Category Archives: NATO

Britain, Europe, NATO, Russia, Ukraine, United States

Is Putin a drowning man?

PUTIN’S WAR IN UKRAINE

Intro: The paranoid dictator has built an impenetrable echo chamber around himself, within which he is told only what he wants to hear

Vladimir Putin’s war to subjugate Ukraine is going from bad to worse for the Russian tyrant.

Originally billed as a three-day “special military operation”, it is now in its fifth year, longer than Russia fought in World War One, and longer than the Soviet Union took to repel then defeat Nazi Germany in World War Two.

Nor is there any end in sight as Putin faces yet another summer of setbacks. The Russian military has long ceased to make any territorial gains in Ukraine and the human toil continues to mount.

British intelligence estimates Russian war deaths at half a million. At least another half a million have suffered horrible, life-changing injuries.

Putin is running out of manpower to replace casualties of over a million. His military is being forced to offer enlistment bonuses of up £60,000.

This sounds like a lot of money to most young Russians – until they discover that the average life expectancy of a new recruit once deployed – after training – on certain sections of the frontline is between just 20 and 35 minutes.

Putin is being forced to consider conscription. But that would make an unpopular war even more disliked.

Ukraine has fanned the war’s unpopularity by taking it to Russia’s home front. Increasingly sophisticated, long-range, lethal drone strikes have hit oil refineries, arms factories and other critical infrastructure deep inside Russian territory. They even managed to cripple an oil refinery in Siberia – 1,200 miles from the Ukrainian frontline.

Almost a third of Russia’s oil-refining capacity has been put out of service, some of it for a long time. Fuel depots have also been destroyed. As a result, there are now fuel shortages in more than a dozen regions across the country, even in Moscow (normally shielded from such inconveniences), where bad-tempered drivers are queuing ever longer for fuel.

There are now plans to import gasoline, quite an embarrassment for a country which pumps out 9 million barrels of crude oil a day.

It’s even worse in Crimea, which Putin annexed from Ukraine in 2014. The peninsula is home to a massive Russian military presence, a vital bridgehead supplying Russian forces on the frontline.

But a relentless series of Ukrainian strikes using new, more powerful, semi-autonomous drones on roads, bridges, railways and ferries has effectively isolated Crimea from Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine.

The drones stalk petrol tankers and military vehicles travelling on the main highways in and out of Crimea. Unsurprisingly, freight traffic has collapsed. The ferries have stopped. Fuel is scarce. And blackouts are common. Russia has even had to remove its powerful Black Sea fleet from Crimea to put it out of harm’s way. Quite the humiliation, since Ukraine doesn’t even have a navy.

It’s not clear how much Putin knows about any of this. The paranoid dictator has built an impenetrable echo chamber around himself, within which he is told only what he wants to hear.

It is populated by a mixture of senior military lackeys and old cronies from his KGB days. Bad news, they have easily worked out, isn’t a career-enhancing move. So they don’t give him any. They even produce a specially sanitised, bespoke version of the news for his delectation.

Stuck in this vortex of disinformation and downright lies, Putin often doesn’t have a clue what’s actually going on.

But even he couldn’t ignore the ominous dark clouds of burning oil over the Moscow sky some days ago, nor the black rain falling across the capital.

Ukrainian drones had struck the city’s main oil refinery again, this time putting it out of action for maybe 18 months and ensuring fuel shortages will remain a daily reality. Another humiliation, given Moscow has some of the best air defences in the world. Putin’s response was to retaliate.

He unleashed more than 70 missiles and almost 500 drones on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities, killing at least 21 and wounding 85 in the capital alone.

The death toll will rise as rescuers rake through the rubble of some 20 residential blocks. It’s a gruesome business, but Putin is in no mood for peace.

His echo chamber is still telling him he can win – and nobody is within his earshot to gainsay or contradict that.

There are still more than 700,000 Russian troops massed in eastern Ukraine, maintaining deadly pressure on Ukraine’s fortress belt in Donbas which, if it were to fall, would put the whole country in peril.

Certainly, Russia has far more shells to fire than Ukraine and can deploy swathes of missiles and hundreds of guided bombs a day on a scale Ukraine cannot come near matching.

And frontline reports from battle-hardened Ukrainian soldiers who are aware of Russia’s suffering and setbacks, are reporting that there is still no sign of its forces collapsing.

Putin is being told all that – and more. But the home front continues to deteriorate. The initial war-driven stimulus is petering out: the economy grew by only one per cent last year, it will be less than that this year.

Unemployment remains very low. But that merely reflects the loss of so many lives on the battlefield and the fact so many other young folk have fled the country to escape military service.

Inflation and interest rates are cripplingly high. The national debt and the annual budget deficit were in fine fettle when the war started. But while the debt is still low, budget deficits are rising fast as defence devours almost 10 per cent of GDP (and half of all state spending). The national wealth fund, which has been pillaged to pay for the war, has run out of liquid assets to finance it.

More than 60 per cent of Russians now think economic conditions are worsening, and 56 per cent believe that the war is hitting their living standards.

Concerns about a deteriorating economy are adding to the growing anti-war mood. Public opinion is clearly souring on Putin’s “special military operation”.

Dictators, of course, don’t have to bother about public opinion – at least not for a while. But there’s always the risk they will do something stupid.  

You might think that a stalemate with no end in sight and an increasingly restless populace would encourage Putin to call for a ceasefire and sue for peace. Donald Trump, after all, has said he can keep all his ill-gotten gains in eastern Ukraine in any peace deal and can look forward to all manner of lucrative Trump-inspired business deals. 

Putin is just as likely, though, to double down and strike elsewhere to deflect attention from Ukraine and rouse Russian patriotism. The Kremlin is already waging extensive cyber and hybrid warfare against the Western democracies, including Britain.

That could be ramped up, creating various crises and confrontations on the way, keeping Ukraine out of the headlines.

More seriously, Putin could threaten Poland or the Baltic states or even Scandinavia, contriving a small-scale incursion to test NATO’s resolve.

The timing would be propitious for him: NATO has never looked more fragile, thanks to Trump’s hostility to the European democracies and his penchant for dictators like Putin.

The Trump administration has already cancelled the deployment of an armoured brigade to Poland and withdrawn an infantry brigade from Romania.

Pete Hegseth, the blowhard US defence secretary whose animosity to Europe knows no bounds, is reviewing what further US troop withdrawals should follow. He wants to move quickly.

Nothing is more likely to embolden Putin to seek a way out of his Ukrainian troubles than a show of weakness on NATO’s flank.

One expert has likened it to “drowning man” syndrome – the desperate measures a struggling swimmer will take to keep afloat, even pushing others under water to stay alive.

Thanks, then, to the resolve and bravery of the Ukrainian people, Putin is that drowning man.

The NATO allies have the resources and determination not to be pushed under by him.

If they stay resolute and united he will eventually sink to the bottom – if only President Trump didn’t keep indicating he’s minded to throw him a lifebelt.

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Britain, Defence, Europe, Military, NATO, United States

Without the US, can NATO survive?

NATO ALLIANCE

Intro: If Trump follows through on his threat to pull out of the alliance, the West will face its most profound crisis in 80 years

For eight decades, NATO has weathered internal disputes, enemy plots, and shooting wars in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan. America’s departure of this historic alliance would be the biggest divorce in history.

If Donald Trump acts on his threat to finally pull the US out of NATO – having said publicly that he is “strongly considering pulling out” after allies failed to join his war on Iran – the transatlantic family will be torn asunder.

At which point, the club that calls itself the most successful alliance in history may as well close its doors.

And the pain could match that of the most acrimonious of break-ups.

The numbers are stark enough: the United States alone accounts for more than 60 per cent of NATO’s total defence spending and provides the bulk of the alliance’s firepower, particularly at sea, in the air, and in nuclear deterrence.

The US has 1.3 million active military personnel – a full million more than Turkey, the next largest NATO force.

The United States is, however, not simply the largest and richest member of the club. It is the linchpin, the tent pole around which the entire edifice has been constructed.

It has logistical capacities in airlift and shipping, as well as satellite and signals intelligence, that other NATO allies rely on to get them into battle and help them fight. And it has always provided the leadership that has kept the alliance together.

Europe

The most profound threat would be for European members, the primary beneficiaries of the Article 5 promise that “an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all”.

For the first time in 80 years, they would have to face Russia shorn of that basic security guarantee, even as war rages on the continent.

Trump allows other NATO countries to requisition US kit for Ukraine via a programme called The Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List, but has curtailed direct US military aid to Kyiv.

Nonetheless, Moscow has not doubted the seriousness of the NATO alliance. For four years, it has avoided risking a direct confrontation with NATO powers, to the point of refusing (for the most part) to bomb the airbases and railway depots in Poland that supply Ukraine.

But remove American conventional and nuclear power from the equation, and the risks of doing so suddenly look much more palatable. Vladimir Putin has long made the destruction of NATO and creation what he calls a “new European security architecture” one of his dearest and cherished ambitions.  

That does not make a direct Russian attack on Europe inevitable, should the US abandon the alliance. But the chances of Putin taking a gamble would increase substantially.

Greenland and Canada

Quitting the alliance would not only absolve Trump of the obligation to come to allies’ defence. It also opens the way – at least in theory – to one would-be former ally attacking another, a scenario NATO itself would never have been able to survive.

Canada, in particular, would face difficult new realities. Trump, who has ordered attacks across 13 countries since he returned to the White House, has coveted their country (a NATO founding member) as a future “51st state”. Suddenly uncoupled from its enormous neighbour and security partner, Ottawa would no longer live with the certainty that North America is a safe and secure home.

War is perhaps most likely in Greenland. In recent weeks, it emerged that the Danish military had secretly prepared to repel a possible American assault on the island amid repeated threats from Trump to annex it.

Troops were equipped and ordered to blow up key runways and even flew in blood bags to simulate treating the wounded from the anticipated battle.

These nightmarish prospects present serious dilemmas for Canada and Denmark’s remaining allies.

Would Britain, France, and Germany send troops and ships to fight off an American invasion? Or out of dependence on and fear of American might, would they turn their backs? Leaders in Britain will be praying that they never have to make such a choice.

Everything from Britain’s nuclear missiles, which must be serviced at American facilities, to GCHQ’s signals intelligence network, which overlaps with the US National Security Agency, is enmeshed in the apparatus of the US security system.

America

Like any major break up, the pain would not be one way. America, too, would suffer.

Since its founding, NATO has allowed the US to project power globally. US airbases in Britian and Germany, for example, are currently being used for American operations against Iran.

NATO states also house and accommodate American early warning systems. It is the UK and Norway, for example, whom the United States relies on to keep an eye on Russia’s nuclear missile submarines operating out of Kola Peninsula and the Barents Sea. And while some NATO members – France, Spain, and Italy – may have baulked at the war with Iran, the alliance has proved vital in other US-led engagements.

Its member states joined the Americans in ending the Serbian genocide in Kosovo in 1999, for example, and in the 20-year campaign in Afghanistan. Many also showed up for both the first and second Gulf Wars.

If the United States does find itself embroiled in the much feared and potentially epochal war with China in the Pacific, such former allies will be missed.

The consequences

For these reasons, and the fact that Trump cannot withdraw from NATO without approval of a two-thirds Senate majority or an act of Congress, it is possible the worst fears about transatlantic relations may not come to pass. Indeed, even in a future without the formal North Atlantic alliance, American will need allies and to maintain bilateral ties.

And since Trump’s public doubts about NATO and his threats against Greenland have already undermined the deterrent power of Article 5, perhaps losing it altogether would not do much more damage.

Conventional defence spending in Europe is already rapidly increasing, especially in the east and north of the continent. No sensible Russian general is likely to believe a fight with Poland would be a walk in the park.

Although small compared with America’s, Britain’s nuclear arsenal, which, unlike the French one, is committed to the defence of NATO, is potent enough to act as a serious deterrent. The UK would, however, have to develop a domestic delivery system if it is to eventually wean itself off dependence on US Trident missiles.

There is also the suggestion that the alliance could continue in some form, even shorn of the US. Trump’s repeated attacks on the alliance have already prompted some British and European strategists to think about how to preserve it without America.

The remaining allies could, for example, retain the North Atlantic Council, NATO’s main decision-making body, and the mutual defence clause.

Perhaps, then, there is a very narrow but plausible path to enduring a divorce and not suffering too greatly.

But should Trump or another incumbent president come to see Canada and Europe as enemies, the world will change profoundly.

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Britain, Europe, Greenland, NATO, Society, United States

Society as we know it must change if NATO is to survive

SOCIETY

Intro: Western societies have grown comfortable assuming that security, prosperity, and peace are the norm. They are not

The stand-off over Greenland has, for now, been defused. Donald Trump has withdrawn his threats of military action and tariffs. There is now an agreed framework for talks. Europeans, including Britons, should be relieved but not reassured. The deal is not done. More turbulence seems certain to lie ahead. The biggest winners in this disruption are not in Washington, let alone Europe, but in Moscow and Beijing.

For weeks, the world has been transfixed as America threatened a NATO ally over an Arctic territory that many struggle to locate on a map. That might have been “Art of the Deal” pressure and not a determination to be the president who acquired a 51st state, but it will have confirmed for Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping that Westen unity is brittle, that transactional pressure works, and even old alliances can be destabilised.

The strategic logic for Trump’s agenda is real. The Arctic is no longer a frozen periphery. Climate change is opening new shipping routes and exposing vast mineral deposits. Russia has militarised its northern coastline with submarine bases, icebreakers, and hypersonic missiles. China, despite having no Arctic territory, has declared itself a near-Arctic state and invested heavily in infrastructure and resources. Greenland sits at the intersection of these ambitions and astride the Golden Dome missile defence coverage.

The Arctic has always mattered to Britian. Our defence posture is northern-oriented, shaped by the Cold War imperative of protecting the Atlantic sea lanes to North America. That has not diminished but intensified as undersea energy and data cables have become critical to the modern economy. Our submarine patrols, maritime patrol aircraft, and our commitment to NATO’s northern flank all reflect this reality. The UK Commando Force will be in Norway shortly for their winter deployment – a tangible reminder that, for Britain, the High North is not a distant theatre but increasingly our strategic front line.

Greenland and Canada now sit on that front line too. Mark Carney’s call at the World Economic Forum in Davos for “middle powers” to collaborate more closely was not abstract multiculturalism but a recognition that the post-Cold War security architecture is fracturing. Countries like Britain, Canada, the Nordic nations, and others must build new coalitions. These will require substance – they need capability, capacity, and credibility.

For decades, we have relied on America’s military dominance to underwrite our security. Notwithstanding our sacrifices for American security in Iraq and Afghanistan, that guarantee can longer be assumed. The United States might be unwilling (isolationist sentiment is rising) or even unable to provide it (for example, were a crisis in the Euro-Atlantic to coincide with one in the Pacific). Shorn of its rhetoric, the Trump administration’s recently published national security strategy reflects priorities that any US administration would recognise: homeland security, the western hemisphere, China and the Middle East before the Euro-Atlantic.

Europe has committed to increasing defence expenditure over the next decade. Away from the eastern front line, those commitments are not yet backed by credible capability plans. Fragmentation is an issue. Europe operates 17 types of main battle tank; America has one. We have 20 different fighter jets; they have six. We have 29 classes of destroyers and frigates; they have four. Every variant means separate supply chains, training regimes, and maintenance.

Integration is not just about efficiency but credibility. An alliance that cannot operate as a coherent force will not deter a determined adversary. Putin has watched European defence debates for years and calculated – correctly so far – that we lack the collective will to match our rhetoric. European NATO must therefore accelerate defence investment, military interoperability, and defence industrial integration. Not as an alternative to NATO, but to reinforce NATO.

Political leaders must educate voters about the world we now inhabit. Western cohesion is brittle. The post-Cold War peace dividend has been spent. The threats are real and growing and the choices are hard: Europe spends 10-times more on welfare than on defence. No modern politician has dared echo John Kennedy’s “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country”. Someone will have to try.

These choices are not just about bigger budgets, they demand a broader reshaping of national resilience: how we protect critical infrastructure, secure supply chains, educate engineers and strategists, and prepare communities for disruption. During the Cold War, civil defence was a shared civic responsibility. We need a modern equivalent – not bunkers and drills but resilient energy systems, domestic manufacturing capacity, cyber literacy, and a citizenry that understands the strategic environment and can respond to crises from floods to hybrid warfare.

This isn’t about sacrifice. It’s about engagement. Higher educational establishments must train the technical talent and conduct the research that underpins resilience. Businesses must rebuild strategic capabilities. Local authorities must prepare for infrastructure disruption. And citizens must understand that security is not something government provides while we go about our lives – it is something we build together.

Darwin saw that it is not the strongest or smartest who survive but the most adaptable. The West has grown comfortable assuming that security, prosperity, and peace are the norm. They are not. They require constant effort. The Greenland episode has been a crisis. It must now become a catalyst. Europe has had its wake-up call.

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