THE FUTURE OF NATO

27 July 2023

Beyond NATO membership lie the fodder and the enemy.

Europe's turn comes next - it has already started paying the price economically, with the sanctions.

Do you think Western Europe will get involved militarily? Never mind the nuclear, it doesn't have the resources to tackle a resurgent Russia, certainly not now; maybe NATO's eastern fringe would like to have a go?

American put their own boots on the ground? Certainly not! Sure about the nuclear? Not sure.

Someone asked "One more non-negotiable demand for the ceasefire talks -- the Black Sea is to become a Nato lake". I'm sure that is a NATO objective, but would Russia show up to any such talks, or maybe this doesn't matter.

Here is a metaphor for this war. When a tier1 customer orders supplies of a complicated sub-assembly from a first line supplier, it first of all clarifies the requirements and checks the capabilities and capacities of its supplier, before placing the order. 

It doesn't stop there, during execution of the order, the customer purchasing department will make regular audit inspections of the supplier's production facilities.

All this to ensure the timeliness quality and cost of deliveries.

What planning did the Pentagon undertake in its preparations of this offensive with Ukraine's political and military leadership? Can it really only be now that the Pentagon and the National Scurity Council realise that this offensive is being defeated?

To all the evidence, America's planning was woefully insufficient, while Ukraine's execution is a costly failure.

The western powers need to renew our leadership and review the whole way of working, from the goals downwards.

Of course Russia is not without its problems. Take the Prigo affair. Prigo was deeply angered at his Military Headquarters for not supplying him with the munitions he needed to defend his men.

But then you have to understand that the Ministry wanted to keep the Bahkmout "meat grinder" trap open. 

The proof of this is that though Prigo took the town, he had received no instructions to build a defensive post capture line. Indeed if you look at a map, Bahkmout lies east of the defences that the high command had been building since October.

So this dispute was caused by a conflict of objectives and a refusal to accept the strategy of the Ministry. This is what insubordination means. The result is Prigo is in exile (so it is claimed), Ukraine is having another go at Arkiomsk the former Bahkmout and Russia is having to transfer troops from Malinka to defend its latest capture.