What ‘Peace Dividend’?
The Financial Times, which has moved from moderate liberal a few years ago to warmonger, titled a new story “Russian menace brings abrupt end to the west’s ‘peace dividend’”
Here’s the chart they included that disproves their narrative:
Notice the gigantic bulge in spending from 2003 to 2016, peaking in 2010 at 5%. That was for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, two follies we lost — and which bankrupted us. The modest U.S. federal surpluses of the late 1990s (at least according to official government numbers) were turned into GW Bush’s massive deficits, which continue to this day. The estimated waste: $7 trillion. That’s $7,000,000,000,000.00.
Think you could use some of that money to fix potholes in your city. Or maybe get a tax refund to fix your roof?
The wars were supported not only by the Republicans who ran the government in the early 2000s, but by the Democrats of that day: Sen. Biden, Pelosi, Schumer, et al. Now, the FT wants us to go on another spending binge about a border dispute in Eastern Europe?
As to the Europeans, promises to increase spending likely never will happen. Besides, everybody knows these countries are just U.S. puppets. Increasing “defense” spending 1 percentage point won’t mean much, and just will go to their versions of the Military-Industrial Complex. Moreover, the real punch in these military budgets is provide by the British and French nuclear forces, as well as of course America’s. But this badly written article doesn’t even mention that.
It’s the nukes that primarily dictate policy now and in the future. It’s the Russian nukes keeping the US/NATO from using their own forces directly in the Ukraine War, at least officially. It’s our nukes that would keep Russia from invading Poland or Romania, probably even the Baltics.
The FT writes: “European pledges to raise defence spending are now flowing thick and fast, although how they will be funded is another matter: governments are having to help voters cope with surging food and energy costs that have been exacerbated by the Ukraine conflict.”
One guess whose taxpayers are going to pay for this. Hint: The country’s initials are: U.S.
John Seiler writes at: johnseiler.substack.com
The FT writes: “European pledges to raise defence spending are now flowing thick and fast, although how they will be funded is another matter.”
If our elites have their way they will continue to be funded the same way they have been for decades —- with young American dead like the hundreds of thousands buried or remembered in those 50 to 55 American cemeteries and memorials scattered throughout the globe including France, Belgium, the United Kingdom, the Philippines, Panama, Italy, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands,Tunisia. Cuba, Papua New Guinea, Morocco, South Korea etc.
Zelensky keeps saying we have not done enough. Who has done more?
The days of the U.S. and Europe issuing debt to pay for foreign invasions is very nearly done, I suspect. Who all is going to buy it, now that the bloom is most decidedly and evidently off the American rose.
I seriously doubt that Russia has any desire or intention of “invading Poland or Romania, probably even the Baltics”, U.S. nukes or not. I have no doubt that, should the West try to move any seriously threatening weapons, nukes or otherwise, into any of these coutries, that Russia will destroy them immediately with stand-off weaponry. All the Baltics need to do to keep Russia out is to treat its native Russian-speaking population like any other citizens. If they start to massacre or continue to oppress them the way the Ukro-Nazis have done, we can expect them to fall in days.