The Duran Podcast - Macron looking ridiculous. NATO is getting weaker

Episode Date: March 13, 2024

Macron looking ridiculous. NATO is getting weaker

All right, Alexander. Let's talk about NATO expansion. Now Sweden is officially in NATO. And Stoltenberg sets some very interesting things at the ceremony with Sweden, how Ukraine needs to find its independence and its sovereignty. Okay, interesting statements from Stoltenberg. And of course, when we talk about NATO and what is happening with NATO and Ukraine. We have to bring in the comments from Macron, which are about two or three weeks running, where Macron has been calling for. You can even say lobbying because he has been traveling or he has sent his foreign minister to travel to various countries to get more commitment into Ukraine, boots on the ground, Ukraine or collective West military involved in Ukraine in one capacity or one capacity or another. And yeah, this is this is

where we are right now. Macaron continues to push this escalation in Ukraine. And he has got in support. He has built a kind of mini coalition, France, the Baltic states, Czech Republic, Pavel. Pavel is definitely on board. And even Poland, at least in the form of Sikorski, at least Sikorski, the foreign minister, is on board with, I don't want to say NATO because the U.S. has said no, but let's just say collective Western European troops inside of Ukraine. And once again, they could be non-combative role, but just during that, just during that out there. What are your thoughts on everything that's going on? I mean, let's first of all discuss Macron, because it is beginning to look tiresome and ridiculous,

more than dangerous, if I have to say, because, I mean, you said that he's traveling around Europe or saying he's foreign minister around Europe. This is true, except, of course, the one place which he dares not visit, apparently is Kiev. he was supposed to go to Kiev he's been supposed to go to Kiev on several occasions it was expected that he would finally go there this month

and then at the last moment he was apparently or supposedly going to go to Kiev he called the visit off now this is very weird but I suspect that the reason for that is because he's nervous

about going to Kiev empty-handed. It looks as if the French military are telling him, look, we've exhausted our ability to send military equipment to Kiev, to the Ukrainians. We've given them lots of things. Our Caesar Howitzers are all gone. You know, we sent lots of them to Ukraine.

The Russians are destroying them systematically. Apparently, the French military are not happy at all with this proposal for France to intervene directly in Ukraine. And I think what Macron is finding in his attempts to build this coalition to intervene militarily in Ukraine, is that it's becoming a coalition not so much of the willing, as of the insignificant, the three Baltic countries, which have tiny armies, I mean barely armies at all, a Czech Republic, hardly a huge military power. And of course, Sikorsky in Poland, except of course it seems that he doesn't speak for the Polish government

because Donald Tusk, who's got problems of his own in Poland, is apparently ruling his out. So, you know, Napoleon is, you know, rather Napoleon. Macron is a kind of Napoleon figure who is literally at the moment starting to look like all hat and no trousers. The Americans don't want to join. And so, as I said, Macron, I think is becoming increasingly embarrassed and really doesn't want to go to Ukraine at this time because he can't provide them with. military equipment and he can't provide them with troops either. So he's, he's, you know, put on a big show, but for the moment, it's not working out like most things Macron does. The big story with NATO at the moment is that, you know, a couple of months ago, even a couple of months ago, but you know, through much of the last two years, we've been hearing the story about how much stronger NATO has become as a result of the Ukraine war, I think the penny is now starting to drop, that the Ukraine war, despite the accession of Finland and Sweden, isn't stronger.

NATO isn't stronger. It's getting weaker. Its armies, the European armies, have been massively depleted. The chaotic and, frankly, decaying state of the European arms industry has been exposed in the most brutal way. And beyond that now, there is a specter haunting Europe, to paraphrase Karl Marx, and that's the specter of the return of Donald Trump. And Donald Trump is talking about ending the Ukraine war in a day and he's saying that he doesn't want any more free-loading by NATO partners and the EU states are telling each other. My God, that means he's going to take the United States out of NATO, in which case, of course, the entire alliance collapses. Now, to be straight to say very clearly, and I've said this in my own program on my own channel,

I have not seen a single comment from Donald Trump over the course of this election in which he says that it's his intention to take the United States out of NATO. Maybe he said it and I've missed it, but I have not heard him say it. So this story is, to all appearances, to be completely wrong, he is not campaigning to take the United States out of NATO. But he is campaigning to stop further commitment by the United States to Ukraine. He's apparently told Orban, it was very interesting that Orban came to see him. He says not assent more for Ukraine.

the moment he becomes president, the Europeans can see that. That is again telling them the extent of their dependence upon the Americans, because to be straightforward about it, whatever Macron may say, whatever the British may say, without the Americans,

the whole Ukraine enterprise is lost. So they sense that the Americans could soon be walking away, if Donald Trump is elected, they definitely are going to walk away. They're worried that they'll be left hanging out to dry and that their own weakness has been catastrophically exposed as a result of this whole Ukraine project, exposed to the Russians and the world,

but also to their American ally, which now sees how, useless the Europeans really are. Yeah, Trump has never said, I agree with you, he's never said he's going to take the United States out of NATO. What Trump is saying, in essence, is more spending on NATO. That's basically what he's advocating for, which if you go by the hawkish European point of view, which is more escalation with Russia and more military spending, they should be on board with Trump's statements to spend more into NATO. I mean, it's the hawkish Europeans like the barebox, like the Macron's, which are saying,

we need to go to war with Russia. We need to build military factories in Europe and in Ukraine. So Trump is basically saying, okay, let's spend more on NATO. And then they're backing off. And they're saying Trump wants to take us out of NATO. Basically, the way I read it is the Europeans, they want all the national. NATO. They want all the factories. They want all the spending. They just don't want to do it. Not all the European countries, Poland, Greece, they do spend quite a lot. I know Greece, as a

matter of fact, spends a lot on NATO and on its military with regards to NATO. But most of the European countries, maybe most of the European NATO countries, maybe more than half, are not spending that much on NATO because they have the United States there. And I think that's the crux of this entire issue, this entire panic over Trump is that Europe wants all of these things, but they don't want to pay for it. And in years and decades past, the United States has kept the grift going. And it's kept the Europeans very, very full with all the money that they've ported to NATO and the NATO project. And here comes Trump saying, okay, well, you guys need to also pay your 3% or whatever it is to stay in NATO. I mean, this is the issue here.

This is all about money. And the Europeans want the Americans money, but they don't want to put in their money. But they still want all the escalation. Yes. You are absolutely correct. I mean, we have an expression in England. Maybe they also have it in the USA, wanting to have your cake and eat it as well, which is exactly what the Europeans are about.

They want to have their cake and eat it as well. Even Putin, of all people, has said that the European position is completely absurd and illogical and self-serving. They want the American guarantee. They want the American protection. They want to be able to be horrid to the Russians and to, you know, engage in all kinds of games in places like Ukraine, you know, trying to draw Ukraine into the European Union and all that kind of thing. But they don't want to spend any money on it. Now, you know, we've just had a budget in prison. Britain, of course, is no longer in the EU,

at least not normally, but it's part of NATO. And, you know, the British have been talking all the time about, you know, the need to increase defence spending, to strengthen defences. We've been having one article after another telling us about the problems in the British military. There's only 40 tanks still operational, that the aircraft carriers can barely function

and don't have enough planes, that are third of the planes in the Royal Air Force are having to be sold off because there aren't pilots to fly. We're getting all these problems. We're told all the time about the enormous danger to the West and to Britain specifically from Russia. So all of this, you'd expect huge, big increase in defence spending, except the government announced its budget just a few days ago, no increase in defense spending. It's exactly where it was before. And this is true right across Europe. Germany has increased spending on defense, but it hasn't actually, because what it is actually spending on defense is really spending for Ukraine. They've been spending

more money to arm Ukraine, even as Germany itself, the German military, is increasingly. increasingly disarmed. It's this extraordinary bizarre thing. And elsewhere in Europe, hardly anything like that is even going on at all. Poland is one country, as he rightly said, which is taking military expansion seriously. But I know a lot of people who think this is unsustainable and it is becoming controversial in Poland. And Greece has had a very long history of heavy spending on defense, but then in Greece we have our problems with Turkey, and that's probably why what's really driving it. So the Europeans, they want to, in the like, they want to, you know, hide behind the Americans. They don't want to spend more. And there are reasons for this.

Firstly, there's a economic crisis in Europe, as we all know. They're budget. problems right across Europe. The European economies are under stress. Welfare budgets are falling. And of course, the Europeans have heavily invested in their welfare states. And they know perfectly well that European publics don't want to see cuts in welfare spending and social spending. So they don't want to spend more because there's a political problem there. At the same time there's another factor which is that they worry that if they do spend more

if they do increase their armed forces to a certain level where they might be able to defend themselves the US will say to them well look you don't need this anymore you can do it all yourselves you've got a good army in Germany you've got a good army in France

you've got a good army in Britain We've got lots of things to worry about in other parts of the world, in the Indo-Pacific region, in the Middle East. So let's us Americans reduce our forces in Europe and transfer them instead to these other places where we need them more. And the Europeans are terrified of that. By the way, they were already frightened of that happening during the Cold War, the last period of the Cold War. because they know that however much they spend on defence, they cannot match the Russians without the Americans being there. And that if the Americans do start to pull back in that kind of way,

then ultimately the Europeans have no real choice but to come to some kind of understanding with the Russians, which is the one thing they don't want to do. Yeah, the Europeans are addicted to the easy American money. They've gotten used to it. And it has been easy and it's allowed the Europeans, many European states, to invest, as you said, in their social programs. I mean, when you go to Greece, you understand that one of the reasons that the social programs in Greece are so poor, they're not at the standard of, say, the North European countries is because Greece spent so much on the military. I'm not saying it's all the reason why, but that does play a big part in why you see the social programs in Greece are not at the level of, say, the Scandinavian countries or Germany or something like that.

It's because Greece does allocate a large part of their budget to military spending and to NATO. I think Greece is at 3.4% or something like that. I mean, we do surpass the 3% threshold consistently over the last 10, 20 years. So, yeah, that's, and so, you know, if you're a European, you know, a European NATO member and you have the United States paying for everything and you could keep your NATO spending at 0.5 or 1% and the rest of the, the other 2% you could allocate to whatever programs you want to allocate that money to, yeah, it's a great deal. It's a great deal. And you keep America in.

That is the purpose of NATO. You keep America in and it benefits the political class. And it's easy money. It's easy money. And it makes them feel important. They can, you know, you know, talk tough. Strike poses. Pretend, you know, the great moves and shakers of the world.

Be horrid to the Russians. And it's, you know, it's safe. You know, if you start having to take responsibility for your actions and are accountable for what you spend to your taxpayers, then, of course, none of this becomes easy in quite the same way. And, of course, when we talk about spending on NATO, and American spending on NATO, it isn't just arms and troops, because the United States has a massive presence in Europe. And, you know, there's all these NGOs and all these outfits which are all funded by the US. You know, the Marshall Fund in Germany or whatever it is called Foundation in Germany, all of these things. And of course, they're very, very lucrative of the people who work and can work on them. There's a nice, very big salaries.

You write, it's a very easy life. You write all sorts of articles and all sorts of journals. You do all kinds of studies, the outcome of which are predetermined about how dangerous Russia is and all that kind of thing. And you earn a nice big, comfortable salary that way. So all of that is now at risk and they're panicking. And of course, beyond that, they have a debacle on their hands in Ukraine. So this whole enterprise project Ukraine has not strengthened NATO at this moment in time. It looks like it's creating instead for the Europeans a massive headache.

And if Donald Trump is elected in November, that headache will get worse. And I'm going to say this. I think that whatever happens in the United States in that election, over time, this criticism that you get in the US is going to grow because Trump has spoken the unspeakable. many Americans are noticing and they're picking up on this and it is starting to spread through certainly the Republican Party

but before long I suspect more and more of the political class and the wider public in the US also so he's already to some extent shifted the dial on this yeah I mean the US or at least the the political class and the permanent state and everything that that revolves around the permanent state absolutely does very well from from the empire building in Europe. And the empire building is a huge business. Like you said, the NGOs. You have all the staff that has to work at the bases and everything around it. Everything around it provides a lot of jobs, a lot of money. And yeah,

It's empire. And if you can get in on the empire game in the United States, if you can be part of the empire game, you're going to do really, really well. So the U.S. also benefits from this, or at least a part, a part of the permanent state in the U.S. absolutely benefits from the whole NATO grift. I'm not going. Let's finish off the video. I just want to return a little bit to Macron. And I actually just want to ask you your opinion on an article that Simplica's the Thinker put out on Substac the other day.

And in the article, he points out to the two different viewpoints as to how Macron could achieve what he says is his goal, if you want to believe that this is what Macron really wants to have happen. but how he could achieve his goal of getting collective West military involved in Ukraine, whether it's part of NATO or not a part of NATO. And the first way that this could happen is that troops could be invited to Ukraine. So under international law, Ukraine invites the militaries of France, the Baltics, Poland, whatever, into Ukraine. Under international law, they're invited. and they either are used to take away pressure from the border with Belarus and they free up the

Ukraine military, which is on the border with Belarus, so then they can send those Ukrainian forces to the front line. Or, as Pavel said yesterday, the forces that the collective West could send to Ukraine could take on a role of in the rear in various. auxiliary tasks, once again, freeing up Ukrainian forces to go to the front. And the argument is that under international law, they're invited and they're non-combative. So if Russia were to target them, well, then this could give Macron the excuse and NATO the excuse to say, well, look, we were invited to Ukraine. Our soldiers were taking on these tasks, which are not coming into direct conflict with Russia, and the Russians, they hit us. So now we have to respond, Article 5 or something

along those lines. What do you think of those two different analysis? And this is, I just want to clarify, this is not what Simplicis the thinker said. This is not his analysis. He was just pointed to the two different ways that various analysts are saying this could happen. And coincidentally, Pavel actually brought this up yesterday. He actually came out and said, well, we could send troops in the form of troops to take over some of the tasks that the Ukrainian troops are performing in the rear. And then Ukraine can free up higher thousands of soldiers they have doing these tasks and they can send them to the front line. Well, it's a, it's a It's an intelligent analysis, but I think that there are a lot of flaws in it.

Let's first of all deal with the issue of international law. Yes, of course, Ukraine can ask troops from NATO countries to enter Ukraine. And in international law terms, that would be entirely, you know, legal. But saying that it is legal does not make it politically wise. Now, if we're talking about international law, international law functions within a wider global international framework. The Russians have been complaining for years since long before the special military operation was launched, that Ukraine was being integrated into NATO, that NATO or the Western powers were establishing military bases there. that they were introducing troops into Ukraine.

They said very clearly that this is a key reason why the war began. In the first place, if NATO troops, they would be NATO troops, enter Ukraine in that kind of way. What happens is this. The Russians tell their own people, and they tell the Indians, the Chinese, the Brazilians, the Arab states, the African states, look, You see, we were right.

They may be there with the permission of the Ukrainian government, but it's a government that they ultimately installed. They are there to protect their project. We did indeed act in order to defend ourselves. And given that the global majority of states, China, India, Turkey, even Iran, the Arab states or whatever, have been very sympathetic to the Russian perspective. All I can say is that what this is actually going to do is make those countries more

sympathetic to the Russian point of view still. The global majority will not see this as a legal step. They will see it as an escalation, which is what it actually is. You can't fool people. Oh, no, no, this is entirely legal. People will say, well, you may be legal, but you don't have to do this thing. Doing it in the way that you are doing it is dangerous, it is reckless, and it is clearly escalatory.

So that's, I think, one thing I have to say. Now, the other thing is, yes, all right, you send your troops into Ukraine, and then you dare the Russians to attack. you. Now, bear in mind, this would be true in either scenario. Western troops take control of the border between Ukraine and Belarus. Now, Lukashenko has been talking for ages about how the West is trying to encircle Belarus. He's got proof now. He's got Western troops on his southern border, as well as Western troops on his Western border and, of course, Western troops in his northern border

in the Baltic states. So he's got the proof of that now. So already, again, this doesn't look defensive. This can be persuasively argued to be actually threatening. So it's not just a question of releasing troops. to go and fight the Russians. But let's say the Russians, if the troops go to the border,

or if they fulfill a role in the west of Ukraine, an auxiliary role of some kind, like Pavel is talking about. Well, the Russians could say, look, it doesn't matter to us. These are NATO troops in Ukraine. We have consistently said that this is wrong, and this is dangerous.

They're clearly there for a military purpose. after all they are troops they're not you know civilian you know medical people or something of that kind so as far as we're concerned they're a target and if the russians do strike at these troops what do western governments and western public say do they escalate still further or given that as i said most countries around the world will see the introduction of Western troops into Ukraine already is an escalation. Do they escalate even further? Do they get into the incredibly dangerous situation?

They're getting involved into a shooting war with the Russians. How do they justify these moves when the body bags start to return to Germany and France and Britain and the Czech republics, as they would do. This doesn't make any sense, and it doesn't even bear thinking about, unless the Americans are fully on board. And given how the American public, at the moment, feels about forever wars and military interventions

and all of those things, I think that it would be an impossible cell in the United States for President, for Biden to turn around now before the election and so to the American people. Well, our allies in Europe are getting themselves into trouble in Ukraine and we must come and protect them. I think this whole concept is fundamentally flawed politically from every perspective and militarily from every perspective, from every perspective, that you look at it. And the Germans understand it, which is why they're saying no. The British understand it, which is why they're also saying no. And of course, the Americans absolutely refuse,

are refusing to become involved in it also. So these unovercomplicated ideas, the kind that Macron is very attracted to. He's very big on ideas like this. that when you unscramble it, when you take it apart, you can see that it won't really work. Yeah, just in closing, I can understand why Macron comes up with these ideas

because, as we said in a previous video, maybe he's trying to stick it to Germany. He's trying to present himself as the tough guy. He's trying to present himself as the hawk while Germany is weak. You know, maybe Macron is trying to distract away from the farmer's protests. There's a very good distraction. He has various other issues in France, which are related to Macron's social life.

I will just leave it there, which he may want to distract away from. The question that bothers me about all of this is, okay, the Baltic states, they're in a panic. They're always in a panic. But people like Pavel, you know, this is a Cold War communist. isn't he? I mean, you know, you would think that he's more intelligent than what he's leading on. He's, he's gone full in with Macron on this. It's people like Pavel that I don't quite understand.

Sikorsky from Poland. He's a neocon, a chief neocon. But, you know, it's why are these guys putting their chips in with a macron type when they, when they obviously realize that macron is just, you know, he's either bluffing, or he's crazy. You're absolutely right. I can just quickly go back to Macron. Yes, I think this is part of diversion.

It's an attempt to divert away from his own internal problems. But of course, the price of doing that is that it's convincing even more people in France that this is a reckless, dangerous and irresponsible president. Because if you look at the opinion polling in France, if you look at the commentaries that are appearing in the French media, even people within the political class who were formerly his allies are appalled by these ideas. France is not ready to get involved in a war with Russia. I mean, it's terribly unpopular there.

So this isn't going to solve Macron's domestic problems. It's going to make them worse. But of course, he probably doesn't understand that. always his response to every problem is twofold. It is to be even more aggressive, and that's absolutely true with domestic challenges, and we can see that it's also true with foreign challenges, and of course to argue for more Europe,

which is in a kind of a way, what this also is, this plan to send troops to Ukraine. So he falls back on those two things, and he doesn't fully understand the political effect of what he's doing. So that's one thing. Now, let's turn to people like Pavel. I don't know a huge amount about Pavel.

I don't think anybody does. But you're absolutely right. He was a Cold War communist. He was a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia during the Cold War. He was a military officer in the Czechoslovak army, the Warsaw Pact Czechoslovak army during the Cold War. Remember, there are a fair number of people like that. The current military commander of the armed forces of Ukraine, General Alexander Siersky,

was presumably also a member of the Soviet Communist Party and a military officer in the Soviet military. So this isn't actually quite so unusual. I think that Pravo is a classic example. of a certain type of East European, you know, former party figure, apparatchik, whatever you'd like to call him, who when they saw that the old communist system in which they'd got themselves, they were involved in, was starting to fall apart, decided that they were going to throw in,

go over to what they assumed was. the winning side. In this case, the West. So, you know, they forgot the fact that they were communists. They forgot the fact that they were part of the apparatus of the communist system. They forgot all of that. They suddenly embraced in an even more fervid way the things that they assumed that the West represented. And what they're now, I think, sensing is, well, maybe just possibly in Pavel's case, I didn't get it quite right after all. Things are not quite as straightforward as I assumed. And that explains his belligerence and his confrontational nature,

because of course what he senses is perhaps that the ground is shifting under his feet. And this time he really will be left high and dry if the whole thing comes tumbling down around him. Didn't get it right with the communist. Did it get it right with the neolib globalists? Didn't get it right with the neocons? Where can he go? Where can he go from here? Exactly.

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