What NATO learned in Ukraine

Apparently, they did not learn anything at all - straight out of the horse's mouth!

Last week I had the dubious privilege of attending a presentation by the former US Ambassador to NATO, Kurt Volker. His talk was (mis)titled: "Russia's war on Ukraine: what have we learned?" which did elicit my interest. Volker is also the President of Alliance Strategic Advisors LLC and had a role as a Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations. Interestingly, earlier in his career Volker had also worked for Britain’s Defence Minister, George Robertson.

But his presentation didn't really cover anything "they" learned from Russia's war on Ukraine. Instead, it was a rehash of all the talking points we have heard in the mainstream an infinite number of times: Ukraine must win, Russia bad, freedom, democracy, human rights and so forth. It sounded exactly like they did not learn anything at all.

Framing the thinking on Ukraine

Volker was probably the source of many of the western talking points on Ukraine and Russia. During the last six years of his involvement, he was "involved in trying to frame the thinking" about the project (words in quotations are Volker’s own formulations). A few weeks ago, Joe Biden stated that Ukraine successfully recaptured half of the territory it had initially lost to Russia and Volker said that same thing during his presentation, which made me think that he may have "framed" that talking point as well.

As the news from Ukraine hasn’t been great lately, he warned against getting "bogged down in day-to-day news" about the war and that the most important thing is that Ukraine “survived as a sovereign, independent European democracy.” Volker repeated that same phrase in italics several times during his talk.

He explained that Ukrainian forces are no longer trying to recapture lost territory, but are instead focusing on long-range precision strikes against Russian targets, since this is a capability in which Ukraine apparently has an advantage over Russia. Also, Russia is (still) running out of missiles and ammunition (it has been running out since at least March 2022) and is facing all sorts of challenges in Ukraine: the troops' morale is low, their leadership and command is poor, and their operations are shoddy. Meanwhile, the Ukrainians are defending their homes and their freedoms so they are better motivated than the Russians.

The war must continue…

Indeed, Volker said that Ukraine has "the largest, best trained, best equipped, battle hardened army in Europe". Well, Ukraine did have the largest, best trained, best equipped army in Europe before February 2022. By today it's been almost completely destroyed and rather than battle hardened, it has now been battle ruined. 

With regards to the future, Volker did say a few interesting things: 

• No normalization: the relationship between Russia and the West will not go back to normal after the war.

• The war will continue: it must because, if Russia's imperial purposes were to succeed, this would be the signal to other despotic regimes that they could expand their territory at their neighbours' expense. For example, China might take Taiwan and therefore, "we must act," and "we all have a stake in this..." Continuing the funding for Ukraine project is a challenge due to US politics, but European Union will step up and drastically increase its aid for Ukraine.

• Strategic pivot to the Black Sea: the west's strategic thinking is turning toward the general area of the Black Sea. Volker said it was an area that deserved attention and that no one in the West has thought in those terms before. NATO's priorities will include securing freedom of navigation in the Black Sea and ensuring safety of commercial vessels, cargos and their crews.

• It's all about the model of governance: to my mind, this may have been the most important thing Volker said all evening, confirming what George Soros had said in 2021 while addressing the WEF gathering in Davos. Ultimately, the conflict unfolding in the world today is about "the nature of governance." Soros said it was open societies vs. closed societies. Volker framed it as a conflict between authoritarian regimes and democracies. The difference, according to him is that authoritarian regimes treat people as subjects while democracies treat them as citizens. It’s all about the people being able to change their leadership and the course of their  nations' development. Ultimately, it’s down to our values.

We are immensely fortunate in the west that the people in power are so fiercely determined to defend our right to remove them from power that they never hesitate to wage war against other nations to ensure those people have that same right, even at risk of nuclear armageddon. Such values!

Apart from its content, Volker's presentation was packed, well delivered and engaging. However, it all deteriorated during the Q&A session. I had raised my hand to ask a question immediately after his speech, but somehow ended up fourth in line for the microphone. He took three friendly questions to which gave very long, slow, rambling answers with many pauses that seemed like he was thinking what more he could toss into the word salad to drag it out as much as possible.

The question I didn’t get to ask

Because Prince Albert was also in the audience, and Volker was his guest in the Principality, I was not going to embarrass Volker with anything confrontational (I’m not keen on getting kicked out of Monaco), so I jotted down the following question for him:

Recently, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock announced that Germany would drastically increase her aid to Ukraine. Right after that we had a confirmation that Ukraine was responsible for the destruction of Nord Stream pipelines, which was very important industrial infrastructure for the German economy. Could this revelation jeopardize German support for Ukraine and if it does, what is the plan B?

Of course, nobody buys the Mickey Mouse story about Ukrainian pirates of the Baltic who blew up the Nord Stream, but I would have enjoyed pointing to the utter nonsense of its premise: that Germany accepted this account, lodged no diplomatic protest about it, and then decided to reward Ukraine by doubling its financial and military aid. It would have been even more enjoyable hearing what Volker would conjure up in response. Unfortunately, after he’d rambled through his answer to the third friendly question, the organizers ended the sessions and invited us to join the cocktail party instead, but I wasn’t able to stay.

Nord Stream and the crafting of history

Incidentally, the case of Nord Stream gas pipelines destruction is an important example of how history is being crafted in real time. A few months ago, Seymour Hersh exposed the Mission Impossible team at the heart of Biden Administration as the culprits behind the attack. Not only did they have the opportunity, the means and the motive for the act, the impostor President even announced it at a press conference in February 2022, while standing next to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz!

Biden said that if Russia invaded Ukraine, “there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We, we will bring an end to it.” When a German journalist asked him to clarify how they would be able to do it, since it’s Germany’s infrastructure, Biden confirmed:

“We will, uh, I promise you, we’ll be able to do it.”

So, why did the CIA invent the insultingly preposterous, unlikely story that it was all a Ukrainian plot and even that the US Central Intelligence Agency sternly warned the Ukrainians not to do it since that would be just so very bad and wrong!

Stuffing the respectable sources

The reason to run the embarrassingly unconvincing account in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and all the other “respectable” media of record is that in the near future, after the memory of all these events recede into the fog of time, court historians will duly record that, in their brave but desperate struggle for democracy and freedom, Ukrainians hit at Russia’s pipelines in the Baltic. They will cite articles written by respectable journalists, published at the time by the media of record. Alternatively, they might not even mention that there ever was such a thing as Nord Stream pipelines.

Meanwhile, all articles mentioning Seymour Hersh’s account will be duly scrubbed from the internet and dumped into the memory hole. Anyone who says that the US (and the UK, which Hersh forgets to mention) were behind the destruction of Nord Stream, will be dismissed as a conspiracy loon spreading hate speech and disinformation.

The old playbook won’t work this time

At any rate, that’s the MO of the way history has been crafted for us in the West for decades, perhaps centuries. However, the truth will not fade as easily this time. It is the victors who write history and the west is losing. After the war there will be trials in which the truth about Nord Stream will emerge undeniable through legal discovery and the payback will be painful.

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

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