What Good Is A NATO-Trained Army?

A bunch of NATO materiel wasted in the fields of Ukraine. God be with the poor souls inside

NATO is openly training and equipping the Ukraine Army as if that’s a good thing. It’s not. Every US/NATO trained army for nearly 70 years has collapsed or lost half their country. What makes you think Ukraine is going to be any different? As Henry Kissinger said, “it’s dangerous to be America’s enemy, but fatal to be America’s friend”. Just ask South Vietnam (collapsed), South Korea (divided), Iraq (collapsed and barely re-formed), Afghanistan (collapsed), et cetera, ad nauseam . With friends like NATO, who needs enemies?

NATO’s bread and butter is bombing the shit out of poor people with no air cover, not fighting a land-war against an industrialized nation. NATO has also somehow lost its last 20 year war against poor people with no air cover (in Afghanistan). America’s great imperial innovation is making money by losing wars. As a result they’ve developed highly complex and bloated weapons systems that get defeated by dudes in Toyota Hiluxes. These are Ukraine’s ‘allies’.

Note that I’ll use NATO and America interchangeably because the structure is effectively America and its subservient vassals. The whole thing is one centuries old White Empire that just changes capitals (US instead of UK) and words (fighting ‘authoritarians’ instead of savages). To understand the nature of control within this Empire, just look at how it operates. America bombs infrastructure in NATO ‘partners’ like Germany, showing you how much power they actually have. Australian citizens don’t even have the right to know if nuclear submarines are parked there. Most NATO ‘members’ are effectively (and literally) occupied by American troops. Their vassal duty is to show up for whatever fight America gets into, or get their heads on pikes (like when they couped Australia).

As Professor Richard Sakwa wrote (via), “NATO exists to manage the risks created by its existence.” Hence the White Empire creates terrorist organizations like ISIS, they are the war in the Middle East, and they are behaving aggressively towards China and Russia (who have had the temerity to place their country close to American military bases!). War is a force that gives the White Empire meaning, and it’s increasingly a farce. As we can see in Ukraine.

The fact is that for all its size, NATO cannot win actual wars. They can beat up poor countries and bomb people without air forces, they can enforce sieges (new word: sanctions) on poor countries for generations, but they simply cannot pick on someone their own size, ie Russia. Or China. Certainly not right on those countries’ borders. In Ukraine NATO materiel is getting chewed up and NATO is fundamentally too cowardly to put boots on the ground. They just release wunderwaffen after wunderwaffen which their idiot populations cheer for (HIMARS! Patriot Missiles! Leopard Tanks!) like they’re new toys on a Saturday morning cartoon. Every imperial war is like Paw Patrol for adults, and they keep falling for it like this time it’s going to be different. Why would it? Is it? It’s not.

The fact is that for all its size, NATO cannot win actual wars. They can beat up poor countries and bomb people without air forces, they can enforce sieges (new word: sanctions) on poor countries for generations, but they simply cannot pick on someone their own size, ie Russia. Or China. Certainly not right on those countries’ borders. In Ukraine NATO materiel is getting chewed up and NATO is fundamentally too cowardly to put boots on the ground.

People like Erik Kramer and Paul Schneider are training the Ukraine military, and they say:

This sounds nice, but when has history ever shown a NATO/US trained army winning? They just lost to the fucking Taliban. Why should anyone understand that western training will lead to battlefield victory? It’s just leads to Lockheed Martin and Raytheon’s stock price going up while your country turns into rubble. That’s all that history shows. Even after losing every war for generations, these ghouls still bluster about how great they are. They’re just not. Look at their results.

As Ukraine’s counter-offensive takes hideous losses for no gains, western observers (those Saturday morning cereal crunchers) are saying they could do better, but when have they ever had to? As Simplicius The Thinker writes:
Further, I saw many claims from Western ex-military personnel on social media who claim that NATO armies would never use such tactics, and that the first thing they’re taught is to never bunch up, etc, etc. The problem here is: no one in NATO has ever had to navigate such a highly contested environment, not only from the standpoint of not having air dominance/superiority/support, but even having to actually work through minefields like these in a contested environment with large maneuver formations. Name me a single battle or conflict where a NATO force had to work through such scenarios as what AFU was up against yesterday?

This is all to say that, a ‘textbook’ method of “properly” negotiating such conditions simply does not exist. There is no “proper” way to do it because no one has ever successfully done it before. A single roadside I.E.D. in Baghdad is nothing compared to what the AFU is up against here. So when people ask how can Ukraine improve: it can’t, because true modern theory for defeating such defenses doesn’t exist, particularly not for an army that’s up against an opponent who exponentially outnumbers and overmatches them in every weapons system.

The fact is, when it comes to this sort of hyper-industrialized, technological-hellscape trench/tank warfare, Ukraine should be training NATO. They’re the ones in a street fight while NATO is giving them karate lessons from the back of a comic book. NATO is also fundamentally cowardly because they don’t actually show up. They just give Ukraine very expensive rope to hang themselves with, both destroying and indebting the country for generations. Meanwhile what Ukraine actually needs is air cover and manpower, but all they get are used, disposable toys for their men to burn to death inside of. As that honest war criminal Kissinger said, it’s fatal to be America’s friend. As with every other proxy state, the people of Ukraine are bitterly finding this out.

Personally, I’m 40 years old and it still shocks me that people still act like America and NATO are actually good militaries. They’re expensive militaries, but that’s not the same thing as functional. It’s actually the opposite. That expensiveness is really a measure of how corrupt and bloated they are. How are bullies that beat up poor, defenseless people going to train anyone to fight a conventional military? How are bullies that lose to poor people brazen enough to take this show on the road? Why does anyone take this training at all?

The reason is that they get in on the corruption. Ukraine was highly corrupt before (as the western press used to report on) and a few people are getting wildly rich from these arms dealers. All of these ghouls make more money when the arms are destroyed on the battlefield. In classic divide and conquer, the White Empire creates a rapacious local elite that profits from destroying their own countries. Negotiation, in this context, is just bad business. Why stop the gravy train, even if it’s full of human blood? Remember, the modern imperial innovation is making money by losing wars. That’s the core ‘lesson’ that NATO teaches. It’s not a good one.

 Tagged USA, War, Ukraine, Russia, Politics

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Indi Samarajiva is a writer in Colombo, Sri Lanka. ( http://indi.ca.).  INDI.CA TELLs IT LIKE IT IS.