NATO’s next summit is looming. Will they finally choose sanity in Ukraine?

(LifeSiteNews) — The current head of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, is due to leave his post on September 30. Having seen his tenure extended by one year on account of the war in Ukraine, his legacy looks less than promising. He is running out of time to deliver a result before a summit which will decide the direction of the war.

A legacy of lapses

As he is faced with becoming history, Jens Stoltenberg is perhaps considering his contribution to it. He has  distinguished himself this year with some notable statements. 

He surprised the media in February 2023 when he said NATO has been providing “training and equipment” to Ukraine’s armed forces since “the war started in 2014.”

In case you have to be reminded, we live in a time when to point out facts that stand in contrast to the mainstream narrative, one is considered to be in collaboration with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Yet, this is not the only intrusion of reality into the thoughts of the NATO head. 

His recent comments suggest a pattern may be forming. Last week, speaking at the German Day of Industry, Stoltenberg admitted that “Our weapons and ammunition stocks are depleted and need to be replenished, not just in Germany, but in many countries across NATO.”

The argument that the massive donation of materiel to Ukraine has demilitarized the West is another Putin talking point – according to our friends in the media. His presence among German industry leaders whose business has been devastated by sanctions and the destruction of their gas supply is also remarkable. 

Setting another deadline, he announced on June 25 that Ukraine would join NATO “immediately after the counteroffensive.”

To cap it all, the very next day he stood beside the German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius and blurted out a shocking truth: “I think what we are seeing of the Russia of the last days demonstrates the fragility of the German regime.”

The German defense minister laughed before twice questioning the NATO leader, who had the temerity to stress NATO’s future commitment to “undersea pipeline infrastructure” five months after the Nord Stream pipelines were mysteriously blown up. 

The Germans are used to being humiliated. In February 2022 the German leader Olaf Scholz stood nervously by as U.S. President Joe Biden declared his intention to destroy Germany’s strategic gas supply. 

The fragility of Germany is a fact which is supported by its industry and trades union leaders. Amidst a worsening energy crisis, the former economic powerhouse of Europe faces economic chaos and rapid deindustrialization. Heavy industry faces a potential shutdown due to the lack of Russian gas. 

So, what is going on in the head of the head of NATO? 

Dead lines

Time appears to be a pressing factor for Stoltenberg and the NATO alliance. The counteroffensive itself was heavily promoted in the Western media, with rumors first appearing last winter. 

Objectives were bold. Crimea and the four regions claimed by Russia would be retaken, with wild talk of a march on Moscow. Expectations were managed downward when the Spring Offensive remained unsprung. With its eventual arrival, little more than a few houses have been gained.  

Even the Western media admits that Russia’s defense in depth is formidable.

The narrative has flatlined.

A failing campaign

The fabled Ukrainian counteroffensive is at once a military and an advertising campaign. Its success or failure is deemed to have profound consequences for the continued financial and military support of Ukraine. 

The house newspaper of the neoconservatives, the Washington Post, stated this bluntly in an editorial which described the counteroffensive as a “D-Day” moment for Ukraine to “turn the tide of the war.”

Yet the tide may turn either way. Will Stoltenberg stand by his assurance that Ukraine will join NATO with the tide turning against them? 

Combat estimates

Stoltenberg warned in February 2023 that the war was a matter of supply and demand.

“This has become a grinding war of attrition. And therefore, it’s also a battle of logistics.”  

He carefully explained that the West was being outpaced, and in danger of disarmament. 

Key capabilities like ammunition, fuel, and spare parts must reach Ukraine before Russia can seize the initiative on the battlefield…

The war in Ukraine is consuming an enormous amount of munitions, and depleting Allied stockpiles…

The current rate of Ukraine’s ammunition expenditure is many times higher than our current rate of production…

This puts our defense industries under strain.

At the time, he suggested that arms factories could work through the weekend to make up a shortfall. Yet here, again, time was against his hopes. As Stoltenberg admits:

For example, the waiting time for large-caliber ammunition has increased from 12 to 28 months.

Orders placed today would only be delivered two-and-a-half years later.

Despite this, he left the address on a positive note.

The good news is that several Allies, including the United States and France, have already signed new multi-year contracts with the defense industry… we are on the right track.

Our decisions this week will pave the way for our Summit in Vilnius in July.

And help keep our people safe in a more dangerous world.

The NATO summit in Vilnius is weeks away. Is the NATO campaign really “on the right track”? 

Expectation management

Again, the Washington Post is seen as a bellwether for policy decisions. It published an article by Graham Allison yesterday – June 26 – whose candor, bitterness and resistance to reality neatly summarizes the ideology of fantasy which precipitated this mess. 

Expectations have been severely mismanaged in the West. The clock is ticking for an alliance heavily invested in a war it seems it can neither win nor afford. 

The mention of the “Global South” is a rare reminder of the world which exists outside the “international community” frequently invoked by NATO and the neoconservatives who direct its actions. 

This map also illustrates the nations which have applied the self-harm of sanctions. Depleting military inventories, inflation and recession combine to threaten the governments of the West with severe electoral consequences. 

The writer, Allison, cannot conceal a contempt for peace shared by his neoconservative readership.  

He closes with the unfortunate optimism typical of an ideology which cannot acknowledge the cost of its own destruction, and remains dedicated to the promotion of fantasies. 

Perhaps Allison should have asked the Germans how well the example of their nation serves as a model to future NATO allies. It is not an example which inspires confidence. 

An outbreak of sanity?

The counteroffensive appears extremely unlikely to deliver any meaningful gains before the Vilnius meeting. 

Faced with failure and a reluctant peace, there are two options for NATO: negotiation or escalation. 

The sponsorship of war or peace is the question which will be decided at the summit. The combined arms of the Western method of war – the media and the military – have run out of steam. There is nothing to cheerlead in the miserable spectacle of men dying in minefields they have entered and now cannot escape. 

It appears that reality has made more inroads into the mind of Jens Stoltenberg than has the army of Ukraine into the Russian lines. He knows what the cost has been in blood and treasure, the one excluded by the trumpeting of the other in a media which has sanitized a pointless massacre. 

He and the alliance he leads is faced with an existential question that touches on us all. Do they finally step back from the table, having lost everything so far?  

Jens Stoltenberg’s legacy will be tarnished either way. Yet he appears to be aware, along with a war-wearying U.S. and European public, that if the choice is made for an inconvenient peace there will at least be a history left to judge him.