Sitting in an office with the television set by my side watching the news, I suddenly was focused on a report coming from New York, USA, about the Twin Towers and airplanes crashing onto the sides of the towers and couldn't possibly imagine that just a few weeks later war was to arrive in Afghanistan, country that was to be subject to carpet bombing. The smoking mountains were on television screens across the world. Just about two years later came yet another disastrous event that was the invasion of Iraq that completely destabilized the Middle East causing wave after wave of refugees. There was Libya, Syria and so forth afterwards.
The present war in Ukraine has been going on for more than a year and there is every indication that it could go on and on, threatening to engulf Europe as a whole. I do remember the war in Yugoslavia, war that ended up with the end of Yugoslavia and that in more than one way led to expansion of NATO that created the present war in Ukraine.
Long before the present war, Ukraine was in trouble, unable to make ends meet, with internal upheaval and ethnic tensions. Western Ukraine did not love Eastern Ukraine very much and World War Two is ample evidence of it when one side of Ukraine supported National Socialist Germany and was very much involved in what we know as the Holocaust and Eastern Ukraine sided with the Allies. Paradoxically, history repeats itself following what happened in Yugoslavia. Croatia and Bosnia Herzegobina were on the side of National Socialist Germany. Heinrich Himmler used to boast about the fact that Muslims from Bosnia Herzegobina joined the SS and were 'good fighters'. It did not come as a surprise the fact that Germany was the first country to recognize an independent Croatia because, after all, Croatia was on the German side during World War Two.
What happens today in the Baltic Republics is no surprise either. SS officers remarked the cruelty of Lithuanians against Jews. They described the scenes of an execution carried out by Lithuanians against Jews. The Lithuanians killed Jewish men, women and children and after the execution they danced on top of the corpses playing accordions and singing.
One conflict after another seems to be waged against people who fought against National Socialist Germany. Yugoslavia was dismantled and all the focus was against Serbia that in two World Wars fought against Germany and Austria. Now the focus is against Eastern Ukraine and against the Russian Federation that as part of the then Soviet Union lost tens of millions of people fighting against National Socialist Germany.
But, going back to the title, how good are the promises and what is the real agenda? The real agenda is to weaken Europe and the USA is using the conflict in Ukraine to weaken Europe and threatening to destabilize Europe with the willing cooperation of European governments that seem all to eager to please warmongering lobbies with complete disregard for their own peoples. In their efforts, adulating politicians are getting rid of outdated equipment that even when it is outdated it will be difficult to replace. Denmark, Netherlands, Norway and others are not known for being military powers and even Germany that was kept under American domination is no military power at all. Warplanes are foreign made and bought from the shelf since Germany was not allowed to develop its war industries. The only pieces of equipment worth mentioning are the Leopard tanks and even so they have proven to be pretty useless in real combat.
Promises here and there and big speeches including speeches made by Ursula von der Leyen, the disastrous former German Defense Secretary and present head of the European Commission can only make a bad situation worse. Present German Chancellor Olaf Scholz talks both ways, sending equipment while expressing fears regarding the involvement of Germany in yet another war.
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