communist China get the trade agreements while Russia and India get the sanctions and tariffs.

[epluribus_2]

Yep, the Turkish armed forces stand ready to fight for your NATO democracies.

NATO just meant Block the Soviets. (or at least slow them down)

[delta7]

The EU is more of a threat to the US than Russia is.

[delta7]

Yet NATO nations and communist China get the trade agreements while Russia and India get the sanctions and tariffs.
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Patience, wait till this Ukie war wraps up. We will be opening up Trade and Commerce again….Russia has much of what the West needs, and many will rush into what’s left of Ukraine to grab resources ( which Vlad will control much of)

https://x.com/ArmchairW/status/1961296644017705164

“A dark theory for the evening. Let’s talk about Russian strategy in Ukraine.⬇️

Looking at developments lately, specifically: (1) the Ukrainian casualty leak showing an astronomical 1.7M KIA/MIA; and (2) the Ukrainian collapse north of Pokrovsk - I thought should revisit a dark thought I had a while ago, namely that, “maybe the killing itself is the point of all of this.”

I’ve said before that the Russians have fought an extraordinarily clean war in Ukraine, but it should be understood that there is a very legalistic shade on that assessment. They’ve killed very few civilians, and Ukrainian propagandists are perpetually beclowning themselves trying to pretend that the usual single-digit handful of injured civilians that accompany the latest attack using hundreds of standoff weapons fired into city centers (producing secondary explosions visible from outer space as military targets hidden among civilian infrastructure are destroyed with surgical precision) somehow constitute gEnOCiDe rather than some of the most well-controlled warfighting in the history of the business. There is another and far darker side to Russia’s “clean” war, however.

Let us consider the fate of the Armed Forces of Ukraine - legal combatants all, whom the Russians can and do target and kill without limit. I mentioned the casualty leak earlier, but I feel this needs to have a line drawn under it - one point seven million personnel killed or missing in action in the AFU, over the course of the war. 1.7 MILLION. Seven or eight percent of Ukraine’s prewar population, probably something like a quarter of the entire national cohort of military-aged males, dead or missing. Casualties on the scale of a genocide, sufficient to permanently cripple any postwar Ukrainian nation. Casualties multiple times that which I assessed two years ago as sufficient to shatter the AFU based on the experience of Nazi Germany.

This brings me to the Ukrainian collapse north of Pokrovsk two weeks ago, in which a run-of-the-mill Russian attack walked through twenty kilometers of Ukrainian defensive belts and into open country. The Ukrainian propagandists coped by whining about how the single most important front sector for the AFU had somehow “run out of infantry.” But did the Russians throw in a mobile reserve to collapse the front and chase the AFU back to the Dniper, despite doubtless knowing full well what was going on? No, they did not - they consolidated in the breach and awaited the inevitable, panicked Ukrainian counterattack, in which they would have the opportunity to destroy Ukraine’s remaining elite troops.

Which brings me to my conclusion. The Russians have had countless opportunities to make large advances in this war, especially recently - the Ukrainian front line is an absolute shambles and their “drone wall” tactic will falter against any serious attack. So ineffectual is the AFU that very few Russian moves at the front even face serious opposition these days, with most geolocations of Russian advances showing them already established in place and dealing with harassment by kill drones after having seized positions bloodlessly. The Russians have in fact consistently foregone breaking the front and taking swathes of ground in favor of killing the largest possible number of Ukrainian soldiers on the existing front line under the existing attritional combat dynamic.

This “tactical directive” held true even during the Battle of Sudzha-Korenevo, fought in prewar Russia. Rather than counterattacking aggressively to evict the AFU, the Russians saw the opportunity to kill gigantic numbers of Ukrainians in a trap the enemy wouldn’t be able to extract themselves from for ideological reasons, and they took it. That battle ended up being nine months of hideously lopsided butchery that broke the back of the AFU.

All of this makes observing the war more than a little maddening, but it’s a consistent pattern of behavior that begs for explanation. So here’s my theory.

The Russian government has consistently sought to end the war via peace treaty with the existing Ukrainian government, not via regime change, outright conquest, or even killing enough of that government to find a more flexible interlocutor among the Maidanites. Putin apparently wants a treaty with Zelensky. The Russians have also consistently made demands of the Ukrainian government - and its NATO sponsors - that are absolute political nonstarters for the Maidan-era regime and which that regime, by its very nature, simply cannot accept. Russian language rights, Orthodox religious rights, demilitarization, large territorial concessions which would see the AFU surrender vast urban areas without a shot fired. And yet the Russians insist, and they’re going to continue killing Ukrainian soldiers at ever-more lopsided ratios until they get their way.

Which leads me to the brutal conclusion: Putin doesn’t want to see Ukraine conquered. He’s never publicly expressed any desire for that. The consistent Russian policy is instead to see Ukraine - a “free” and “independent” Ukraine, having come to this impasse of its own sovereign will - utterly humiliated. Putin wants to make Zelensky put on a suit, come groveling to the Kremlin, and sign a treaty that will see the Maidanite government surrender its arms, disgorge huge amounts of territory, and reverse every single anti-Russian policy position it ever had. Ukrainian nationalism will be discredited overnight by the hands of those very nationalists, and the economically irrelevant, demographically shattered rump state will be sucked back into Russia’s political orbit in a matter of days.

So of course the Russians are only advancing in the most leisurely way possible. Their goal is to place the Ukrainian government into a militarily untenable situation so as to force a flamboyantly humiliating peace treaty upon them that includes large territorial concessions beyond the line of control - the ultimate Ukrainian taboo - so as to discredit Ukrainian nationalism by the hands of the very ultranationalists who took their nation to war in the first place.“

[Carry_Okie]

The EU is more of a threat to the US than Russia is.

The entire purpose of the EU was to displace the dollar with the Euro as a reserve currency. Its own failure to enforce its internal fiscal standards in nations like Greece were the downfall of that effort.

As predicted.

[Olog-hai]

It’s the EUSSR, not specifically NATO.

And in case anyone thinks otherwise, just remember that Bill Clinton handed over administration of the NATO defensive structures to the EUSSR in the 1990s.

[Worldtraveler once upon a time]

NATO has become a “progressive” and expansionist superstate, as one sees the hypocrisy of “silencing the populist right.”

"Climate change is one of the defining challenges of our times. It is a threat multiplier that impacts Allied security, both in the Euro-Atlantic area and in the Alliance's broader neighbourhood." NATO Climate Change and Security Action Plan NATIO, 14 June 2021

Environment, climate change and security NATO, 18 July 2024

"...the importance of incorporating gender perspectives in all that the Alliance does....:

Women, Peace and Security NATO, 31 October 2024

"NATO and its partners in the region share common values and a goal of working together to uphold the rules-based international order."

Relations with partners in the Indo-Pacific region NATO, 23 June 2025

All the above are NATO links. Who decides the rules in the "the rules-based international order?"

How many "gender perspectives" is NATO recognizing?

How is NATO going to "fight" climate change? With what weapons or military alliances?

But notice, in that visit and meeting with President Trump last week, European "leaders" included not just national leaders, but the leader of the EU -- itself a superstate -- and NATO, as if the United States was not a part of NATO, Rutte being somehow a lobbyist for some other entity?

[sauropod]

.

[Harpotoo]

I guess the left all over the world is suicidal as they embrace their own executioners;-)

[TexasGator]

Russian propaganda.

[Worldtraveler once upon a time]

--- "Russian propaganda."

Everywhere one looks.... Here's some additional "Russian propaganda" for discussion and debate.

"The EU will gradually and effectively stop the import of Russian gas and oil by the end of 2027, under a legislative proposal put forward by the European Commission today. "

Commission proposes gradual phase-out of Russian gas and oil imports into the EU European Commisson, 16 June 2025.

"These are the areas where economic ties with Russia remain the strongest, for the US and Europe respectively."

The US and Europe are still doing billions of dollars’ worth of business with Russia despite years of war CNN, 14 August 2025.

As to the source of "Russian propaganda" on X --

Armchair Warlord
@ArmchairW
Weaboo, author and battle theorist. Interactions are not endorsements.
United States
Joined March 2014

In March this American "Russian propagandist" wrote in part, "Turns out all the economic benefits from neoliberal 'free' trade were actually going to middlemen."

An interesting assertion. Middlemen everywhere will not be pleased.

As Smedley Butler, United States Marine Corps major general and two-time Medal of Honor recipient, wrote, "war is a racket." For all concerned.

[Uncle Miltie]

I will actively oppose the use of American troops to support countries that restrict speech or lock up their political opposition.

[delta7]

Its own failure
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Their failures were many, cumulative. Allowing member nations to individually add to their debt resulted in a debt spiral. Most all now carry 100 percent plus ( Germany was in best shape, now in major Recession) debt to a shrinking GDP….debt unsustainable, illegal immigration unsustainable, social programs unsustainable, tax revenues unsustainable, no resources or anything of “ value”, then the death blow, their war with Russia.

Suicide, Fools.

[Carry_Okie]

I see the lack of fiscal restraint as primary, in that it would have otherwise constrained so may of the other profligate behaviors you cited.

[GBA]

“Any organization, any group of people that is not exclusively, explicitly conservative every day will eventually become liberal.”
Rush Limbaugh
December 13, 2020 ·

[delta7]

I see the lack of fiscal restraint as primary
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The U.S. measured by debt ( $37 trillion- 128 percent of GDP) is the leader in debt……next up on the chopping block?

[delta7]

“ This “tactical directive” held true even during the Battle of Sudzha-Korenevo, fought in prewar Russia. Rather than counterattacking aggressively to evict the AFU, the Russians saw the opportunity to kill gigantic numbers of Ukrainians in a trap the enemy wouldn’t be able to extract themselves from for ideological reasons, and they took it. That battle ended up being nine months of hideously lopsided butchery that broke the back of the AFU.”
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Some of us followed closely when this war started back in 2014, Ivan slaughtered the Ukies, refraining from gaining territory but instead drawing them in for a massacre…..just as we are witnessing today.

[TexasGator]

“Some of us followed closely when this war started back in 2014, Ivan slaughtered the Ukies, refraining from gaining territory but instead drawing them in for a massacre…..just as we are witnessing today.”

UNREAL! You are actually speaking about the evils of Mother Russia.

If Putin sees this no more checks for you!