{"id":282469,"date":"2024-02-26T08:15:18","date_gmt":"2024-02-26T08:15:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=282469"},"modified":"2024-02-28T08:26:14","modified_gmt":"2024-02-28T08:26:14","slug":"fire-jens-stoltenberg-now-before-it-is-too-late","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=282469","title":{"rendered":"Fire Jens Stoltenberg now before it is too late"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stephen Bryen \u2013 Asia Times Feb 25, 2024<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Jens Stoltenberg, a former Norwegian Prime Minister and now Secretary General of NATO should be fired now, before it is too late. He\u00a0announced he is giving Ukraine \u201cpermission\u201d<\/a>\u00a0to use its soon to be delivered F-16s to launch attacks inside Russia.<\/p>\n

This is equivalent to a NATO declaration of war. It is an irrational and dangerous move that needs to be quashed as soon as possible.<\/p>\n

Not only is Stoltenberg an uber hawk, but he totally misunderstands NATO\u2019s purpose.\u00a0 If he is allowed to stay in office, he will lead NATO into a European war that might well include nuclear weapons.\u00a0Above all, Stoltenberg doesn\u2019t grasp that NATO is a defensive, not an offensive, alliance.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Ukrainian tanks and armoured vehicles disabled and\/or destroyed in the recent Ukrainian counteroffensive. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n

NATO has been drifting in the wrong direction for years.\u00a0 It has got involved in wars outside of NATO\u2019s defensive domain, based on a rude sort of politics that gratifies the US and Europe\u2019s otherwise inert and short sighted leaders.\u00a0These wars, that now include Ukraine, are draining NATO\u2019s defenses and weakening the core responsibility of the alliance, which is to protect the territory of its members.<\/p>\n

There are no provisions in the NATO Treaty authorizing offensive, outside-the-boundary operations.<\/p>\n

Now the\u00a0Russians are saying<\/a>\u00a0that many of the so-called \u201cmercenaries\u201d in Ukraine are, in fact, highly trained NATO soldiers.\u00a0They wear Ukrainian uniforms with national patches identifying them.\u00a0They are \u201cnecessary\u201d to operate the high tech weapons NATO has sent to Ukraine.\u00a0When the Russians recently took over Avdiivka they found\u00a0bodies of\u00a0 these mercenaries<\/a>, some American and some Poles.<\/p>\n

Earlier, they killed at least 60 French mercenaries in a hotel in Kharkiv.<\/p>\n

The French\u00a0denounced the attack<\/a>\u00a0saying it was disinformation.\u00a0But the French also called in the Russian ambassador\u00a0to complain about French deaths<\/a>\u00a0in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

The Ukraine war is being rapidly turned into a NATO war, not only through the supply of intelligence, troop training and armaments, but the supply of experienced technicians.\u00a0It is simply impossible for Ukraine to operate air defense systems such as Patriot and NASAMs, rocket launching systems like HIMARS, or support British and French Storm Shadow cruise missiles, without considerable outside assistance.<\/p>\n

Most of the deaths of NATO personnel are covered up.\u00a0When they are reported at all, they generally say that the \u201cvolunteer\u201d was providing medical assistance.<\/p>\n

Now the Russians are starting to believe that the F-16s delivered to Ukraine (probably operational by early summer) will be operated by NATO pilots.<\/p>\n

The Russians make this claim based on their own past performance.\u00a0 Russia\u00a0dressed their pilots up in Chinese outfits<\/a>\u00a0to fly Mig-15s in the Korean war.\u00a0In the war of attrition in 1970 between Egypt and Israel,\u00a0Russian pilots flew missions<\/a>, sometimes openly (as only Russians could fly the Mig-25) and sometimes pretending they were Egyptian pilots.<\/p>\n

It is extremely dangerous to use NATO pilots in Ukraine.\u00a0But now Stoltenberg has \u201cgiven permission\u201d to Ukraine to fly its F-16s over Russian territory.\u00a0The war has\u00a0already been expanded\u00a0<\/a>with NATO-made drones, cruise missiles and rockets attacking targets in Russia.\u00a0 Adding the F-16 is a qualitative expansion because F-16s can attack Russian cities.<\/p>\n

Russia won\u2019t content itself trying to shoot down F-16s flown in the name of Ukraine.\u00a0 They will, certainly, attack Ukrainian air fields (in fact\u00a0they already are doing so<\/a>).\u00a0But will it stop there?\u00a0Probably not: Russia will interpret the F-16s flying over its territory as a declaration of war against Russia, in fact Russia\u00a0already is saying so.<\/a><\/p>\n

The F-16 is an excellent aircraft, but the planes Ukraine is getting are around 20 years old and are not really front line. That\u2019s why the countries supplying them have moved on. While they can be upgraded with newer weapons, better fire control computers, and maybe even better radars, they are not survivable against Russian air defenses and top of the line Russian aircraft such as the Su-35.\u00a0 Flying them over Russia is, therefore, only a provocation likely to result in a wider war spreading to Europe.<\/p>\n

NATO has been playing chicken with Russia for some time, especially by supplying long range systems to Ukraine\u2019s army.\u00a0There is hardly any military justification, since harassing Russia only can lead to escalation and mostly does not strengthen Ukraine\u2019s army, which is increasingly short of manpower and ammunition.<\/p>\n

Zelensky probably hopes that he will be saved by a NATO intervention.\u00a0But from Russia\u2019s perspective, NATO has already intervened and things can only get worse.<\/p>\n

It is not clear who, if anyone, told Stoltenberg to make such a reckless statement about the\u00a0use of the F-16. What is clear is that the \u201cpermission\u201d should be withdrawn and Stoltenberg fired.<\/p>\n

Stephen Bryen served as staff director of the Near East Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee\u00a0and as a deputy undersecretary of defense for policy.<\/em>\u00a0This article<\/a>\u00a0was first published on his\u00a0Weapons and Strategy\u00a0Substack.<\/em><\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Under Stoltenberg\u2019s auspices, Ukraine has enlisted many Western mercenaries. However, Moscow claims many of them are in fact highly trained professional soldiers from France, Poland or the U.S. Now Russia says that NATO pilots will also fly the soon-to-be-delivered F-16s. If that happens Moscow will be ready to declare war on NATO <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[91,116],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-282469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-russia","category-ukraine"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=282469"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282469\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":282472,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282469\/revisions\/282472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=282469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=282469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=282469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}