By Paul Craig Roberts - December 16, 2021

NATO promises to keep expanding, despite Russian objections

https://www.rt.com/russia/543418-stoltenberg-nato-continue-expansion/

The two-bit punk Washington puppet, Jens Stoltenberg, responded for Washington to Russian Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Ryabkov by spitting in the Kremlin’s eye.

Minister Ryabkov made it clear, finally after much too long of a time, that NATO would not be permitted to advance any further. But, as I said would be the case, Washington did not hear.

https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2021/12/16/cuban-missile-crisis-redux/

Stoltenberg, a non-entity of no consequence, just told the world’s preeminent military power to go to hell.

As for the Kremlin’s opposition to Ukraine being incorporated into NATO, Washington’s puppet declared: “whether Ukraine joins NATO is up to the bloc’s member states and its leadership, and that Moscow doesn’t have input into the decision.”

Will the Kremlin pretend the strong rebuff didn’t happen?

Stoltenberg is not going to let them:

“NATO countries are already training Ukrainian troops and consulting with them,” he bragged. “They are conducting joint exercises and providing military supplies and technology.”

As Biden and his Secretary of State already said: “We don’t give a hoot about Russian red lines. The exceptional US has red lines, not those inconsequential Russian jerks.”

What now will the Kremlin do? Will Lavrov rush out and “correct” Ryabkov so the Kremlin can continue to avoid the reality? Indeed, what can the Kremlin actually do? Having misplaced its trust in Western democracy, reasonableness, dialogue, negotiation, the Kremlin has been led by its pro-American intellectual class, its pro-Western Atlanticist Integrationists, and CIA-financed protesters inside Russia down a blind alley. Trapped in a blind alley, how is the Kremlin going to get out?

The West was astonished when suddenly the Russian foot came down in Syria and Washington’s overthrow of the Syrian government was blocked by Russian military force. With the West stunned, that was the time for the Kremlin to settle on its terms all other issues, but the vision simply was not there. The Kremlin worried that someone in the West might not speak well of them.

All the Kremlin has achieved is to show that it naively believes in all the professed values of the West that the West most certainly does not believe in.

I have said from the beginning that Russian foreign policy has been a mistake that is leading to nuclear war. We are at the point where Russia must back down or show in a highly convincing way that it will, indeed, use its superior force.

To comprehend how poorly the entire Western world is led, consider that while this most serious situation developed off the radar the idiot Western governments were preoccupied with boosting the profits of the pharmaceutical industry with an orchestrated fake “Covid pandemic” by marketing a “vaccine” that does not protect against Covid but does cause serious injuries and deaths.

Something has happened to human intelligence everywhere on the globe. Hype prevails over reality. Unimportant issues silence important issues. Truth is less preferred than illusion and delusion. Avoid reality at all cost. Pretend. Pretend.

The utter fools who comprise the governments of the world don’t see what is coming.

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