John Batchelor and Stephen F. Cohen prep for NATO summit today

"Cold Wars make it possible to invent threats then act upon them."

"NATO is talking itself into war with Russia." 

"NATO is convinced that the Russians are preparing to invade in order to destroy NATO."

Those are just three of John Batchelor's great one-liners during his talk with Stephen F.Cohen on Tuesday night about key issues regarding the NATO summit -- although I'd have to review the podcast to jog my memory as to whether he said NATO was talking itself into war or had already done so.

In any case, President Trump will want to talk about money at the summit while the NATO bigwigs will counter with what he's going to do about Russia's obvious plan to invade Europe.  

Now why is it obvious? We have NATO's reading of a before and after satellite photo to thank for that. Below is the "after" photo. Visit Defense One for the 'before' photo and accompanying article to understand why NATO might have to start a defensive nuclear war with Russia.  

Veterans of making sense out of SouthFront's Syrian war maps should have no trouble reading the photo. Put the before and after photos together, as they do at Defense One, and it's obvious, after Defense One explains for people who can't read SouthFront war maps, that the Russians have built an "exterior fence" around some buildings and put snow or dirt over some other buildings to fortify them, and there's the proof that the Russians are preparing to invade plus they've been building a railroad extension, which is more proof.

Put it all that another way, as John Batchelor did, and humanity still has 14 minutes from the launch of a nuclear weapon from Russia or the U.S. to prepare for The End. 

My view is that the people currently in charge at NATO make the characters in "Dr Strangelove" look sane.

Is there is any way to stop the madness?  Well, Steve tried to put the best spin on things by pointing out that bureaucrats (who want to protect their department budgets) are fueling a lot of NATO war drumming. 

But while I can't recall whether it was Steve or John who made the observation, another great one-liner was that relations between the U.S. and Russia had become militarized. This is a departure from the Cold War, during which diplomacy played a large role in staving off hot war between the superpowers.  The role is absent in the new cold war. 

The hopeful news, which Steve and John didn't discuss because they might not know about it yet, is now that the Bundestag made public their research bureau's investigation of whether the U.S. coalition's presence in Syria is legal, I don't think there's going to be much discussion about Syria at the NATO summit.

All right. The gabfest is just about to get underway in Brussels, so here's the podcasts for the Batchelor-Cohen discussion.

Part 1.  Part 2. 

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