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05-08-2022, 07:44 AM
French President Emmanuel Macron said it was suffering “brain death.” And then-U.S. President Donald Trump didn't have much patience for the alliance that has been a cornerstone of U.S. security policy for more than half a century, grumbling that the U.S. was unfairly shouldering too much of the defense burden and other NATO members too little.
Now NATO is clubbing together increasingly heavy weapons for use by Ukraine on its front lines and relentlessly bombed trenches horribly reminiscent of World War I. It speed-dated Finland and Sweden when those Nordic countries decided that continuing to be nonaligned was too risky in the wake of the Russian invasion and that they needed the shield of the NATO umbrella against whatever Putin might do next.
Their becoming the 31st and 32nd members of NATO will add to the ways in which Europe has been changed permanently, or at least for the foreseeable future, by the war.
Further away, in Asia, the ripples are consequential, too.
China is scrutinizing the Russian campaign for military lessons that could be applied in any eventual invasion of the self-governed island of Taiwan. India, China and other energy-hungry Asian nations are boosting the Kremlin's war chest and undercutting Western sanctions by buying growing amounts of Russian oil.
And then there's Putin himself. In Ukraine, long before the invasion, many already felt that their country was engaged in a battle of survival against the Kremlin leader's designs. Since 2014, thousands of people had already been killed in fighting with Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.
Mankind became inured to the bomb, learning to live with it.
https://japantoday.com/category/features...kraine-war
Now NATO is clubbing together increasingly heavy weapons for use by Ukraine on its front lines and relentlessly bombed trenches horribly reminiscent of World War I. It speed-dated Finland and Sweden when those Nordic countries decided that continuing to be nonaligned was too risky in the wake of the Russian invasion and that they needed the shield of the NATO umbrella against whatever Putin might do next.
Their becoming the 31st and 32nd members of NATO will add to the ways in which Europe has been changed permanently, or at least for the foreseeable future, by the war.
Further away, in Asia, the ripples are consequential, too.
China is scrutinizing the Russian campaign for military lessons that could be applied in any eventual invasion of the self-governed island of Taiwan. India, China and other energy-hungry Asian nations are boosting the Kremlin's war chest and undercutting Western sanctions by buying growing amounts of Russian oil.
And then there's Putin himself. In Ukraine, long before the invasion, many already felt that their country was engaged in a battle of survival against the Kremlin leader's designs. Since 2014, thousands of people had already been killed in fighting with Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.
Mankind became inured to the bomb, learning to live with it.
https://japantoday.com/category/features...kraine-war
