In the course of his remarkable speech to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, President Trump declared that Russia's military performance in the war in Ukraine demonstrates that Russia is not a "real military power" but, instead, a "paper tiger".
While Trump is clearly capable of holding two diametrically opposed opinions at the same time, it is difficult to reconcile this opinion with his insistence that the Russian military poses a threat to other NATO states of such an extreme magnitude that all other NATO states must massively increase their military spending (necessarily purchasing more weaponry from American merchants of death) to 5% of their GNP -- an opinion with which the "leaders" of virtually all other NATO states have, albeit with some quibbles as to the precise nature of the spending which should count toward the 5% target, at least ostensibly agreed.
While Trump and I are rarely in agreement, his new appreciation of the seriousness of the "threat" posed to other NATO states by the Russian military supports the conclusion in my February article, retransmitted below, that Russia's military performance in the war in Ukraine should permit other NATO states, many of which are facing serious budgetary problems and accompanying social unrest, "to significantly decrease their military spending and consecrate their freed-up resources to trying to improve the quality of life for their own people."
Has the World Gone Mad?
John WhitbeckFebruary 27, 2025
Photo by Nsey Benajah
Rational people should share a sense of amazement that virtually all European political “leaders” and Western professional commentators appear to view with shock and horror the possibility that the United States and Russia, the two major nuclear powers with the capacity to destroy human life, might have correct and cooperative, rather than hostile, relations.
One can understand why those financially and/or professionally invested in the for-profit Hate, Fear and War Industry, with its existential need for enemies and threats, would view a world at peace as unthinkable, but why should anyone else do so?
In my youth, the era of “détente” between the United States and the Soviet Union was widely welcomed as an excellent development.
Why should “détente” today be castigated as the ultimate evil of simple minds — “appeasement”?
Another source of rational amazement should be the apparently unanimous belief among European political “leaders” that, if relations between the United States and Russia were no longer to be hostile, so that the United States would no longer see any need for the military support of European “allies” or vassal states, European military spending would need to be significantly increased.
Why? To counter what military threat?
It should be clear that, with the possible exception of the current NATO/Russia proxy war, the wars in which European countries have become directly or indirectly involved in this century — against Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Palestine, none of which posed any conceivable threat to Europe but all of which were perceived as enemies by the United States and/or Israel — involved them because of their relationship as “allies” or vassal states of the United States, a relationship which has dragged them into unnecessary wars rather than protected them from war.
Even the current war in Ukraine was not provoked and perpetuated in defense of any consistent Western principle (https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/02/24/the-territorial-integrity-of-states-vs-the-self-determination-of-peoples) or any genuine European interest but, rather, in furtherance of the decades-long American quest for “full-spectrum dominance” of mankind and the planet.
If European countries were no longer allied with a Russia-hating United States, why would Russia, which in three years of fighting has been unable even to occupy all the territory of the four Russophone-majority oblasts which it formally annexed in September 2022, have any conceivable incentive to attack a NATO country or even a post-NATO European country?
Rationally, if European countries were to achieve independence from American domination and control, whether by their own initiative or by having independence thrust upon them, and, as a result, have no identifiable enemies, real or imagined, they should be able to significantly decrease their military spending and consecrate their freed-up resources to trying to improve the quality of life for their own people.
Has the world gone mad? Or have I?
John V. Whitbeck is a Paris-based international lawyer.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/02/27/has-the-world-gone-mad
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