Europe is drilling for World War III

NATO is conducting exercises for "a broad offensive from Vilnius to Odessa" at "a scale unseen in decades."

[Originally published at I-System TrendCompass] Russia’s military victory over Ukraine has been a near-certainty for months now. Ukraine’s total defeat is only a matter of time, but as that time approaches, European powers have been increasingly determined not to let the war die and are now actively preparing to take it up where Ukraine stumbles. Our liberal democracies are as precious as they are fragile and every precaution must be taken to defend them from the Asiatic hordes gathering in the east.

While our valiant bankers are arranging to allocate trillions of euros of our children’s and grandchildren’s wealth for defense spending, our militaries are diligently exercising and preparing for war, hidden from ordinary Europeans who aren’t exactly enthused about World War 3. But the Russians have noticed: presidential aide and former National Security Adviser Nikolai Patrushev recently stated that, for a second consecutive year, NATO has been

“conducting exercises at our borders at a scale unseen in decades. … They are training for conducting a broad offensive from Vilnius to Odessa, seizing Kaliningrad region, imposing a naval blockade in the Baltic and the Black Seas and executing preventive strikes on the staging locations of Russian nuclear deterrence forces.”

If Mr. Patrushev is correct, it would appear that London, Paris, Berlin and Brussels are actively preparing for war against Russia. But his statement that the exercises are “at a scale unseen in decades,” needs to be put in context.

NATO’s provocations far predate Ukraine war

NATO has been involved in increasingly aggressive military maneuvers at Russia’s doorstep for many years now, especially after the 2014 Euromaidan coup in Kiev. During that time, NATO forces have been conducting as many as 40 major military exercises per year along Russia’s borders.

Movement of their military assets evolved from purely reconnaissance hardware to battle ready ships and aircraft equipped with precision munitions and cruise missiles which would frequently approach Russian territory to as close as 15 km (9.3 miles). On these occasions, they often activated their missiles in repeated mock attacks on Russian targets. In September 2020, chief of operations of Russia’s high command, General Sergey Rudskoi stated that NATO was staging between 33 and 40 such flight approaches per week using fighter jets from Sweden, Germany, Ukraine and Italy.

This suggests that the exercises Mr. Patrushev referred to aren’t Europe’s reaction to Russia’s aggressiveness but a continuation of policy that far predates the Ukraine war. In June 2021, still more than six months before Ukraine war, NATO’s then Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg boasted that,

“Perhaps the most important thing we have done is that for the first time in NATO’s history, we have combat-ready troops in the eastern part of the Alliance. New battle groups are deployed to the Baltic countries and Poland, we have tripled the size of the NATO readiness force.”

In a 2016 radio-interview with John Bachelor, late professor Stephen Cohen noted that,

“NATO has decided to quadruple its military forces on Russia’s borders or near Russia’s borders… The last time there was this kind of Western hostile military force on Russia’s borders was when Nazis invaded Russia in 1941. There has never been anything like this. During the 40-year Cold War there was this vast buffer zone that ran from the Soviet borders all the way to Berlin. There were no NATO or American troops there. This is a very radical departure on the part of the [Obama] administration. … Russia is not threatening any country on its border.”

$75 trillion worth of democracy and freedom

Professor Cohen was right. Russia really wasn’t threatening any of its neighbors, and no Russian leader has either explicitly or implicitly expressed any territorial pretentions against any European nation. The deranged claims that once they are done with Ukraine, the Russians will continue on to Poland, the Baltic states, Finland and then, who knows, perhaps Paris and London, are based on nothing but European leaders reckless fear mongering, aimed at justifying NATO’s continuing preparations for war.

The ultimate reason isn’t the belief that Russia will launch a medieval invasion of Europe and deprive us of our democracy and freedom, but the certain knowledge that Russia is sitting on an estimated $75 trillion of our freedom and democracy. Those precious resources are utterly wasted on the unworthy Russians. Here’s what the Iron Lady Margaret Thatcher once said (video at this link):

“If you were to make a table of countries in proportion to the natural resources they have, the top one would almost certainly be Russia. She has everything. Oil, gas, diamonds, platinum, gold, silver, all the industrial metals, marvelous standing timber, a wonderfully rich soil. But countries are not rich in proportion to their natural resources. Countries are rich whose governments have policies which encourage essential creativity, initiative and enterprise of man and recognize his desire to do better for his family.”

We can’t allow for Russia’s wealth to be wasted on Russians

Why would Ms. Thatcher even utter such a statement? What was the thinking that motivated her words which, in addition to a sense of superiority betrays a sense of envy over the riches that are being wasted on the Russians. In 1991, not long after she spoke those words, the Soviet Union collapsed, Western powers got their democratically elected puppet Boris Yeltsin into power and over the following nine years ran the greatest pirate raid ever orchestrated since the beginnings of time. As E. Wayne Merry, chief political analyst at the US Embassy in Moscow testified,

“We created a virtual open shop for thievery at a national level and for capital flight in terms of hundreds of billions of dollars, and the raping of natural resources and industries on a scale which I doubt has ever taken place in human history.”

Then, in 2000, Vladimir Putin came to power and that vampire ball came to an end. But whoever is in charge in London, Paris, Brussels and Berlin will never give up trying to take control of all that wealth from the unworthy, inferior Russians.

That’s our resources, dammit!

In their deranged minds, that wealth belongs to those “whose governments have policies which encourage essential creativity, initiative and enterprise,” of men. Ms. Thatcher must have meant the creativity, initiative and enterprise of such men as Edward Teach, Henry Avery, William Kidd, or Sir Francis Drake, or Sir Henry Morgan since the ruling establishment that she represented still upholds those real life pirates and assassins as national heroes to this day. Her establishment's hatred is only reserved for those who resist the looting, reject vassalage and defend against their colonization.

Today that establishment has faithful vassals in Europe and in NATO. The United States under Trump broke ranks for the time being, but this might only be a setback; they could get a war going anyway, forcing the US to come to their aid. After all, the Americans couldn't just stand by, leaving their faithful European allies at the mercy of the barbarous Asiatic hordes. Even if Trump resists the call of war, the war narratives could build up powerful political pressures at home. If you throw a well-timed false flag attack into that mix, it could work the same magic as it did during World War I and World War II. London may already be making the preparations, as I detailed in this report last November.

In all, the Europeans are pushing hard to give this war the chance it deserves and to escalate it to World War III. Trillions of dollars in democracy and freedom for the bankers are at stake.

Alex Krainer – @NakedHedgie is the creator of I-System Trend Following and publisher of daily TrendCompass investor reports which cover over 200 financial and commodities markets. One-month test drive is always free of charge, no jumping through hoops to cancel. To start your trial subscription, drop us an email at TrendCompass@ISystem-TF.com, or:

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