This article is based on a text published on Nachdenkseiten.

NATO propaganda places responsibility for the Ukraine war solely on the Russian side by ignoring its own expansion policy. Through its regular infiltration of news management, it wins over a large majority of the Western public.

“Putin ordered the war. He is responsible for every dead soldier.”

The statement that Russia alone was to blame for the catastrophe sounds as plausible as it is implausible on closer inspection: Like all wars, this one cannot be understood without its history and it will not be possible to solve it without understanding the history. Those who do not seek such an understanding will all too easily fall for the idea that the war was the result of the psychological disposition of the aggressor, the President of the Russian Federation.

NATO, a military alliance which has been purely western to date, likes to justify its previous and planned future eastward expansion with the ‘legitimate security interests’ of its member states. This also justifies NATO’s military manoeuvres near the Russian border and the permanent stationing of 7,000 ‘rotating’ NATO soldiers in Poland and the three Baltic states. However, Russia is denied the claim to ‘legitimate security interests’.

At the same time, western states lose their credibility when they criticize Russia’s efforts to expand its spheres of influence, but suppress or gloss over the expansion of their own spheres of influence brought about by NATO’s eastward expansion. Only if the western states give up this attitude, their joint responsibility for the deterioration of relations with Russia and draw practical political conclusions from this for the future formation of these relations, there is a chance for their lasting improvement and thus for stability and cooperation on the common Eurasian continent.

By ignoring its expansion policy before the war, NATO propaganda locates the responsibility solely on the Russian side and, through its regular infiltration of news management, wins over an ever larger majority of the Western public.

Long-term NATO propaganda

Documents from NATO strategists show how long and how concretely NATO strategists have been pursuing this irresponsible strategy: As early as 2014, the so-called NATO Center of Excellence Joint Air Power Competence Center (JAPCC) questioned the fact that there was no longer a major war in Europe as stated in the Future Vector study, part I, page 141; In this context, on page 70, the strategists recommended an “appropriate mix” of nuclear and conventional capabilities, in other words: they consciously risked nuclear war in Europe. They also explained on page 141 where to start: it was the areas immediately west of Russia’s western border. These are the areas that have been or are aspiring to be included in NATO.

They also understood the nuclear danger posed by a war in Ukraine, a country with 15 nuclear reactors, all of which are threatened by their absolute reliance on reliable electricity and water supplies to prevent a meltdown. In May 2014, without much publicity, NATO advised the Yatsenyuk interim government in Kiev on what to do with its nuclear facilities during a war. It was not about avoiding war, but about protecting the nuclear reactors from a meltdown in the event of war; no one can do that under war conditions.

The military take risks that no one is allowed to take. As a result, they de-legitimize the peace movement and manipulate the population in order to win them over to their high-risk risk. NATO and Western governments call this “security policy”. This is a Babylonian perversion. A security policy does not deliver heavy weapons to combat zones with nuclear facilities, but it complies with the texts of international law that prescribe a peace order of common security and that takes into account the security interests of everyone. This is security policy in the 21st century. Also and especially in view of the wars in several parts of the world.

The logic of war also endangers the ecological vitality of the living space on earth. The only chance of survival lies in observing international law within the framework of world domestic politics, since the destruction of the livelihoods of supposed opponents ultimately destroys one’s own livelihoods. Securing the habitat of Earth requires that all self-adulation and black-and-white propaganda cease and be replaced by negotiations about sustainable relationships between the parts of humanity that can only survive as a whole. That would be security policy. In the vulnerable earth of the 21st century there is no security against each other, only together. Pacifism is a basis for this.

Bernhard Trautvetter