Jens Stoltenberg, a former Norwegian Prime Minister and now Secretary General of NATO should be fired now, before it is too late. He announced he is giving Ukraine “permission” to use its soon to be delivered F-16s to launch attacks inside Russia.
This is equivalent to a NATO declaration of war. It is an irrational and dangerous move that needs to be quashed as soon as possible.
Not only is Stoltenberg an uber hawk, but he totally misunderstands NATO’s purpose. If he is allowed to stay in office, he will lead NATO into a European war that might well include nuclear weapons. Above all, Stoltenberg doesn’t grasp that NATO is a defensive, not an offensive, alliance.
NATO has been drifting in the wrong direction for years. It has got involved in wars outside of NATO’s defensive domain, based on a rude sort of politics that gratifies the US and Europe’s otherwise inert and short sighted leaders. These wars, that now include Ukraine, are draining NATO’s defenses and weakening the core responsibility of the alliance, which is to protect the territory of its members.
There are no provisions in the NATO Treaty authorizing offensive, outside-the-boundary operations.
Now the Russians are saying that many of the so-called “mercenaries” in Ukraine are, in fact, highly trained NATO soldiers. They wear Ukrainian uniforms with national patches identifying them. They are “necessary” to operate the high tech weapons NATO has sent to Ukraine. When the Russians recently took over Avdiivka they found bodies of these mercenaries, some American and some Poles.
Earlier, they killed at least 60 French mercenaries in a hotel in Kharkiv.